Chapter 5 A Good Frame #4
“We don’t have time to get you to a real bar if you need to get home by eight-thirty.
Just sit on my jacket so you don’t ruin your dress.
” He doesn’t mention that this might ruin his jacket, which warms me inside.
I was always too cynical for old-school chivalry, but now I’m realizing it feels amazing when it’s sincere.
Ollie didn’t practice that line; he just means it.
My insides feel fizzy and soft, like I’m filled with champagne.
We sit down together, and I consider what he’s asking me to do. What would I say about Nick if I was really being honest? If I were four drinks deep, midway through a night on the town?
“Okay,” I agree. “But you have to promise me your drunken rant, too. This can’t be one-sided.”
I watch his jaw clench for a second, but then he nods. “Okay.”
“Okay.” I take a breath. “Nick,” I say, imagining what would pour out of me if I was wasted. “I loved him.”
I watch Ollie’s jaw tighten again, but he just nods.
“I mean, I thought we were on this romantic, once-in-a-lifetime journey, because he was loyal, and supported my sobriety, and was really sweet when we were together. But he never put me first. It was always his music. And it’s not like he was obsessed with money or fame.
It was more like, he was good at guitar.
He got gigs and made money. But never great gigs, and never for that much money.
And it’s not even self-sabotage! That would almost be better, if he was ruining things by fighting with the lead singers or something.
It’s more like, he was good enough to be a replacement guitarist, but not great enough for a band to take him on tour.
And that broke his heart, that he’d spent his whole life working on something and wasn’t exceptional.
But it meant that whenever he got an opportunity, he felt like he had to take it. ”
Ollie nods. “Because the next opportunity was going to be the one where he made it big.”
“Exactly. And I didn’t even mind that he stayed with music.
That’s the thing. People would tell me he was immature or irresponsible for staying in music, but I didn’t expect him to get a desk job.
He would have been miserable. What bothered me was that Hannah and I always ended up coming in second.
It was like he was in love with another woman—the music industry —and she kept breaking his heart, and he couldn’t give her up because he wanted to believe this time would be different.
So he couldn’t say no, even if a gig came up on my birthday.
Or…this past year, he promised Hannah he’d come for Christmas. ”
Ollie winces a little. “And he got a gig.”
“It was a good gig, but she was so sad, because he promised her. I let him promise her he’d be there Christmas morning, and then I had to deal with the fallout when she realized he wouldn’t be.
And a few weeks ago, he was supposed to come for Hannah’s spring break, and he missed half of that for another job.
And I just stopped being in love with him.
It took years, but you can’t be madly in love with someone who’s in love with something else.
It burns you out. I think Nick thinks that once he makes it big, he can turn around and make it all up to us, but I’m done waiting, because he stopped being a man worth waiting for. ”
Ollie nods. Our shoulders are almost touching. “But last summer? You went back to him?”
“That was him trying to prove that he’d changed. He had a steady gig at a jazz club in Atlanta, and he promised that if I came down, he wouldn’t take any more gigs away from home. He’d be with us.”
“Right.” Ollie’s eyes are sympathetic.
“And that lasted four weeks, five? And then…”
“Something good came up,” Ollie finished.
“Really good.” I nod. Tears come into my eyes. “And it made me feel so stupid.”
“No, you weren’t.” Ollie leans forward and speaks gently. “It’s okay to trust people.”
“You told me that you don’t trust anybody,” I remind him.
“I’m working on it,” he says with a rueful smile.
“We have a kid, so I felt like I owed it to Hannah to try. But the reality is that I owed it to her not to try.”
He is gazing at me, watching the expression on my face carefully.
“Your turn,” I say, pretending there aren’t tears in my eyes, willing the tears away like they will dry on their own if I ignore them even though that has never worked, not once.
His smile turns ironic. “Okay. Let me think about what I would say if I was totally drunk. You want messy? My wife left me for my brother, who got her pregnant. You may remember I was expecting a baby the first time we spoke a couple of years ago.”
It is my turn to nod. I don’t want to admit I’ve heard any of this.
“Well, that was the day I found out that the baby wasn’t mine. She had slept with him at least once, and she figured out the timing and realized it could be his child, so she took a test, and she had texted him the results. But I picked up her phone that day by mistake, so I saw his response.”
“Oh no.”
“I always wonder if I subconsciously knew, and that’s why I grabbed her phone.
Or what would have happened between us if I hadn’t.
But…I told you she dated my brother before me.
So they had a history. And if…if it had just been some random guy, I might have forgiven her.
But I realized she had only ever loved him. I was the backup plan.”
“I’m sure that wasn’t it.”
There’s a skeptical look in his eyes. “Anyway, I broke it off. And then two months later, she and Sean were married. And I still don’t know if my brother really loves her or if he just wanted to take her away from me.”
“That’s horrible.”
He smiles bitterly. “And I can’t talk to my family about it because my parents have forgiven him, and now I’m the problem because I’m unwilling to do the same.”
“They can’t possibly expect you to forgive him.”
“You haven’t met him. He can spin a really good yarn, and he was working on my parents, selling his side of the story, for the years I was away. I’m sure he told them I had stolen his one true love, never mind that they broke up several years earlier.”
“How can they not be furious at him?”
“They were. But on some level, I think the whole thing pleased my father. When I was in college, I used to act superior to my dad, like…I’ll never treat a woman the way you do.
I think he likes seeing my me and my brother rolling around in the mud like this.
It means that we’re on his level. Cheating is what real men do, you know?
And my mother just wants a grandkid. She wants her family to stick together, and right now I’m the problem for not agreeing to it. ”
My jaw drops open. “Your mother said that?”
“She says that I have to forgive Phoebe, because I don’t realize how guilty she feels, and you can’t help who you love. Which I know is true, of course, but…”
I roll my eyes. “Oh come on. You’re not upset at her for her feelings. You’re upset at her for her choices. Including her choice to lie to you about her feelings.”
He blinks once, startled. “Can I bring you with me next time I see my mother?”
“Oh, I would have words.”
Ollie looks away for a moment. “I was always trying to measure up to my brother, you know? As a kid, I was trying to be as cool as Sean. And when I couldn’t do that, I tried to be more successful.
And I didn’t manage that, but at least I had a stable relationship, while he hopped from woman to woman, and now he has the marriage and the kid and the wife. ”
“You’re amazing.”
He shrugs. “You haven’t met him yet. That’s what I’d confess to you if I was really drunk. That I think if any woman I’m dating meets my brother, she’s going to fall for him instead.”
I can see that he means it. It is shocking how much he means it. “I’m going to fall for the asshole who slept with his brother’s wife?”
Ollie shrugs.
“Does he dance?” I ask.
“He’s probably taking swing lessons, for all I know. Phoebe still dances. But that’s why, when she left, she took everything good with her.”
“No, she didn’t.” I stare ahead at the traffic nearby as it piles in front of a stoplight and then speeds away. “You know what I know about that story, and you don’t?”
He shakes his head, gazing at me. His eyes are close enough that I can really see their colors, the dark rings of green and brown.
“There is no way in hell your brother would have done that if he wasn’t intimidated by you.”
Ollie shakes his head. “Nice thought, but he just likes to win.”
“He didn’t win. He lost his brother. I mean, my sister, no matter how screwed up I was, I always tried to be there for her. Because if I lost her, I lost everything. And you’re telling me he doesn’t care that he lost you?”
Ollie looks into the distance. “He still thinks I’ll come around. Sometimes he calls my office phone at work and leaves messages telling me to call him. And I don’t. But sometimes I think about it.”
He looks so sad that I don’t think; I just put my hands on his shoulders to meet his eyes.
“Listen. You should do what you want. Just because you’re the better man doesn’t mean you have to be the bigger man.
If he’s counting on that, if he’s using your own decency against you, then he can go fuck himself.
Because you have a right to be angry. Don’t let him take away your anger, because you earned it and you get to keep it for as long as you want to. ”
Ollie opens his lips to say something and then places a hand on my cheek and kisses me fiercely instead.
It’s startling for half a second until he slows down, giving me space to move away.
Another kiss comes more gently, then another, and our arms are around each other, and his hands are slipping around the back of my dress.
It’s messy and uneven and not polite at all, and I feel the blood racing up to my cheeks.
He slows down a little, taking a breath.
When he finally pulls away, he meets my eyes.
I kiss him once, gently, like an answer to a question.
For a long moment, I can’t speak. He looks a little dazed too.
“You’re so beautiful,” he whispers. “You’re so staggeringly beautiful it’s unreal.”
I feel myself blushing harder, unsure what to say in the face of a direct compliment
“It feels like a trick that you’re single,” he adds. “It feels like I can’t trust it. I can’t…” He trails off. “Can I kiss you again?”
“I think you should, because that kiss needed some work,” I tease. It was probably the best kiss in my life.
“Oh really?” He looks, a little wary.
“You need more practice. A lot more before you get it right, I think.”
He kisses me again, hard and confident, just long enough to melt my insides, then pulls back and puts his head down on my shoulder for a second, making a sound of frustration.
“I have to get you home,” he groans into me. We don’t move for a long moment. I kiss his neck, once.
“That’s not helping to motivate me,” he says.
He stands up and offers me a hand and sweeps me into his arms in a dance position.
I am about to joke that there’s no music, except I realize there is, vibrating through the windows of a car that’s pulled up to a stoplight.
A Justin Timberlake song. Ollie grins and runs me through a couple of moves on the sidewalk.
He is still grinning when he pulls me back into his arms to dip me.
I hear the cars near us moving away, and I wait for the car with the music to leave, but it doesn’t.
The driver rolls down the window, the booming music getting louder.
“Awesome!” the man calls. He’s a young guy in a white tracksuit with an earring. “You guys are awesome!”
“Thanks!” Ollie says. “She’s a famous dancer!”
“Shut up,” I whisper into Ollie’s neck.
“I believe it!” the man calls. “She’s great.”
To be clear: I am not great, but Ollie can make anyone appear that way.
He spins me around again as the driver calls, “Have a good night!” I hear the car engine speeding away, taking the music with it.
“I love this city,” Ollie murmurs.
My heart feels open as I finally meet his eyes. My brain is trying to absorb everything: the way his lips felt and the warmth of the city and the music I can still hear in my head. The faint, enticing woodsy scent of him. I put one hand gently on his shoulder.
The thought flashes through my head that for the first time since Nick, I want to drag a man somewhere that we can be alone, exploring each other for hours. But we don’t have hours. We have no time at all.
He gently lowers his hand down my side and then threads his fingers through mine.
We turn together to continue our walk. My whole body is vibrating like the subways rumbling below us and the buses idling on the corner.
We say nothing at all for the last few blocks as he walks me home, holding hands like we’re teenagers.
When we arrive at my door, he kisses my hand and slowly lets it go.
Another chivalrous act that shouldn’t work—that wouldn’t work if I thought it was anything but sincere—but I sense that he means it, and it makes me swoon inside.
I walk up to the door of my building and look back to see that he is still there, still handsome, still watching me intensely.
The moon is out tonight, giving his hair a faint blue halo against the greasy glow of bodegas and the hazy green of my building’s lobby lights.
In his suit, his hair disheveled and his eyes dark, he looks like a romantic hero.
I walk back to him and kiss him one more time.
He grins at me. “So how was your date?” he asks softly.
I smile. “It was nice.”
I can still hear his low laughter as I turn and enter the door.