Chapter 29
In the days that follow, a sequence of disagreeable events unfolds.
For starters, the heat breaks at the Inn, our radiators as cold as ice queens. Tara and I have to bundle up in scarves and
hats inside, with no update from the super on when it will be fixed. Next, I’m all cramped with writer’s block, unable to
think of any ideas for a new play. Usually I have so many ideas swirling that I just have a hard time getting them onto the
page. Now, though, I can’t even dream up the concepts. It’s like all my creativity has congealed and I can’t figure out how
to reverse it from solid to liquid to air.
There’s no word from Chris either. I figure he’s trying to move on from the whole Olivia mess before he comes for round two
with me, but I’m not going to sit around and pine—I’m not an evergreen. So I give him a call one night. It goes straight to
voicemail. I don’t leave a message, just text him something short so he won’t think it’s serious. U still up?
He never replies. I tell myself he’s just so stunned by how amazing it was to be with me that his analytical brain is still
trying to process it. Chances are slim that he’s gone back to Olivia. Who climbs back into their own coffin after rising from
the dead?
I’m confident that he’ll pop up again soon, but when two weeks go by, my patience chips away with the nail beds I keep biting.
When I text him again, I see the message doesn’t get delivered.
It stays that icky green color on my screen.
A weird feeling stirs that he’s blocked my number.
It’s a trick I know all too well from years of doing it to other people.
It makes me all paranoid that maybe he hasn’t left Olivia yet, that perhaps she’s extended the engagement deadline and they’re in couples therapy or something.
“He probably doesn’t want the temptation,” Tara says when I confide in her one night. We’re baking snickerdoodles together
in the kitchen, consuming most of the dough before it makes its way into the oven, daring salmonella to get us. “That’s why
he blocked you.”
“It’s just insane,” I say. “That some people fight so hard to stay away from the things that draw them toward them. Life is
too short to do what you think is right; you have to do what you feel is right.”
“I’m with you,” Tara says, pressing horizontal fork marks into the unbaked cookies, making neat little crisscross shapes while
I stab the forks in, tines first, poking all sorts of air holes in the dough. “But let’s remember the life Chris leads. He’s
not just going to toss everything aside and follow you into the great unknown. He’s too risk-averse for that.”
She’s right, I know, but it doesn’t make it any easier. “Well, I’m not going to be derailed by some dull corporate guy who’s
passed up the best thing to ever happen to him. That’s his problem, not mine.”
“He’ll realize that eventually,” Tara says. “Even if he never admits it to you.” She passes me the baking bowl, coated with
cookie dough scraps. “You have the rest.”
“You really know my love languages,” I say, scraping the bowl with my fingers.
Tara opens the oven to put the cookies in, warmth leaking into the apartment but not even filling the tiny cove of the kitchenette.
“Well, what are the Redstockings for?” she says, and we both feel it, the resilience of a black cat that’s been dropped from
a skyscraper window but still springs back up and lives.
As January crawls along, the Inn’s radiators finally start rattling with heat again, but things still feel cold inside. Something about Chris lingers, something that no amount of scalding showers can wash off.
I think about going over to Chris’s apartment and demanding answers, but bad behavior like his doesn’t deserve to be rewarded,
so I just keep checking his social media. He hasn’t blocked me yet. I’m almost expecting to see a post about how his phone
got stolen or how he’s just waking up from a coma. I’m not wishing for the coma situation, but at least that would explain
things. I’d be able to verify that I’m not being ghosted the way it feels like I am, that Chris isn’t just another one of
those guys who drops off the face of the earth after sex.
He finally posts a photo, geotagged in Punta Cana. Palm trees and the ocean, no caption. It sends me reeling. His audacity
to be out there, jet-setting around the world, enjoying his tropical little paradise without me. I wonder who’s watching Arnie
while he’s gone. It gets me so upset that I have to go out for a manic drive along the Bushwick Expressway. Then I come back
and get higher than I’ve ever gotten, but it just leaves me sinking downward, toward all the rocks at the bottom that are
trying to attach to my ankles, pulling me down like anchors.
I end up downloading a dating app or three just to have something else to scroll through besides Chris’s photos. It reminds
me how many millions of other people are out there, how there’s nothing that special about Chris, how he’s not even my type
at all. If I’d seen him on a dating app, I would’ve swiped no on him within a nanosecond. I start messaging a few dozen of
my matches, then ghost them all in one fell swoop. It doesn’t feel good, but it feels a little less bad.
Then it happens. Chris posts a photo with him and Olivia hugging on the beach. Preppy outfits nearly matching, blue stripes and linen. Olivia’s hand outstretched toward the camera, showing off a ring, something big and vulgar.
She said yes! is all the caption says.
A laugh jabs its way out. I’m not upset; I’m way beyond that. It’s just hilarious how Chris nearly liberated himself from
the whole marriage thing but then got cold feet and put the noose back around his own neck. What a joke.
Seven hundred forty-eight people have liked the photo so far, and the comments are rolling in. Things like: World’s most perfect couple!!! and You two give me hope that love is alive!
The irony of it is really too heavy to handle. I think about posting a comment like So great you were able to move beyond the cheating scandal! xoxo. But that would be petty even for me and I’m not sure what it would accomplish. Chris would just delete the comment or explain
it away as EJ the weird dogsitter causing trouble again.
It’s all a total sham. I expected more from Chris and really thought he’d have the guts to end things with Olivia. But maybe
Chris isn’t just living the life his brother wanted to. Maybe it’s actually the life Chris wants and I was wrong about all
of it. I’m sure I could coax him into having an affair, but that doesn’t appeal. It would be tainted. The only thing I back
down from is being the backup.
“I’ve never seen you this worked up,” Tara says one night when I’m going off about Chris’s cowardice and how he crawled back
into his little jail cell just because he likes the comfort of knowing where the walls are. “Maybe it’s a sign to tell him
how you feel?”
“How I feel is completely and totally indifferent,” I spew. “I’m over it, the whole thing. I was never even under it in the
first place.”
I can’t help imagining it in the abstract, though. Crashing their wedding, standing up at the “or forever hold your peace” part. The look on Olivia’s face as Chris leaves her at the altar and climbs on the back of my stolen motorcycle.
I know that if he saw me in person, he wouldn’t be able to resist. There’s something consoling about that and how I’ll never
put it to the test.
Tara and I are cleaning the apartment, which just means we’re rearranging the mess into a new shape, stooping over to brush
crumbs from one corner to another with a hand broom, covering heaps of unfolded laundry with blankets, like it’s not still
there, like we won’t have to deal with it eventually when we run out of underwear or need to layer on another fleece.
“What does your intuition say?” Tara asks. I don’t particularly like the question because any kind of gut feeling has been
missing the mark lately.
“It says Chris isn’t worth my time,” I say, flushing the toilet three times in a row and calling it a deep cleanse.
“You can do whatever you want, of course,” Tara says. “I just wonder if maybe you should sit with it a little longer before
you cross Chris out of your life.”
“Too late,” I say. “He’s already deleted, fully expunged.”
My statement sits there like an expired bag of Doritos at the back of the vending machine, neither of us buying it. But there’s
nothing else to believe except that I was used by someone I cared about, someone who never actually gave a shit about me at
all.