Chapter 31 #2
The man takes me deep into the dining room to a small table beside the windows that overlook the Queens Boulevard side of the restaurant.
The restaurant is dimly lit, with exposed red brick and black trim, which makes the burgundy and white linens on the table stand out that much more.
Two menus are set down. “Your guest is arriving soon, yes?” he asks.
I nod, strategically seating myself to face the door so that I can wave Beckett in when he arrives.
“Sparkling, still, or tap water?” he asks.
“Tap is fine, thank you,” I reply. He grabs a pitcher from the service station and pours the ice water into my glass. He nods, then heads back to the front of the restaurant.
I check my phone: 7:03.
Tempted to look at myself in a mirror and fix my face with more lip gloss or powder, I instead pick up the menu. I peruse it, appearing deep in thought, as if I am studying the entrées and don’t already know that I’m going to order the chicken parm, like I always do.
It’s bold of me to think I’ll be able to eat once Beckett gets here, that my nerves won’t be so tightly wound they won’t just cut off my esophagus’s ability to keep food down entirely.
A server appears. The older sort, maybe mid-fifties, with puffy, overdyed dark hair and brownish-red lipstick. “Hey, doll,” she says. “You waitin’ on a friend?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Sorry. Could be a train delay.”
“Not a problem at all. I’ll get you some bread while you wait.
” She winks at me, and the gesture comforts me, especially since my stomach is churning from a combination of hunger and anxiety.
I become bored with the menu, so I place it on the table.
I pull my phone out of my purse and check it again.
It’s only 7:11. The subway in New York City is very erratic, especially on a busy Friday night at the start of summer.
I don’t have any text messages. No missed calls.
Which makes sense, because he wouldn’t have service underground.
The waitress comes back with the bread. It’s a lovely basket of garlic knots and sliced, warm Italian bread. A tiny ceramic dish of butter. She places it on the table, along with two small, white plates. “Here ya go, hon. Have some bread. You look nervous. This a date?”
I shrug. “Not sure. He’s more like a friend I haven’t seen in a while.”
“’Kay, well then steer clear of the garlic. At least not before he gets here. But I can get you some olive oil and fresh cracked pepper if you’d like?”
I appreciate this woman’s attempt to not make me feel like an asshole for taking up space in this restaurant by myself. “Sure. Thank you.”
She gets a saucer, a huge pepper mill, and a big bottle of olive oil from the server’s area.
Comes back and theatrically pours the oil in the dish, then grinds the pepper once, twice, three times.
I rip off a piece of bread and slide it through the oil, tap off the excess onto my plate, and take a bite.
Chewing, I wait. I stare out the window, people watching.
By 7:28, I’m getting concerned that he’s not coming. I consider giving up the table, but I know the second that I do that will be the exact moment he races in, windswept and apologetic, armed with a story about the E train getting stuck in the tunnel or something.
Finally, I decide to order my meal. No sense in starving to death waiting for him.
Besides, I don’t want to give up the table, and at this point I’m filled with more anger than trepidation.
It’s not like Beckett to be late. Although, who knows?
This new, famous Beckett could be a real douchebag, and I just don’t know it yet because I don’t even know him anymore.
I’m grateful for the low lighting of the restaurant because I feel like a freak sitting alone like this.
New Yorkers don’t care. New Yorkers dine alone all the time.
I guess I’m just feeling like the table set for two is giving off a “stood up for your date” vibe, one that I am all too familiar with courtesy of the Tinder dates from my very distant past.
My waitress, who tells me her name is Angela, checks on me often.
By 7:40, she delivers my meal and brings me fresh garlic knots to accompany it.
“At this point,” she advises me, “you just go ahead and eat all the garlic you want.” The feelings that bubble up in my belly are tamped down by chicken cutlets fried in breadcrumbs, covered in house marinara and plentiful quantities of gooey, melted mozzarella.
I glide a garlic knot through the sauce and take a hearty bite of it, not caring if I get herbs in my teeth or if my breath smells.
I mangia on forkfuls of pasta, spun around into little nests, the food of the gods.
I consider the idea that I might be most angry of all at the fact that if Beckett doesn’t show up—and it’s looking less and less like he will—he might ruin Portofino’s for me forever.
Which would be a damn shame.
I finish most of my meal. Not all of it, but so much that what remains on the plate isn’t worth wrapping up and taking home.
Angela offers me a dessert menu, but it’s 8:04, and I’ve about had it. I just want to pay the check and go back home. I’m tired, hurt, and embarrassed, and despite it all, I’m a little bit worried that something happened to him.
After handing her my credit card and signing my name, I take a deep breath and push my chair away from the table.
I grab three of those wrapped chocolate after-dinner mints that they have in the bowl by the host stand, unwrap one, and pop it into my mouth.
I shove the plastic into my pocket and step out onto the sidewalk.
Naturally, the sky—which is swollen with fat, black clouds now—decides that this is the moment to open up.
Lightning crackles above the movie theater.
A loud boom of thunder follows. Thick, heavy drops of rain fall on my hair and my shoulders, so distended that they splash as they land on me.
I shake my head, just accepting my fate or luck or karma or whatever this is.
Around me, people dash to find cover, holding briefcases or newspapers over their heads.
The few forward-thinking passersby with umbrellas silently judge those of us doomed to be drenched.
People scatter like ants being sprayed by fresh pesticides, running this way and that until they eventually disappear somewhere indoors or underground.
I, too, get ready to power walk to the nearest subway station, when something catches my eye across the street.
It’s the figure of a man—young, tall, broad, dressed in khakis and a collared shirt—sitting on the steps of the church.
It’s pouring, but his elbows rest on his knees. His fingertips are tented and lean up against his forehead. He’s just sitting there.
Getting wet.
I would recognize that body anywhere.
I go to the corner and look both ways, then walk across Ascan Avenue. I’m soaked. The rain is torrential. I walk up to him, and he stands when he sees me approach.
“Beckett?” I ask. I’m kind of shouting, because the rain and traffic on Queens Boulevard is so loud around us. “What are you doing?”
“I’m sorry,” he replies, also in a louder-than-usual voice. “I just—”
“Why didn’t you come inside?” I wonder. “How long have you been sitting here?”
“I’ve been here since seven. I saw you go in. I panicked. I didn’t know what to do.”
“You panicked? I just ate dinner alone! I thought you were standing me up!”
“Mel,” he says. The sound of my name is a stick of butter in an open flame. “I could never stand you up.”
“You literally just did!” I point to the restaurant behind me.
“I’m sorry,” he says again. “I was afraid to go in there. Afraid to see you.”
“Why?”
“Because!”
“That’s not a reason!” I grow increasingly confused and frustrated by this conversation.
“Melody”—he tries again—“I told you this on the phone the other day.” He stops to wipe the water from his eyes.
“You broke my heart after Aruba. I was so in love with you and you crushed me. And I’ve done a whole lot of work to build up walls around my heart so that doesn’t happen again.
But here you come through like a fucking bulldozer, just taking them down without so much as a breath. ”
“What are you talking about, Beckett?”
“I didn’t want to go in there because I was afraid you would wreck me all over again.
That I’d forget everything I’ve done to move on from you and just fall right back into where I was two and half years ago.
Jesus, Mel! I wrote a whole fucking book for you in the world’s most pathetic attempt to get you back! ”
I wipe my eyes, certain that I’ve just smeared mascara everywhere.
“And it didn’t even work! You only paid attention to it when the reviews started comparing our stories!
How could that be, Mel? How could you just ignore the book I wrote about you?
” He puffs up his chest, and then it visibly deflates.
“Do you know that I read every single word of Holiday Island the day it came out? I pored over that book, trying to find myself in it. Trying to see what you saw. You gave it a happy ending—they just casually missed each other at the airport and then found each other back in New York. Like it was just that easy!”
“Beckett, I—”
“No! Don’t. Please,” he says.
This is it. This is the scene. The great heartthrob author Beckett Nash stands before me in the pouring rain, limp and defeated. “At least spare me my dignity,” he asks.
I’m dumbfounded, rendered silent by his outburst.
I wipe my face again, shaking the makeup residue off my hands and onto the ground, trying to center myself so that I can respond.
“I’m still in love with you, Mel,” he says. “I never stopped loving you.”
“But you’re engaged.”
He nods. “I know.”
“To a famous rock star.”
Beckett Nash steps toward me with a look in his eyes that is part pain, part hope, and part fear. “Who isn’t you,” he replies with a shrug.
He places his wet hands on my shoulders, and I know what comes next.
I brace myself, and he leans in.