Chapter 37
Some days I feel like I have it all figured out, and some days I slip right back down again.
I guess it’ll always be like that. Baggage never goes away and I wouldn’t want that. That would mean erasing everything that’s
brought me to where I am today, and I don’t want to delete the past; I just want it to be lighter so it doesn’t press down
on me so hard. Get some baggage with wheels, I guess.
There are a lot of nights when I wake up with these awful flashbacks about the things I did in my past and the things that
were done to me. I cringe and sweat and scream at myself.
Maybe that’s the final stage of freedom: self-forgiveness. Extending grace to yourself and not just other people.
I’m sort of like a thirty-two-year-old newborn, having to unlearn everything before I can learn it again. It’s basically triple
the work. I’m not asking for credit, but it would be nice to be recognized for it, that’s all I’m saying. The divine woman
gives me a nudge to remind me that she recognizes me, and that’s the most important approval I can get. It’s just like her
to yank me out of my sulky mood when I’d prefer to stay and wallow for a while.
I get all jumpy and my body tightens as September scoots along, too fast. October 3 is right around the corner: Chris and
Olivia’s wedding. It gives me cold feet, which is a ridiculous reaction considering I’m not the one getting married.
I wonder if Chris is having cold feet too.
I wonder if he’s thinking about me at all.
I hope he’s not. I hope his feet are nice and toasty warm and he’s just thinking about Olivia and how excited he is to build a life with her.
When I’m actually prioritizing his happiness above my own and not just pretending to prioritize it, that’s when I finally know, or at least admit, that I guess I am in love with him after all.
“Took you long enough to admit it,” Tara says when I tell her.
“It’s not like I didn’t know I loved him,” I say. “I was just waiting for my feelings to wear off. But I guess some never
do.”
It’s been over three years now that I’ve known Chris, and he’s still swirling around in my thoughts day and night, dawn and
dusk. It doesn’t really make sense, but none of the best things do.
Even if I never get to be with him, it’s still a big deal to know that I can feel safe around a man. Maybe that was the whole
point of getting to know him. It wouldn’t be my favorite moral to the story, but it’s not the worst one either.
One afternoon, eight days before the wedding, I’m walking around Bushwick, listening to Elijah the trumpet player, still on
his same street corner. I hum along loudly, not even to try to annoy other people. I’m just doing it to express some melodies
that have been bunched up for years and years and now just want a chance to be out in the air, floating or sinking, whichever
is most authentic. The music massages the parts of me I can only see were sick now that I’m starting to get healthy.
My phone buzzes. Chris’s name flashes on the screen. I immediately assume something horrible has happened to him or Arnie.
“Chris, what’s wrong?” I say, picking up.
“Hey, I’m okay,” he says, voice calm. “All good.”
I’m relieved, but something still seems off. “What’s going on? Why are you calling me?”
“Olivia’s gone.”
By the way he says it, I can tell that Olivia didn’t just leave to go to a hot yoga class or get a five-hundred-dollar facial. She’s actually gone. Not dead but the relationship is over, the wedding is off.
I’m not nearly as pleased about this news as I ought to be, which is how I again verify that my love for Chris is the pure
kind, the real kind. It’s unfortunate, but beautiful too.
“Want me to come over?” I ask. He doesn’t say anything, but I can hear him nodding, clenching his jaw.
“Be right there,” I tell him and gallop off to the subway station as fast as my feet can carry me.
I find Chris sitting on the floor of his apartment. His back is hunched, resting up against the couch. He’s staring at the
wall, which is now completely bare, devoid of all the old photographs. Arnie is snuggled up loyally on his lap like he knows
perfectly well what’s going on.
I sit down next to them. “Was it the pool boy at her parents’ Hamptons estate?” I ask, trying to get a smile out of Chris.
It doesn’t work. Chris just keeps staring blankly at the wall.
“Olivia didn’t cheat,” he says. “It was my fault.”
“You’re the one who ended things?” I say it gently, but he winces like I’ve slapped him, which gives me the sensation that
I’ve slapped myself.
He says that’s right. “I don’t really know why I did it. I can’t pinpoint it exactly.”
The fact that he can’t find a logical explanation seems to frustrate him to no end. I imagine his analytical brain is going
insane trying to understand why one plus one didn’t equal two.
He tells me that his anxiety was acting up as the wedding approached, his thoughts kept racing, and he couldn’t sleep. “It
felt like nothing was wrong, but something wasn’t right.”
“That’s really good you listened to your intuition,” I say, because it’s true. I’m impressed, and I’m also trying my best
to start building him back up. It’ll be a long process, but we’ve got to start somewhere.
I ask if it just happened today and he says yeah, they’d been having conversations for the last few weeks, but it all came to a head this morning when he floated the idea of postponing the wedding to give them more time to figure things out.
Olivia freaked out and said that either Chris was ready to commit to her today or he’d never be ready and she wasn’t just going to sit around waiting and wasting the prime of her life.
“She said she’s thirty and wants to start a family soon.
And she thought I did too because we’ve talked about it a million times.
So she wanted to know what changed, and I didn’t have an answer. I didn’t have an answer,” he repeats.
My heart kind of goes out to Olivia on that one. She’s a victim of the patriarchy and societal programming and the biological
inequity of women’s fertility. But I also have to come to Chris’s defense. He was speaking up even at the risk of conflict.
“It’s better that you realized you’re not the right fit now rather than after you made it official.”
We sit there for another stretch of time, five minutes or maybe an hour.
“I kept thinking about what you said about how I was trying to live out Luke’s dream life, not my own,” Chris finally says.
“And maybe there was a little truth in it, at least when it came to Olivia.”
This should give me a nice boost—Chris is admitting I was right after all. But it just scrapes me because I don’t want this
breakup to be my fault. I don’t want to have messed with his head. I should’ve had more tact.
“I’m sorry for overstepping my boundaries,” I say. “That wasn’t right.”
He says no, he isn’t trying to put the blame on me or anything; he would’ve been having doubts anyway.
Talking about Luke with me just kind of helped Chris see himself in third person, he says.
A boy sprinting his whole life to keep up with his brother.
And now when his brother isn’t there anymore, the boy—now a man, or at least trying to be—just keeps sprinting faster through the same trees so he doesn’t have to pick his head up and see the big forest and wonder where he is and where he’s going and why.
“Look who’s gotten all introspective,” I say.
Chris gives me a scrap of a smile, not much, but I’ll take it. I’ll take whatever I can get from this man. I don’t mean that
in a pick-me way or anything. I’m just being honest that I’ve missed him and little bits of him are better than no bits at
all.
“Well, I started going to therapy,” he says. “So I guess I have to credit you for that.”
“No credit needed. It turns out my own genius isn’t even mine. It comes from someplace higher, someplace prettier. So,” I
say, just about holding my breath. “Are you missing Olivia?”
Chris nods, the kind of nod that says he can’t speak because it’s too hard to swallow.
“You could still go after her,” I hear myself say. I resent the words but I revere them too, if there’s a chance they could
help Chris feel better. “If you regret it, you could talk through the Luke stuff with her and work it out. You could still
get married if you want to.”
“Let me get this straight,” Chris says, talking slowly. “You, the founder of the Anti-Marriage Pact, are telling me to get
married?”
“I’m not telling you to get married. I’m just saying it’s still an option,” I clarify. “And as for the pact, it’s been dissolved.
Turns out I was kind of misguided in my views. Sure, marriage can be a cage, but so can being single. It’s really a case-by-case
thing. Commitment isn’t necessarily suffocating if your partner lets you evolve and supports you as you do. At least that’s
my current perspective. I’m still learning.”
Chris looks at me, really looks at me, for the first time all afternoon. His gaze doesn’t make me want to close my eyes or
hide behind a sarcastic joke like it usually does. I want him to see how my steel shell has cracked open, how my spirit is
oozing out of my body like crepuscular rays from storm clouds.
“It’s really good to see you again, Emily Jane,” Chris says.
“Yeah,” I say, still not breaking eye contact. “It’s good to see me again too.”
This gets him grinning, which makes me grin too.
“And you too,” I add. “Obviously.”