Chapter 13
A few weeks later, I’m in the middle of designing an artistic swirl on top of a cappuccino for a customer when Chris’s name
flashes up on my phone.
It’s an incoming call.
My mood lurches forward and upward and in new, undiscovered directions too. It’s just the smug satisfaction of winning my
New Year’s resolution. I knew my willpower was rock solid. I don’t pick up. No need for him to think I’m awaiting his call.
He doesn’t leave a voicemail, but then he texts asking how I’m doing. It’s basically a booty call by his standards.
Maybe he and Olivia broke up. I doubt it but I like keeping it as a possibility, so I don’t text back. I just squirt the rest
of the whipped cream straight in my mouth and swallow. Things are instantly brighter. There’s this gloriously petty yet empowering
feeling about keeping him waiting on my text, picturing him checking his phone every two minutes to see if I’ve replied. Games
like that rile me up in the best way because I’m in control of whether I win them, and I always do.
He doesn’t call or text again, which is disappointing.
I thought he’d try harder to win me back, but maybe he’s feeling rejected.
I don’t like the idea of him sitting there thinking I’m mad at him.
He’s probably stuck in a mind loop of anxiety, regretting that he took so long to reach out.
He can be so hard on himself—it’s pretty cruel actually.
So the next day I ditch work early and take the subway over to Tribeca.
Finding myself outside the Windemere awning, I walk inside the building and go straight into the elevators without pausing
to make eye contact with the workers at the front desk. They don’t come after me. Confidence is everything; Hal’s right.
I knock on the door of Chris’s apartment, just a formality since I have my spare key. It’s in the keyhole when the door opens
from the inside. Olivia is standing there, dressed in leggings and a crop top, looking even more like a mannequin than I remembered.
She doesn’t show even a flicker of recognition that we’ve met before. Sure, my hair is black and chin-length now and my contacts
are violet, but still, you’d think she’d connect the dots given how much interest she showed me in that Uber. How suspicious
she’d been that Chris was going to run away with me, leave her in the glitter that she could only see as dust.
“Hello, Olivia,” I say with admirable cordiality. “Is Chris home?”
She says Chris is at work and asks how she can help me, which is code for how she can get rid of me. She’s not fooling anyone.
“Do you live here now?” I ask as Arnie leaps on me, licking and sniffing and zooming all around in delight.
Olivia doesn’t answer my question, just asks who I am. So I tell her that I’m EJ, Arnie’s surrogate mom, here to take him
out for a stroll. “Chris asked me to come by,” I say, and I get that happy feeling that comes from splashing a lie in someone’s
face and having it blind them for a second or six.
Olivia gets Chris on the phone, says there’s an EJ here to take Arnie for a walk and wants to know if it’s a scam.
Chris must vouch for me, which I appreciate since I didn’t even give him the heads-up I was coming.
Olivia hangs up and tells me I can take “the dog” out but have him back in an hour.
She seems glad to have Arnie off her hands.
I can tell she never gets down on the ground and wrestles him.
There’s barely any dog hair on her clothes at all.
That’s always a warning sign, a red flag. I’m surprised Chris hasn’t taken note.
I put on Arnie’s harness and we both bound out the door. Arnie tugs me down the hallway. He’s wild with glee that we’re reunited,
that I’m helping him escape that dull afternoon. I follow him where he wants to go today. That’s really how dogs should be
walked so they don’t get conditioned to be obedient to humans and lose sense of their own intuition.
He trots east until we’re at the Williamsburg Bridge. I realize he wants to be free of Manhattan, so I let him lead me over
the bridge. He sniffs and paws the graffiti poetry and seems to be a big fan of it too.
Then we’re walking down Bedford Avenue and he’s dragging me right past that art gallery where Chris and I first met. I don’t
go in the gallery, but I pause and look in for a while, repressing a few regrets.
Arnie wants to explore East Williamsburg too. He’s loving the streets as they empty out. Soon enough we’re back in Bushwick.
I let him off his leash and he romps through the overgrown grass and clovers in Irving Square Park like he’s been reborn.
The dusky sky is draped with gauzy, violet-gray clouds. To the west, a golden halo swells up from behind the buildings, where
the horizon should be. I start to wonder if Olivia has even noticed that Arnie’s still gone. Doubtful. She’s probably too
busy scrolling through social media or lounging in the Jacuzzi. It gives me this ugly jealous feeling that I clamp shut.
I bring Arnie back to the Inn since we’re basically there already and he’s probably pretty thirsty by now.
I pour him water in the only clean bowl left in the cupboard.
Tara’s out and about but Hal is home, and she rolls around with Arnie on the floor and asks if we can keep him.
She’s high and getting all emotional about how much she misses Jenni, how she’s been burying herself in her start-up incubation process to numb the pain.
I think about Chris getting back from work and finding Arnie still gone. He knows Arnie’s with me, but he still might get
panicky. I don’t want to prey on his anxiety, so I text him not to worry, that Arnie led me back to Bushwick and asked to
stay the night.
Hope that’s alright, I add.
Chris calls me right away sounding stressed. He says Arnie has to stay at his apartment, that he needs to get his Michelin-star
dinner and mineral water and mani and pedi and all that. Maybe I’m exaggerating a little but not much. The mile-long to-do
list that Chris rattles off makes me remember why he and I would never work out. Not that I was thinking about that anyway.
In the end, I say that I’m not making an extra trip back into Manhattan tonight when Arnie is perfectly happy playing in the
garden here and we’ve got plenty of vegan-ish leftovers in the fridge that will toughen up his constitution. “But if you come
by here,” I tell Chris over the phone, “then I’ll return him for a pretty ransom.”
Chris doesn’t seem to find this funny; he just says he’s leaving work now and is taking an Uber straight over. I tell him
to take the subway because it’ll be faster with the rush-hour traffic this time of day. I don’t expect him to take my advice,
but by the time he arrives, he’s covered in the kind of grime that can only come from a long trek underground, snaking through
the city’s crumbling bowels on a century-old train that rattles violently and then jerks to a stop just when it’s finally
picked up speed, sending you careening into strangers’ spiky shoulders unless you’re gripping the germ-infested pole with
both hands. But Chris looks better for it all, his hair mussed up, skin splotched with sweat.
I’m waiting for him out by the street because I have this weird feeling when I think about Chris coming inside the Inn.
My hands get clammy and I have to check to make sure I’m wearing underwear.
Not because I’m expecting to take it off or anything; it just makes me feel better knowing I’ve got an extra layer underneath.
Arnie goes happy-crazy when he sees Chris, leaps right up into his arms. Chris coddles him like a baby, telling him how much
he missed him all day. It’s very heartwarming and makes me feel kind of bad for taking Arnie away.
Arnie tries to lead Chris down the stairs into the Inn. That’s just like Arnie, stirring up trouble by putting Chris and me
in the same small space, tempting us both.
“You’d better get home,” I tell Chris. “Arnie’s had a long day.” I don’t offer to drive them and Chris doesn’t ask; he just
orders a pet-friendly Uber. As we wait for it, I fill him in on how I’m working at a coffee shop now. I casually drop the
cross streets in case he wants to swing by. I figure he won’t since it’s in Bushwick, but you never know with Chris. He goes
out of his way to see me. Take tonight as an example.
I ask him if Olivia has moved in and he says no; she has a remote job and just likes working from his place because the Wi-Fi
is stronger. I’m good at reading between the lines so I sense there’s some resentment there, like Chris wants his space. I
bet she’s messing up his routine and it’s getting under his skin. The thought makes me bounce a little in my knees, a jovial
kind of jitter.
“How are Tara, Hal, and Jenni doing?” he asks. Hearing Jenni’s name scrapes a little. Not like a fresh wound but not an old
one either. It mostly catches me off guard because I think I’ve only mentioned their names to him once or twice, just in passing.
Chris is a good listener, I’ve got to give him that.
“Jenni defected from the pact.” I briefly fill him in. “But we’re better off without her. You can’t have someone who’s one
foot in, one foot out. She would’ve dragged us all down sooner or later.”
“It’ll be okay,” Chris says, which irks me intensely because why do some people think that “okay” is a good thing? That word scares me senseless. It reeks of forgettable mediocrity. My biggest fear in life is to be “okay.” I’d never get books written about me for that.
Sharpening the blade on my tongue, I tell him that of course it’s not going to be okay; it’s going to be fucking incredible.
A laugh spills out of Chris, like it was suddenly uncorked. The sound is a precious thing and I want to hear more of it. But
his Uber arrives so I deposit a few kisses for Arnie on the beautiful black streak that runs between his multicolored eyes.
Chris confirms with the driver that it’s a pet-friendly ride. The driver says yes, and Chris thanks him profusely. It all
makes me wish I’d just driven them home myself.
The car door closes and I’m alone again, or at least it feels that way for a few seconds before I remind myself that Hal is
right inside and Tara should be back from rehearsal soon.
Chris texts me as I’m walking inside.
Good seeing you again!
It’s a lot for Chris to use an exclamation point and it makes me feel all inflated on the inside, like a hot-air balloon soaring
up over the city, seeing how everything connects from the sky in ways you never can down here on the street level.
U2, I reply, but I don’t like how cold that sounds, so I add two smiley face emojis and call it a night.