Chapter 3
The Thing About Love
The rain is washing the city clean, and I am seeing it anew.
Before today, I constantly noticed the trash heaps on every corner; the way strangers always seem two seconds away from snapping at a cab, a barista, or each other; couples arguing in public like it was their part-time job. I saw the sky as a perma-gloom, a dull grey filter that made even spring feel like a shrug.
Now, I see the young couple kissing on the sidewalk like they’ve got thirty seconds left before the world ends. The old couple holding hands across the table next to me, like they wish they never had to let go. I swear the clouds are trying to form the shape of a heart in a sky that looks at least three Pantone shades bluer than usual. Now that Valerie is behind me, I’m no longer stuck in survival mode, adapting to a world I never wanted to belong to. I’m part of this brave new world where quitting isn’t failure; it’s freedom, where breakdowns make space for breakthroughs.
I am sitting at a table near the window of Taj Mahal, our favorite Indian restaurant in Brooklyn. It’s the kind with strings of fairy lights twinkling across the ceiling, a carnation-strewn altar to Vishnu and Ganesh and a dozen other gods for good measure, and the scent of cardamom and ginger that embraces you before the door even closes behind you. The sound of tandoori sizzling in the kitchen mingles with the soft hum of Bollywood music and the light rain tapping against the windowpane.
The waitstaff knows us by name. Raj always slips me extra mint chutney without asking. Sima insists we try whatever new dessert her aunt mailed from Mumbai this month. It’s the kind of place that makes you feel like family, even if you’re dripping rainwater onto their vinyl red booth seats. This is where Jared and I come whenever we have something to celebrate: promotions, birthdays, anniversaries, surviving a particularly aggressive flu season.
Today, I have two things to celebrate.
One: I finally grew a spine and quit the job that’s been slowly leaching the color from my soul. Two: I’m finally ready to say yes to moving in with Jared—the decision he’s been gently, cheerfully nudging me toward for months.
Now that Pulse isn’t sucking my soul dry, it just makes sense: our books mingling, our records cohabiting, a shared spice rack. The beginnings of a life that’s not just convenient, but chosen. With happy, spontaneous, carefree Jared. If it were up to him, we would already be married. Not such a wild notion, considering we’ve been together for eight years.
My phone buzzes, jolting me back to the present just as Raj drops off two glasses of champagne and a basket of naan—warm, pillowy, and smelling faintly of butter and garlic.
It’s a text from Jared.
Jared
Whatcha daydreaming about?
I look up and see him through the window, crossing the street. The rain has stopped, and the sun is straight-up photobombing his arrival. He’s movie-scene gorgeous today, and I wonder: How did I get so lucky?
As he enters the restaurant, he runs his left hand through his wavy blonde hair, oblivious to the effect it has on the women around him. Two weeks in London have done him good. He looks like a GQ model who moonlights as the tortured lead singer of an indie band.
He sees me, and his face lights up. But there’s something else there, too. Something I can’t quite name. As he nears, I can see that he looks nervous. Or is he excited?
After a long embrace and a deep kiss, he slides into the booth across from me. My heart is practically breakdancing in my chest. I want to blurt it all out: I quit, I’m free, I’m ready to move in with you. But I hold it in, just for a second longer, as Jared reaches across the table and holds my hands. God, he isn’t going to propose, is he? What would I say? It’s not like I don’t want to marry him eventually. We’ve talked about kids. His hazel-green eyes, my Japanese-Mexican-Scottish-and-who-knows-what-else ancestry, his gentle optimism, my chaotic realism. It would all make adorable, emotionally well-regulated humans, right? Maybe I would like him to propose.
“I have something I need to tell you, Ava,” he says, interrupting my daydream.
“I have something to tell you, too,” I grin.
“You go first.”
“No. You go first.”
I can’t hold back my news any longer. He can’t either.
And then, we both blurt it out.
“I think I might be gay,” he says.
“I’ll move in with you,” I say.
The words collide mid-air.
I blink.
Then I laugh because my brain short-circuits when too many things happen at once. Because this can’t possibly be real. Because…what?
He blinks back at me.
“Why are you laughing?” he asks.
“I thought you said you think you might be gay.”
“I did,” he says gently. “I think I am.”
The world slows.
“Although technically, I guess I’m bi.”
“Technically?” I don’t know what else to say.
I’m not laughing now. I am examining his face. He’s dead serious.
He sees my stunned silence as his cue to explain, to keep me from slipping away inside myself.
“Well, when I asked you to move in, I think you knew that something was missing.”
“Actually, I didn’t.” I thought he wanted to move in together because he was in love with me.
“Anyway,” he continues. “You were right to want some time to think about it…”
My mind swirls. How can he be gay? No, he said “bi.” But how would he know that if he’s only slept with me? Oh, God, he’s only slept with me, right?
“Ava, stop. I know what you’re doing. Slow the thoughts down. Ask me whatever you’re wondering in that beautiful head of yours.”
“But we have sex. Really good sex. Right?”
“Great sex. It’s not about that.”
“Then what is it about?”
He exhales and rubs the back of his neck. “I don’t know. Maybe it is about sex. Or intimacy? Look, I’m confused, too.”
“Have you slept with a man?” The words feel strange in my mouth. I always thought the question would be Have you slept with another woman?
“No. God, no. I would never cheat on you.”
God knows a million men have used that line when having an affair. But Jared? He’s never lied to me. He’s the most honest human I know, my best friend, my person. I trust him.
“Then how can you know?”
“I think I may have wondered before, but I thought I was just open-minded. Remember your theory?”
I remember years ago, telling him I agreed with The Kinsey Scale, the theory that says there’s a spectrum of human sexual preference and that people are not just either gay or straight; it’s more like a sliding scale. Not so black and white. Human nature rarely is.
He starts drawing on a napkin…with my lucky pen. I’ve been looking for that pen for weeks, but I don’t say anything. Maybe the pen is not so lucky after all.
He draws a line across the napkin. On the far right, he scribbles the word “straight,” and on the other end, the word “gay.” In the middle, he writes “bi.”
“You are here,” he tells me as he writes ‘YOU’ pretty close to ‘straight’. “And, I thought I was here…” he gestures to a spot between ‘bi’ and ‘straight,’ then moves the pen over slightly to the left, closer to ‘gay,’ and writes the word ‘ME.’ “But now I realize I am here.”
“How could things change so suddenly?” I ask. “Before you left, you asked me to move in with you.”
“I met someone.” He practically whispers.
The words couldn’t hurt more if he shouted them. It really doesn’t matter what comes after these words.
“Ava, did you hear me? I said…”
Oh, god, I have to hear those words again.
“I met someone,” he repeats, this time louder. “Ava, please don’t be hurt. This has nothing to do with you.”
That’s the most absurd thing he could say. And yet some part of me knows it’s true. The tears begin. There is a spectrum of crying behavior, too, and at this moment, mine consists of the kind where tears delicately well up and slide out and down one’s cheeks, but I can feel myself slipping dangerously down the sliding scale toward the shoulder-heaving-snot-flying-scrunched-up-ugly-face cry.
Raj approaches again, grinning, with our chicken tikka masala. His eyes meet mine, and with a frown, he turns right back around.
My mind is trying to make sense of everything Jared has told me. It’s as if I had a vision board of us and our future together, and now he’s swiftly rearranging the photos on it, tossing the ones of me aside and replacing them. He’s bi. Or gay. He’s confused. He’s met someone. So many lines of thought, none of them connecting to the shape we used to be.
“Are you breaking up with me?”
“No,” he answers quickly, then, after a pause, he says with less conviction: “I don’t know what to do. I still love you, Ava.”
“But you might love someone else, too,” I say quietly.
“I honestly don’t know,” he drops his head in defeat.
“Have you…have you done anything with him?”
“I don’t even know if he’s gay. It might be one-sided.”
“Like… a crush?”
He nods. “I thought it was just a deep friendship. Then it felt like what you and I had in the beginning, but stronger.”
Ouch.
“I realized I was looking forward to his texts too much. I was rereading them. I was imagining what it would be like if…”
He doesn’t finish the sentence, but I hear it anyway.
Silence expands between us like a balloon.
Until he pops it.
“What were you going to tell me?”
“I quit my job.”
He blinks. “You what?”
“I quit Pulse. I walked out.”
The news is not nearly as exciting as it was fifteen minutes ago.
“That job didn’t deserve you,” he says softly. “You’ll find another.”
I nod, though my throat is tight.
“And I gave notice on my apartment.”
“Oh.”
It lands like a paper airplane hitting a wall.
“You can get it back,” he says automatically.
But you can’t get me back.
“My landlord called me to gloat that he rented it for more than I was paying.”
He winces. He hates hurting people. He doesn’t even like hurting insects. He catches spiders in jars and walks them outside like tiny, entitled guests. Me? I squash them. I do feel bad doing it, but I squash them nonetheless. Maybe this is karma for all the spiders I’ve smooshed during this lifetime.
Jared excuses himself to the restroom.
I glance at the two glasses of champagne I ordered for our celebration, then down both of them.
I grab the napkin and get up to leave. It’s not so much a souvenir but documentation. Of love. Of change. Of how sometimes, becoming yourself breaks someone else’s heart.