8. Los Angeles
LOS ANGELES
The flight to LA was two hours of Becca trying to hold herself together.
She had the window seat. Margot had the middle, wedged between Becca and a man who'd fallen asleep before takeoff, mouth open, snoring in wet little bursts that made Becca's skin crawl. First class Margot Langley, packed into economy like a sardine, and she hadn't said a word about it.
It didn't add up. None of it added up with the woman who'd stood in their cottage this morning and said people get swept up at weddings like the last four days had been some kind of fever dream.
Becca pressed her forehead to the window. The clouds looked like meringue, stiff peaks, glossy where the sun hit them. Her brain did this constantly, turned everything into food, into something she could bake or shape or transform.
She couldn't transform this. Couldn't fold Margot's apology into something sweet and pretend the bitter wasn't still there underneath.
"You're quiet," Margot said.
Becca kept her forehead against the cold glass. A cloud shaped like a croissant (or maybe she was hungry) drifted past below them. "I'm thinking."
"About?"
"About how you bought a ticket to Des Moines."
She felt rather than saw Margot shift beside her, the cheap pleather seat squeaking under her weight.
"I did," Margot said.
"And about how six hours ago you told me I was a mistake."
Silence, except for the snoring man beside Margot, who gurgled and resettled against his neck pillow.
"I'm having trouble making those two things fit together." Becca traced a finger along the window, leaving a smudge in the condensation. "The version of you who showed up at Oakland and the version who couldn't look at me this morning. I don't know which one is real."
"Both of them." Margot's voice came out rough, scraped. "That's the problem. They're both real."
Becca finally turned. Margot looked wrecked. Mascara smudged under her eyes, hair escaping its twist, hands wrapped around her own elbows like she was the only thing holding herself together.
"That's not comforting," Becca said.
"I know."
"I need it to be one or the other. I need to know which version I'm getting."
"I can't promise that." Margot held her gaze, and there was nothing guarded in it, nothing polished.
Just exhaustion and fear and hope, if Becca let herself believe it.
"I can promise I'll fight for the version that showed up at the airport.
I can promise I'll try. But I'm not going to lie to you and say the other part of me doesn't exist."
Becca's chest ached. She wanted easy answers, wanted Margot to say I'll never hurt you again so Becca could believe it and they could skip ahead to the happy ending.
But Margot wasn't saying that. And weirdly, impossibly, that made Becca trust her more.
"Okay," she said. "That's... okay. For now."
"For now?"
"I reserve the right to revisit." Becca turned back to the window, watching the clouds scroll past like an endless white sea. "We're going to talk more. At my place. Really talk, not airplane talk."
"I understand."
"And I might yell at you."
"That's fair."
"And I'm definitely going to cry more, because apparently that's just who I am now, a person who cries on airplanes and in airports and probably also in her own kitchen."
"I'll buy you tissues."
"You can't fix everything by buying things, Margot."
"I know." A pause, and then Becca felt Margot's hand brush against hers on the armrest. Tentative, asking permission. "But I can buy you really nice tissues."
Becca laughed despite herself, a wet, hiccupy sound that startled the snoring man awake for half a second, and felt something loosen in her chest. Just a fraction. Just enough to breathe.
Her apartment smelled like bananas.
Overripe, forgotten-on-the-counter bananas, announcing their presence the moment Becca unlocked the door.
She'd left Thursday morning in a whirlwind.
Outfit changes scattered across the bed, dishes from her pre-flight stress-baking crusted in the sink, a bra hanging off the bathroom doorknob because she'd tried it on, rejected it, and never bothered with the follow-through.
Margot stepped inside and stopped.
Becca tried to see it through her eyes. The galley kitchen with its scarred butcher block counter, the KitchenAid mixer taking up half the available workspace, the eternal dusting of flour that had embedded itself into every surface no matter how obsessively she cleaned.
The living room with its thrift store couch and the coffee table she'd rescued from a sidewalk in Silver Lake.
The yellow curtains she'd sewn herself, slightly uneven, cheerfully ugly.
It was chaos. It was home. It was everything Margot's sleek Manhattan aesthetic wasn't.
"Sorry," Becca said, already grabbing the bananas and heading for the trash. "I didn't exactly—"
"I love it."
Becca paused, fruit in hand. "You don't have to—"
"I'm not being polite." Margot set down the carry-on she'd panic-bought at Oakland. Her real luggage was still at the cottage and her rental car was parked at the airport, both problems for future Margot. "It smells like vanilla. And butter. And—"
"Bananas, I know, I'm dealing with it—"
"And you." Margot's voice went soft in a way that made Becca's stomach flip. "It smells like you. I've been trying to remember that smell for three hours. The coconut shampoo and something else, something warm."
"Probably brown butter. It gets into everything. I made financiers last week and I swear the scent lives in the walls now." Becca shook her head, tossing the bananas. "You're distracting me."
"Am I?"
"Yes. And we need to talk, and I need to not be holding rotting fruit while we do it, so just—" She gestured vaguely toward the living room. "Sit somewhere. I'll make tea. I need to do something with my hands or I'll vibrate out of my skin."
The kettle was a ritual. Fill, boil, wait.
She'd bought loose leaf Earl Grey at the farmers market last month, the good stuff with the real bergamot, and she measured it carefully into her old tea strainer, letting the muscle memory soothe her.
Behind her, she heard Margot settle onto the couch, then a small yelp.
"There's a spring."
"I know. Move left."
The couch creaked. "Better."
"I keep meaning to fix it." Becca poured the water, watching steam curl toward the ceiling. "I keep meaning to fix a lot of things."
She brought two mugs to the living room but didn't sit next to Margot. Took the armchair instead, the one with the good lumbar support and the old coffee stain on the arm that she'd given up trying to remove. Distance. She needed distance for this.
"Okay," she said, wrapping her hands around her mug. The heat helped, gave her something to focus on besides the urge to scream or cry or both. "Talk."
Margot wrapped her hands around her own mug, mirroring her. The steam rose between them like a barrier.
"Where do you want me to start?"
"This morning." Becca pulled her knees up to her chest, making herself small in the chair. "What happened in your head between falling asleep and looking at me like I was a problem you needed to solve?"
Margot flinched. Took a sip of tea. Set the mug down when her hands shook too much to hold it steady.
"I woke up at six," she said. "You were still asleep. Drooling a little."
"I don't drool."
"You drool. It's cute." A smile twitched at the corner of her mouth and vanished. Margot stared at a point somewhere past Becca's shoulder. "And I was lying there watching you, and I felt... happy. Really happy. The kind of happy that feels like standing on a ledge."
"That's messed up."
"Yeah."
"Being happy shouldn't feel like falling."
"I know that." Margot met her eyes, and she looked like she'd been skinned. Everything exposed, nothing protected. "But it does. For me. It always has. When something feels too good, I start waiting for it to collapse. And then I can't stand the waiting, so I—"
"Collapse it yourself."
"Yes."
Becca set down her mug harder than she meant to. Tea sloshed over the rim, pooling on the old stain, adding another layer to the mess.
"That's not an explanation," she said. "That's a pattern. I'm asking you why."
Margot opened her mouth and then closed it again. Her fingers found the hem of her blouse, the silk one ruined beyond repair, and twisted the fabric.
"My last relationship," she said slowly. "Kate. We were together for two years."
"I know. You mentioned her." Becca held her mug tighter, needing the anchor.
"I didn't mention why it ended." Margot's voice had gone flat, like she was reading from a script she'd rehearsed too many times.
"She told me I was never really there. That I gave everything to my job and had nothing left for her.
That being with me was like being with a hologram. Present but not solid. Not real."
She stopped. Swallowed hard. Becca watched her throat move, watched her struggle to keep going.
"Was she right?" Becca asked.
"Yes." The word splintered on its way out. "She was right. I knew she was right. And instead of trying to change, I just—let her go. Told myself it was better this way."
"So you just decided to be alone forever?"
"I decided to stop wanting." Margot looked up, eyes wet, and Becca had to fight the urge to go to her.
Not yet. She wasn't ready for that yet. "It's different.
I built my entire life around not needing anyone.
If I didn't let myself want a relationship, I couldn't fail at one.
If I didn't let people in, they couldn't tell me I wasn't enough. "
Becca's anger snagged on pity, and she hated that, so she shoved it down.
"That's—" She shook her head.
"Pathetic. I know."
"I was going to say lonely."
"That too."
They sat in silence. Somewhere outside, a car alarm wailed for thirty seconds before cutting out. Mrs. Okonkwo's Pomeranian started barking in response. The ordinary sounds of Becca's ordinary life, soundtrack to this very not-ordinary conversation.
"And then you met me," Becca said.