Chapter 32
Thirty-Two
Before Soulmail, I’d agonized over our wedding. Not the napkin folds or the appetizers, but the people. I worried Sabrina’s
ghost wouldn’t leave Mom alone, I worried I’d snap at Wells’s mother for fretting about something inane. I probably would’ve
called our love a candidate for Dola’s four seasons kind. But now I cycled through stages of wondering, even with that confirmation
of our destinies. The cosmic handshake. The universe’s whisper that this was what I was supposed to get.
A few nights later, Wells and I tried the Mediterranean place around the corner from my new apartment, eating garlicky shrimp,
lemon hummus, baklava shaped like wedges or sailboats. Wells had to repeat himself twice before I heard him.
I shook my head to clear it. “Sorry. Zoned out. Been up so early lately.”
“You were always up early,” Wells said, but his tone was pleasant. “Never thought I’d be able to sleep through your alarm.
Good thing I got used to it.”
“Yeah. Something about all this—” I gestured toward my hair, my makeup, the things that I used to never even consider doing
half the time. I missed my messy bun and calling tinted SPF a makeup routine. “Takes up so much time, and all for pretty much
nothing, you know?”
“Oh, it pays off,” he said, a hint on his face.
A flush of pleasure swept through me. “What was it you were saying?”
“You must be tired,” he said, covering my hand with his.
I turned my palm over, accepting the gesture. “Exhausted.”
He ran his thumb along mine. “Oh. Meant to tell you. You know what a planner I am?”
My mouth opened, then closed, someone pinching a snapdragon. Wells? A planner? Wells liked following someone else’s layout,
liked constructing the image of a perfect boyfriend. He was fortunate enough to take weekends away from the city because it
was easy to go to his parents’ house, not because he’d made any special plans. “Sure,” I said cautiously.
“I was thinking about how much you like your new apartment,” Wells said. “I was describing it to my mom—”
A cringe passed across my shoulders before I could hide it. Wells gave my hand a warm squeeze. “I know what you’re thinking.
They really have always liked you.”
I sighed. “Okay, what about my apartment?”
“Well, maybe once things settle down for us, we could think about choosing a place.” Deliberate pause. “Together.” More deliberate
pause. “Outside of the city.”
I withdrew my hand, placed it on my lap. I’d felt my mood tunneling at the word together—the second time he’d mentioned this after shading toward it at my failed dinner party idea at my apartment a few weeks ago.
But leave here? “I love it here,” I said slowly. “I always imagined living in the city. And now I am.”
Wells’s smile was boyish. In it, I could see what he looked like when we met, the way the right side edged up one fraction
higher than the left. “No, I know. Me, too. I started seeing a therapist—”
“On your own?” I raised a brow.
His nod was earnest. “I’m really trying here. I just had the thought—what if we tried somewhere new, together? If we don’t
run from what we’ve gone through, then that could be a real fresh start.”
The tablecloth wasn’t fabric; it was a thick white paper.
After we left today, the waitstaff would yank it to reveal a fresh sheet below.
Now I traced the curve of my water glass, which had dampened the paper.
Meniscus. I tore my glance away from a thing that rang of lilac walls and pastrami sandwiches. “So you want to move to, what? Long
Island? Jersey?”
He shakes his head. “Further.”
“Connecticut?” I stirred red pepper flakes into the table hummus.
“Brace yourself.” Wells leaned forward. “What if we moved to California? Not right now, but eventually. A couple years. My
college roommate’s in finance out there, and he’s always talked about me joining him.”
Something purred low, deep, heavy in my gut, then took off: an adrenaline buzz. California. California? Shock gave way to something else, my leg pumping up and down, shaking the paper tablecloth as a younger woman approached
our table.
“Excuse me?” I turned to the interruption like it was water and I was thirsty. My savior wore daisy earrings. “You’re an icon.
Do you mind if we take a picture?” she asked.
Even though I’d made a new rule about protecting my time—one I’d obviously never had to make in the before days—I obliged
to buy a stretch for my response.
While I smiled, checking the phone to make sure my eyes were open and my teeth were free of things like poppy seeds, I forced
myself to sharpen my hearing, to intently listen to everything Wells said next. My muscles knotted, which sent a warning signal
from my knee. I weighed how to react.
On the East Coast, California was always the answer to the question “What’s better than this?
” And then ultimately, East Coast diehards volleyed excuses and developed rationales why California was not better.
(Earthquakes. Lifestyle creep.) When I was a kid, I’d heard that California would fall into the ocean someday, as if someone could take a giant pair of scissors and snip along its dotted state line, then cast the puzzle piece into the Pacific.
Daisy-earrings girl thanked me and left. I sipped my water, trying to consider the pros of the idea: A six-hour flight and
a four or five-hour drive were basically the same thing when it came to seeing my parents. I didn’t like winter weather. My
skin craved UV light, and not for a tan: It cracked, broke, went red and dry in the crevices of my joints.
There was something promised about that place, something I’d never really considered for myself. And now that I was older,
and I saw my friends less and less, wouldn’t it kind of make sense to have our day-to-day be full of farmers markets? We were
already in New York City, where the cost of living was astronomical. California wouldn’t be much different.
“Always? Why haven’t you ever told me this?” is what I settled on.
“ ’Cause we never had a reason to consider it.” Wells topped off both glasses with a giant bottle of still water. (No gas.
I’d loved being in Paris with Natalie, once, answering the gas or no gas question.) “Your career is just taking off, and once you log in the experience, then I think you could do anything you want.
You could keep telling stories out there. Any kind of stories. I know that’s what you want most.”
“Sort of,” I said.
He did a double take. “Sort of?”
“Yeah. I want to move into something else eventually.” Salary aside, that was, I reminded myself. “I told you about the documentary
opportunity.”
He shrugged. “Yeah. Exactly. The EP credit for our wedding.”
“For the episode related to our wedding. But that’s not even what I’m talking about. It’s that now I have support for my own doc, promised to me in my offer meeting. Besides, my job might not be what I went for, but it’s still big.”
“Of course it is,” he agreed, but the way he said it made me wonder if he actually agreed. “It’s huge. But you’re a smart
woman. You know Per Diem isn’t Today or GMA. All this buzz is about you, and your presence as a person on the internet, plus the leg up on the network.”
I straightened my spine, imagining my vertebrae piling one on top of the other then pulling up, the way my childhood ballet
teacher instructed. “I wasn’t going for Today or GMA.” I jabbed a knife into a pat of olive-oil-drizzled butter to spread on a piece of lavash. Then I plunked the bread on my
plate without taking a bite. “I wasn’t going for anything. My ‘presence on the internet’ was me eating food and posting movie recommendations and small bits of our life together,
so the people I went to college with could see I’m still a human being.”
“You’re Olivia Jane Adler. People watch for you. That’s called authenticity.”
“Fine. Uncalculated authenticity. I didn’t ask for any of this.”
“You’re right.” His nose twitched. “It’s silly. Never mind. We’ll do New York.”
I frowned. “Is this something real? You really want to move out west?”
He shrugged. “I’m just trying to do right by us,” he said.
I shoved the bread into my mouth.