Chapter 19
ANNIE
I’m crying into a taco, and it is every bit as dignified as it sounds.
Which is to say, not at all. My mascara is doing a slow, tragic migration toward my chin, and I am actively seasoning my carnitas with the remnants of my dignity.
It’s a new low, even for me, and I’m pretty sure there’s a piece of cilantro stuck to my cheek, but I honestly don’t have the emotional bandwidth to care.
“We’re done. It’s over,” I sob, the words muffled by a corn tortilla. “I’m the girl in the movie who teaches the brooding widower how to laugh again right before his perfect, long-lost wife reappears out of thin air in the third act to reclaim her throne.”
Cori and Marcus are flanking me like a two-person emotional SWAT team, sitting cross-legged on the floor of our apartment, which smells like a mix of Palo Santo and the questionable street meat Marcus bought from a cart on Broadway.
Cori’s hand traces soothing loops on my back, her touch warm through my sweater, even as she balances her own taco precariously.
“Annie, breathe. Take a beat. He is not going to leave you for this Rebecca chick, I can feel it in my bones.”
This is how it’s been for the last few days. I’ll be perfectly fine—making pancakes with Emma, laughing at something Marcus said—and then night hits and I completely fall apart.
It’s like my brain waits until I’m alone in the dark to replay every worst-case scenario on repeat.
Leo meeting Rebecca at that café. Her looking beautiful and put-together and exactly like the type of woman who should be raising a child with a Columbia professor.
Him remembering why he loved her. Them deciding to try again, for Emma’s sake.
Me getting a phone call: “Annie, we need to talk.”
Cori says I’m spiraling. Marcus says I’m catastrophizing.
They’re both right, but I can’t help it.
Rebecca has history with him. She has Emma.
She has a whole life they built together, even if she walked away from it.
And what do I have? A night of really good sex and some nice moments feeding ducks in Central Park?
It doesn’t feel like enough. It doesn’t feel like it could possibly be enough to compete with a decade of shared memories and a literal child.
“That ‘Rebecca chick?’” I hiccup mid-sob, a rogue shard of iceberg lettuce falling onto my jeans.
“She’s the Mother of his Child, Cori! She has biological seniority!
For all I know, they’re going to meet up and she’ll end up having, like, a celestial, life-altering vagina that’ll convince him to restore the monarchy of their perfect little family. ”
Marcus snorts, reaching for a napkin. “Nobody’s vagina is that magical, Annie. Not even in the West Village.”
Cori pulls me into a hug, and I bury my face in her shoulder while Marcus awkwardly pats my knee.
“You aren’t going to lose them,” Cori whispers. “Leo would have to be blind, deaf, and lobotomized to let you go.
“Wait, wait,” Marcus says, leaning in with sudden interest. “You haven’t actually given us the full report. How was the sex? Because if it was mediocre, we can just pack this up and walk away now. But if it was—?”
“Marcus, for the love of God!” Cori snaps, throwing a wadded-up napkin at his head.
“I’m just trying to establish the stakes!”
I wipe my nose with the back of my hand.
“How do I put it? It made me understand why people join cults, Marcus. It made me want to learn every single one of his stupid neuroscience facts and whisper them back to him during the really good parts. I was already picturing us grading papers together. Naked.”
Marcus wheezes with laughter, nearly tipping sideways.
“See?” I’m crying harder now, my tears stinging my chapped lips. “That’s how good it was. And now I have to say goodbye to him and his—”
“Compelling intellectual depth?” Marcus supplies helpfully. “His massive—”
“Marcus!” Cori glares at him. “Not helping!”
“I’m just saying—” He glances over at the Polaroid taped to our pathetic, buzzing fridge. It’s the one from Central Park with Leo and Emma and me, all of us grinning like an actual, tax-paying unit of society. “Look at the photo! The man is a specimen! Don’t act like you haven’t thought about it.”
“I’m literally pregnant, Marcus,” Cori says, her voice flat.
“Irrelevant. Your eyes work regardless of your uterine status.” He turns back to me with genuine curiosity. “Was it big?”
I nod solemnly, my chin wobbling.
“I fucking knew it. It’s always the quiet, academic ones with the…most massive data sets.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I say, burying my face in my hands. “Because I’m going to have to kiss him and his massive data set goodbye.”
I’ve tried to keep it together at Leo’s apartment, for his sake.
But I’ve seen pictures of Rebecca. A couple weeks ago, Emma wanted to put photos from her disposable camera into an album, and I was helping her.
We were on Leo’s living room floor, pictures spread everywhere, when Emma reached for this old photo album on the bottom shelf, one with yellow sticky pages and crinkly plastic film.
“Oh, look! That’s my mommy!” Emma had said excitedly.
And there she was. Rebecca was stunning, and it made my stomach feel like it was full of lead.
She had golden hair that looked like it was spun by Rumpelstiltskin himself falling in perfect, effortless waves, round, youthful cheeks, and bright blue eyes that actually seemed to sparkle even in a grainy photo.
Emma’s eyes. She was standing next to Leo at a beach, wearing a white sundress, looking like she’d been born in a field of daisies or had just stepped out of a J.Crew catalog.
They were two beautiful, symmetrical people meant to produce beautiful, symmetrical children.
“She’s a goddess,” I whisper, the salt from my tears stinging my chapped lips. “And I’m just…the stupid nanny who accidentally fell in love with her boss, and I’m about to get my heart handed back to me in a paper bag.”
Cori sets her taco down—a true sign of an emergency—and grips my shoulders. “Annie. Look at me.”
I look at her. Her hair’s still damp from the shower, curling at the ends. Her little belly bump is visible now under her baggy Nirvana t-shirt, just starting to round out.
“Leo is not going to leave you for Rebecca,” she says firmly. “Do you know how I know?”
“Because you’re my best friend and you’re legally obligated to lie to me?”
“No. Because Rebecca left him. She also abandoned her kid, Annie. And yeah, maybe she’s gorgeous, and maybe she’s perfect on paper.
But you’re just as pretty. You’re seriously so beautiful, and you don’t give yourself enough credit.
She left Leo to handle everything alone.
And you—” She pokes me gently in the chest. “You showed up. You stayed. You didn’t run when things got hard. ”
“But what if that’s not enough?” My voice breaks. “What if he meets up with her and realizes he still loves her? Nostalgia’s a hell of a drug, you know.”
“Then he’s a colossal idiot,” Marcus says, his mouth full of carnitas. “And we’ll find you someone else. Someone with a slightly smaller brain, perhaps, but someone else nonetheless.”
I lean my head back on Cori’s shoulder and she pats the top of my head like I’m a sad puppy.
“You’re gonna be a good mom,” I say quietly.
Cori laughs a little. “You think so?”
I nod against her. It’s the truest thing I know. Cori’s the one who remembers to water the sad little fern on the windowsill, who talks me down when I spiral. She’s patient and sturdy and kind and she doesn’t fall apart when things get messy—unlike me, currently sobbing into a mystery-meat taco.
“When are your parents coming to help you move your stuff?” Marcus asks, reaching for another taco.
“The week after Thanksgiving,” Cori says, still stroking my hair. “They want me home before Christmas.”
“We’re not allowed to talk about that yet,” I say firmly.
“We have to talk about it eventually—”
“Not yet.”
Cori sighs, a long, weary sound, but she doesn’t push it. “You can always come visit me. It’s forty minutes on the 7 train, Annie. It’s not the moon.”
“I know. But it won’t be the same.”
And it won’t be. The apartment’s going to feel empty without her. No more pointe shoes hanging on the backs of doors, no more bobby pins scattered on every surface, no more Cori padding around in her giant sweatshirts at two in the morning because the baby’s making her hungry again.
She’s moving back in with her parents. They insisted.
Her mom’s going to watch the baby while Cori goes back to college.
She’s got a whole built-in support system, ready and waiting.
I try not to let the envy twist too sharply in my chest. What would that even feel like?
Parents who rearrange their whole lives just to catch you when you fall?
A safety net instead of an endless free-fall?
“Have you found anyone to take your room yet?” Marcus asks around another mouthful.
Cori shakes her head. “Not yet. But my dad offered to cover my portion of the rent until we do.”
“It better not be someone weird,” Marcus says. “I have standards, Cor. Minimal, but they exist. For example, no mimes. Or anyone who collects taxidermy.”
“Hey! I did a pretty good job picking Annie!” Cori defends.
“The jury is still out.” Marcus gestures at me with a half-eaten taco. “Look at her! She’s a mess.”
I shove his shin with my foot. “You’re a mess.”
He smirks. “At least I’m not seasoning my carnitas with my own tears.”
“Give it time.”
We fall into a comfortable silence then—well, as comfortable as silence gets when your best friend is moving out, your maybe-boyfriend’s ex just reappeared, and you’re eating street tacos on a Sunday night in a too-small apartment that suddenly feels even smaller.
“I don’t want anything to change,” I say softly.
“I know,” Cori murmurs.
“But it is changing.”
“Yeah.”
“And I hate it.”
“I know that, too.”