Chapter 20
I was so fucking tired of beginnings.
“Where the hell’s my third act?” I muttered, staring at the screen of my laptop.
As my screenplay was still unhelpfully refusing to write itself, the only response I got was the blinking of the cursor next to the words Act Three. Groaning, I let my head thunk back against my headboard.
Anyone who’d ever met me would have guessed that I’d be as extra about being broken up with Dash as I was about being with him—and they’d be right.
I had not only switched to a different laundromat, grocery store, and bodega to minimize the potential of accidental run-ins, I had devised a circuitous route to get to my apartment without having to pass anywhere near Dash’s, or past Second Chance.
It was so annoying that I ended up staying home more often than not, and though both Aria and Chase had texted me a few times to check in, we hadn’t hung out like they’d suggested.
I was fully in my hermit era and determined to finish my screenplay if it killed me.
I don’t know when exactly I noticed that summer was almost over. It crept in at the edges of my awareness as I huddled in my apartment, writing scripts and answering emails and exchanging scrupulously polite work texts with Dash.
And then one day I forced myself to go out on a mental health walk and realized that a good handful of the trees in Central Park had started to shed their summer green.
Yaz had gone back to Miami to pack up her half of the apartment and tie up some loose ends, after which she’d go visit her mom in Santo Domingo.
Then she was coming back to New York. I’d told her she could stay with me while she figured things out, and even though she had offered to split the rent with me, I was determined to help her out instead.
So even though every fiber in me was straining to give up this whole Duke of Harding thing as yet another hobby I couldn’t follow up on, even though I would have liked nothing better than to shove it all under my bed along with all the crap from past flails, I stuck with it.
I stuck with my mental health walks, too, and it wasn’t just about procrastination. Even when that walking took up such a good chunk of the day that I was left with precious little time to work on anything but my screenplay and the scripts I was still consistently delivering to Dash.
And it wasn’t like anybody asked, but I was technically doing research.
In the sense that I was listening to books as I went, but also in the sense that I was developing a comprehensive knowledge of every one of Central Park’s nooks and crannies, which was very helpful because that was where a good chunk of my movie was taking place.
I just had to decide if it was a romcom or a horror movie.
Giving up on any decision-making for the day, I flipped my laptop shut and made my way to the park.
My head was pretty much buried in my tote as I dug around the layers of junk that had collected in the bottom, trying to find a missing AirPod so that I could finish listening to my it’s-technically-research-okay?
audiobook, when I predictably ended up bumping into someone.
And since I had meandered along a path that had put me perilously close to the Upper East Side, three guesses who that person was.
“Mrs. Greyson,” I said with as much dignity and politeness as was possible to muster after having accidentally smacked into a former client who’d seen you unravel. “I’m so sorry.”
She looked cool and perfectly put together in a white sheath, beige cardigan, and a handbag that was probably more expensive than my yearly rent. “There was no harm done.”
I would have loved nothing more than to flash her a smile and keep going, but common courtesy dictated that I extend my mortification a little longer. “How’s the project going?”
“We finished the remodel last week. The house turned out beautifully—Elaine’s talent is undeniable.”
I made noises that indicated my agreement, desperately wondering how to get out of this. But then Mrs. Greyson said something that made my mind screech to a halt.
“Mariel, I owe you an apology.”
“Why?” I blurted out.
Mrs. Greyson’s lips twitched up into what looked like a reluctant smile.
“When we ran into you in Williamsburg, Elaine explained that she had fired you over our little disagreement. That wasn’t my intention at all.
As a matter of fact, I wanted you to know that it wasn’t me who told her about it.
And that I’m deeply grieved that you lost your job over such a small thing—I’d been under the impression that you had been switched to a different project.
I know it didn’t seem like it at the time, and, well, I know I can be very demanding sometimes… ” She sighed.
This was the moment where I was supposed to rush in with reassurances that she hadn’t been a literal nightmare to work with and that I hadn’t felt actual dread every time I opened my eyes in the morning to the realization that I would have to be around her that day.
I didn’t quite have it in me to go that far, so all I said was “I can understand that you had standards to uphold.”
“The fact remains that I was more demanding than usual during this project because—” Was the ice queen melting in the heat or were those actual tears in her eyes?
“Because I knew that my marriage was in shambles and I was trying desperately to hold on. It was an unconscious impulse, maybe, wanting to buff away scratches and plaster over cracks, as if by doing so I could remake all that was going wrong in my marriage.”
I saw it then, the deep grief that I had failed to recognize while my own was trying to pull me under.
It was like one of those New York Times word puzzles that Yaz likes, where you look at a jumble of letters and it’s impossible to see how they can make up a word, and then someone points out what that word is and your mind is blown over how obvious it was.
“I’m sorry,” I blurted out. “Sounds like we were both going through a tough time.”
She dipped her head into a nod. “For what it’s worth, I do think you are a very good project manager. And I know you’ll land on your feet whatever you do next.”
“I… thank you, Mrs. Greyson.”
Her perfectly lined lips moved into a restrained curve. Then, without saying anything further, she started to walk away.
And I guess I should have left it at that, but I called out to her before she could get very far. “Have you? Landed on your feet?”
When she turned around, her smile had widened into something more genuine. “I’m getting a divorce.”
“Good for you,” I told her.
I was still holding the AirPod as we turned back to our respective paths, but the audiobook was the furthest thing from my mind.
My entire body was vibrating from the encounter, as if I was a game of Operation and Mrs. Greyson had knocked the tweezers too close to my edges.
Because the truth was, I’d been plastering over cracks, too.
Only mine were not the fissures of a marriage past repair, but all the little—and not so little—hurts that I had refused to see were causing structural damage in my heart.
Every time a relationship ended—or worse, failed to start. Every time I felt like my family didn’t believe in me. Every time I was unable to believe in myself.
I sped up, each slap of my sneakers against the pavement coinciding with another item on the list.
Every word I had deleted from my screenplay. Every time Dash had tried to show me affection.
And it was as if I had shoved all of my hurt into a drawer and kept cramming things in there and all of a sudden, it was so stuffed that it had burst open.
I was not okay.
I was not okay, and I probably hadn’t been okay since well before Milo, or else the breakup wouldn’t have shattered me so thoroughly.
It was too hot to run and I was definitely not dressed for it.
I must have been doing it anyway, because the summer lushness of the park was blurring past and people were jerking strollers out of my way and I had to pull myself sharply to the left to avoid getting tangled up with a dog walker, and I had somehow gotten to the section of Central Park that was directly across from the Museum of Natural History, which was on the exact opposite side from where I’d run into Mrs. Greyson.
But the thing about running is that you can’t escape yourself.
Or the fact that what haunted me most was that maybe I was like my mom. And my father, and anyone who had ever left me. That I was as much of a coward as all the people who had ghosted me.
I let my AirPod fall back inside my tote, and grabbed my phone instead. Swiping past dozens of notifications, I went into my contacts and found the string of emojis that signified nothing and simultaneously everything. And I pressed the call button.
My breath caught when I heard a ring. And then another and another, and my fingertips were digging into the hard plastic of my phone case when the sound was replaced by a voice I hadn’t heard in months.
“Mami?” I tried to take a deep breath, and felt it snag somewhere deep inside me so that the next thing to come out of my mouth sounded like a sob. “I need you.”
I couldn’t remember the last time when a conversation with my mother hadn’t sounded like a terrible mistake. But I guess it was one I was about to make, right there in public, with people milling around me rattling iced coffees and taking selfies and poring over map apps.
Without thinking too hard about it, I turned left on Central Park West and began making my way down the side of the park as I told my mom that no, I hadn’t lost any limbs, loved ones, or—before I could think of another word that started with L that wasn’t lizards, she interrupted me to ask what was wrong.
You already know I tried hard to find any trace of impatience in her voice. All I got was worry, though. Justifiable worry, given that I had called her—like, on the phone—out of the blue to tell her that I needed her.