Chapter 14 #2
“No, it’s incredible,” she said, running her hand along the dashboard. “I love how you are, Gardner, just someone who keeps her head down and works her ass off.”
I couldn’t believe it was how she saw me, and, also, love?
“You and me,” she continued, “I think we’re the same that way. But look at this car!”
I grimaced, starting the engine. “Does that completely undo it then?”
“No,” she said, almost with a gasp. “I love this car. I’ve never seen something so green in my life.”
“I still can’t tell if you’re messing with me or not,” I said, checking my side mirror before flooring it into a U-turn. “Do you mind typing your address into Waze for me? Your ex-wife’s address, I mean?”
“Happy to,” Rebecca said, picking up my phone. “Oh, god, your wallpaper. Your dog’s so cute.”
“The cutest, though I’m biased. Do you have any pets?”
“I wish,” she said. “My schedule makes it tough. Someday, maybe.”
We were silent for a few moments, which was dangerous for me, it turned out.
“Did you call that woman?” I asked, stopping at a red light and pretending I didn’t care about the answer.
“What woman?” she asked with genuine confusion in her voice.
“Tide to Go,” I said, and a laugh flew out of Rebecca.
“Why?” she asked, still laughing. “Would that bother you?”
The light turned green, so I floored it instead of answering. Rebecca watched out the window as I zipped down the street, turned to get on the 2 Freeway headed south.
“Gardner, I should say something.”
My breath caught so suddenly I could hardly breathe.
“I’ve been lying to you,” she said. “This whole time.”
My heart pounded so intensely I felt physically shaken by it. I gripped the steering wheel and, feeling the sweat on my palms, gripped harder.
“You leaving,” she said, “was one of the hardest things I’ve ever been through. You broke my heart, and I hated you for it.”
If I’d had to guess how I would have felt in this moment, I would have imagined my guilt skyrocketing, my villain quotient increasing.
Instead my chest felt smacked by a wall of gratefulness.
Maybe it was monstrous in a whole different way, but I could feel how this was what I’d actually wanted.
Not Rebecca coolly dismissing our story.
To have meant something to someone. To have meant something to her.
“When my agent called me about Hometown and mentioned you were a part of it, I was—I don’t have the words for what I was.” Rebecca’s voice was laced thick with an emotional tone I hadn’t heard from her in a long time. “But it was too good of an opportunity to pass up.”
It was funny thinking of how I’d imagined that call, had imagined Rebecca’s face when she heard my name, had perhaps gotten it all right after all. And yet we were still here together tonight anyway.
“And I have to go in with my walls up anyway,” she continued. “Any job! Or men think that I don’t have a plan and they don’t trust me to lead.”
“Who wouldn’t trust you,” I said, and she laughed and elbowed me. “I’m kidding. Of course I understand.”
“Yeah, what woman doesn’t?” She sighed. “So I came in armed. But then I saw you and how you’re the same.
You’re still the girl who reads more books than she has to, who works her ass off to impress the entire room and not just her director, who bakes someone a gluten-free birthday cake from scratch. ”
I drove silently, letting her words settle somewhere in me instead of finding the right thing to say in return. What could I say anyway? I felt better, I felt worse, I felt more and less guilty. The entire range of human emotion thrummed throughout my body.
There was no parking open in front of Rebecca’s ex’s loft high-rise, so I steered into a red zone and turned on my hazards. Rebecca’s hand went to the car door handle, and something inside of me seized with the panic to do something. I wasn’t ready for this to end.
“Rebecca,” I said, and her hand relaxed, dropped back into her lap, almost like she’d been waiting for me. “I wish I had the words to tell you how sorry I—”
She turned her head so abruptly I stopped talking. “No, Gardner, I’ve had a lot of time to think about this, had more than a few therapy sessions on the topic. And the truth is that I knew.”
I stared at her. “You knew what?”
“I had all these plans,” she said softly.
“This whole life we were going to have in New York. I’d thought of everything.
Like, the more details I could put in front of you, the more I could guarantee it would happen.
But you never said yes. When I came back that day and you were gone—all I could think was, You idiot, she never said yes. ”
I swallowed, hard. “I wanted to say yes.”
“I know you did.” She covered my hand with hers.
“You were in such an impossible position. I kept thinking about the whole plan you had with your brother, how you were these two kids whose family barely paid any attention to them and you’d figured out your futures anyway, and that was who you’d have to disappoint.
On top of the whole—how you weren’t sure you’d have a home to go back to if you came out.
And there I was, all, come to Brooklyn with me, we’ll get shitty jobs and drink at Henrietta’s every night like it was so easy. ”
“It could have been that easy,” I said, and Rebecca squeezed my hand.
“That was my real heartbreak,” she said softly.
“Well, no, of course my real heartbreak was getting left by the girl I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with. Going back home alone and having to tell my roommates I’d gotten dumped.
But thinking of how the world had conspired to keep you from the life you wanted … that broke my heart too.”
“No, I—I don’t deserve that,” I whispered. “I loved you so much, and I was too much of a coward to even try.”
I barely choked back a sob, but another wave was right behind it, and I had to give in. Rebecca leaned over, gently slid off my glasses, wrapped her arms around me. She pulled me close and held me right there until I managed to stop crying.
“Oh, god.” I pulled back from her. “I got makeup on your shirt. I’m so sorry.”
“Where’s a Tide to Go pen when you need it?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. “Don’t worry about it. I already found a good dry cleaner on Yelp. Hey, an idea.”
Her gentle tone soothed something at my core. “Yes?”
Her hand was back on the car door handle. “How would you feel about getting together and catching up? It’s been so long and—I want to hear about everything.”
“Me too,” I said, nodding and wiping my eyes. “I’d love that.”
“I’ll text so we can make plans,” she said. “Can you go out for dinner? Or is it too much of a whole thing?”
“No, there are chill places in my neighborhood where it’s easy.”
“Great.” She squeezed my hand again. “Get home safe, OK?”
By the time I let myself inside my house, I felt like my life had been completely unwritten, and I had no idea what I was supposed to do now with this other story.