Chapter 21
New York, March
Augie and Micah first had sex in the middle of her living room. She hadn’t planned for things to go that far. But of course,
she hadn’t planned any of it.
Immediately following their kiss in the cab, they’d had a more innocuous routine: Each morning at six a.m., they’d meet at
the coffee bar before their coworkers arrived and make out against the fridge. It was easy to hear when someone was coming,
yet the risk of getting caught made it all the more thrilling.
After a week or so, they began meeting at dive bars and restaurants. They only went to places Micah said Julia would never
go. “She’s an elitist,” he joked once as they slid into a bar’s booth. Augie didn’t respond. She didn’t like to think about
Julia, how she was Robin’s cousin—how they attended each other’s weddings and ski vacations and held family reunions at the
Greenes’ cabin. It was easier to stay in the present, to keep kissing Micah and not think at all.
It was only natural that after a few weeks of making out all over Manhattan, one Saturday night, Micah showed up at her apartment.
Augie was home, unsurprisingly. She hadn’t made many friends yet, which she tried not to dwell on.
But between work and the affair, even simple tasks like grocery shopping felt tiring, and Augie didn’t have the energy for a social life.
She never texted back the girl from work who’d invited her to karaoke, never reached out to Leah’s friend of a friend.
So when Micah called that night, she answered. She could tell he was a little drunk, and she went down to the street to tell
him to go home—but as he explained he’d had a bad night, they lost a major account, Julia was out of town, and all he wanted
to do was see Augie and this funky little apartment she kept talking about, she caved. She let him up.
Micah was enthralled. She realized later he came from a long line of family money—New York money—and had never lived in a
place as crappy as hers. While the living room was large, with high ceilings and windows, and her room was off to the side,
the main space was filled with boxes of junk and art supplies: Styrofoam, clothes hangers, felt, glitter, dried-out clay.
“I feel like Willy Wonka,” he said, laughing and stumbling around, shaking a bag of googly eyes at her.
Augie stood back, uneasy and excited. She knew what was about to happen. She had a brief thought, one she’d always remember,
as he twisted a pink pipe cleaner into a flower: she could stop this. She could be the better, bigger person. She didn’t.
For the first time in her life, Augie felt grossly alive. Grossly alive, mature, and a little cruel. Finally, she was someone
new.
Later, her perspective would shift. The affair would become a source of regret and shame that she could barely stand to touch.
But right then, she had no thought of the future. No idea of right or wrong. No thought of anything but Micah, pulling her
closer, telling her how he would split her in two.
Augie hadn’t gone running since New York, but the Sunday after she’d nearly been caught in Mrs. Crawley’s closet, she pulled on shorts and tied her sneakers tight. It was dawn, the air was cool, and she’d been up for hours, anyway.
She blasted an old playlist as she ran her high school route. She felt relief in the nostalgia as she sprinted down Brown
Road, up and over the bridge, looping onto the Luce Line, the wood-chipped trail that snaked through the trees; it was as
if, however briefly, she could fool herself into thinking she was seventeen again. It had been so simple to know the real
world was out in front of you, waiting. That you weren’t there yet. It’d been so much easier to feel hopeful.
The nostalgia was only a Band-Aid. As Augie reached mile three and rounded the edge of Long Lake, flashes of the previous
night came back to her: the smell of fur coats; the struggle to hold her breath; the glow of Mrs. Crawley’s skin; that amber
necklace. The word Latvia blaring in her mind. The end of the night had been a blur, but she still remembered how Chat had rushed her down the hall
and back stairs and straight out the door. He hadn’t even said goodbye.
Augie sat down on one of the benches on the side of the lake, glad no one was around. Above, blackbirds swam through the sky
and the sun slowly started to rise. She stared at the calm gray water and, again, back to her phone. Nothing. She still hadn’t
heard from him.
Augie felt as if her whole body was a concoction of bad feelings: embarrassment from sneaking into Mrs. Crawley’s bedroom and being so forward with Chat; confusion about how Danika and Chat’s uncle and Latvia all fit together; worry about whether Chat was keeping something from her; and mostly, hurt from the way he had basically shoved her out the door.
It felt like a sign of his allegiance: He cared more about Mrs. Crawley.
Augie knew he was also worried about his job, but still.
Mrs. Crawley had won. Women like her always came out on top.
At the same time, Augie knew she was to blame. She had screwed up. She never should have gone there in the first place. What
was she thinking? Here was yet another rash, ridiculous decision. Augie didn’t recognize herself anymore—this pattern of failure.
But maybe all her previous years had been the farce. Maybe this was who she really was.
Augie’s breath hitched, and she stood up. She walked around the water with her head down and searched for a thin, flat rock.
She found one and held it like a boomerang the way her father had taught her. If this skips, everything will be fine, she bargained with herself, feeling desperate as she approached the shallow, lapping water. She pulled back her hand and
whipped the rock forward, cringing as she watched—yet physically relieved as it skidded three times across the surface. She
needed something, anything, to believe in.
As the day continued and Augie didn’t hear from Chat, she told herself this was it. It was time to be done. She deleted the
LinkedIn app. She turned her phone off. She didn’t want to keep waiting for his messages. He had Mrs. Crawley. He didn’t get
Augie, too.
Augie showered and sat at her desk. While she planned to call Leah to tell her the latest revelations, she knew she was probably exhausted after the restaurant opening.
Augie had to give her a minute. Augie was eager to talk to her, though.
Even if she’d been trying not to rope Leah into her drama, she knew Leah would want to hear about all this—sneaking over, the Latvia connection.
Because it was too strange not to mean something, right?
Augie couldn’t stop thinking about it: Was Chat’s uncle the ex who gave Mrs. Crawley that necklace?
Had they been in Latvia together? Were the hockey games she’d bragged about to TC his?
Nonetheless, Augie promised herself that that morning, she simply needed to work.
To focus on her own future. Chat had already
been enough of a distraction.
But as Augie settled at her computer and opened her spreadsheets, her mom knocked and cracked open the door, raising a basket
of laundry like an offering.
“Oh, thanks.” Augie leaned back as Lilly set the basket on top of her bed. Augie noticed her work shirt for the Club on top.
She didn’t want to go back.
“How was your night out? Did you have fun?”
Augie focused on her computer. She had lied to her mom and said she was seeing friends.
“I should have stayed home.” She moved her wet hair to her other shoulder, the water bleeding into her shirt, making her shiver.
“How was your work dinner?”
Her mom began putting away the clothes, pulling a hanger from her closet.
“I can do that.”
“I don’t mind.” She untangled the straps of a dress. “Dinner was fun,” she said brightly. “A perk of summer session is new
adjunct professors. They were nice. And . . . there’s this guy.”
“No way—who?” Augie scooted back her chair. Her mother rarely mentioned men—let alone dated. In the twelve years since her
dad left, Augie could remember only two guys who made it past a first night out and into conversation. Even the mention of
someone was a big deal.
Her mother smiled, holding a shirt with her chin as she folded its arms. His name was Peter.
He was from Wisconsin and a mechanical engineering professor at the University of Madison, but he was moving to Minnesota to be closer to his aging parents.
He was teaching three sections of math this summer at the U, trying to get an in.
He had a pug named Pug. He was divorced with no kids.
“He loves to make pizza, apparently. Although I have yet to try it.”
Augie stood. “He sounds so nice, Mom.” She hugged her. They stood in silence until, finally, Augie turned away. The comfort of her mother always made her
choke up, and now the morning’s melodrama was catching up with her.
“Hey.” Her mom slid her hand down the ends of Augie’s wet hair, flicking the water away. “Are you okay? I know this summer
hasn’t been easy.”
Augie felt her stress expanding inside her. She sat down on her bed. “I just feel so pathetic. I keep messing everything up.
I feel like I deserve all the bad stuff happening to me this summer. Like it’s karma. Like everything I worked for was for
nothing. . . . in the end.”
“Oh, come on, now.” Her mom shook her shoulder. “I know losing the job was tough, but it’s only one job. Even if you messed
up”—she paused, and for the first time, Augie wondered if her mom knew there was more to the story than the merger, if she
sensed, in their closeness, something worse had happened—“there’s no point in beating yourself up about it. Regret is a wasted
emotion, dear. You can’t change the past. Karma isn’t so black and white.”
Augie scrunched her forehead. She had never wanted to ask her mom about all her own regrets. Augie wondered if these mantras
were how she coped.
“Do you really believe that?”
“What?”
“You really don’t have any regrets?”
Her mom pulled back. “Well, it’s impossible to not have any regrets. I regret not calling my dad the night before he died. I regret not going to my friend Allison’s wedding. I regret not keeping in touch with a few people. But it’s not worth ruminating over. You learn, do better.”
Augie pushed her tongue against her bottom teeth.
“You don’t regret Dad, Minnesota, never working in publishing? All this?” She gestured to her room.
To her surprise, her mom let out her real laugh, that perfect scale.
“I do kind of regret letting you paint the walls such a bright blue.” She squinted, holding her hand to her forehead as if
blocking the sun. “But no, Aug. Of course not. You’d go crazy trying to compare paths not taken—playing the endless game of
what if. And believe it or not, I love my life.” She hugged Augie’s shoulders with one arm. “I love you. I loved your dad. I loved
Maine. The restaurant. I love it here, too. I told you, karma isn’t so clear-cut. Things often work out in the end, despite
the hardships. You have to give yourself some grace.”
Augie took a slow, shaky breath. She was surprised, but she felt a valve turning inside her, a pressure releasing from her
center—one she hadn’t known was wound so tight. It had been years since she and her mom were vulnerable with each other. She’d
always assumed she knew how her mom felt about everything—hadn’t wanted to challenge their perfect ecosystem.
“It’s going to be okay, Aug.” Her mom broke the silence as she stood and folded the last of Augie’s T-shirts. “You have to get messy in life. No other way to become as wise and wonderful as your own mother.” She batted her lashes.
Augie shifted her weight on the bed, growing so fully sick of thinking about herself, she couldn’t stand it. “Okay, so”—she
hit her thighs—“when do we do a pizza party with Pug and Peter? And all the pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?”
Her mom laughed again with her head back. “Touché, darling. Soon, soon. Let’s plan a party promptly.”