More platinum highlights. If she goes any brighter, she’ll be a traffic hazard. Fritter looks up at me from knee height, with adoring brown eyes. I bend down to give him a deep scratch behind both ears, the way he loves.
“Thanks, girl. I was worried it might be too much, but I think it’s growing on me. What’s up with you?”
I can’t tell her that I found my dream house or that I’m in a fight with Ian about it, so I ramble on about work for a block. Natalie will take over the conversation any second now. It’s chilly and lightly misting in that annoying way that isn’t helped by an umbrella. I yank the zipper of my North Face up to my chin.
“Have you ever done coke before fucking?” Natalie asks, right on cue, in the same tone you might use to inquire about a colleague’s Wordle score. A guy walking past with a toddler on his shoulders does a double take.
“Um, no.”
“Color me shocked,” she deadpans, rolling her eyes at my lameness.“Aren’t you glad you at least have me around to keep things interesting?”
Natalie got married right out of college—evangelical upbringing and all that nonsense—and ever since the divorce, she’s been trying to reclaim her lost youth. She was a recruiter before she started working as a bartender at some ironically divey place in Mount Pleasant. She swears the career switch was her idea, but one time when she was drunk, she let slip that her old boss put her on “probation” for offering Molly to his assistant at a company retreat. I tried to coax more details out of her, but she was too wasted to focus.
Natalie refers to this current chapter as her “freedom era.” Most everyone else would call it a midlife crisis, or maybe a third-life crisis since she’s only thirty-one. She hooked up with a new guy last night—there’s always a new guy, or a new girl—and she’s spilling every gory detail like she’s dictating stage directions for a low-budget porn.
“We did it four times. And in between, he did this thing with his tongue that’s hard to explain, but it was off the charts. Then we did it once more this morning.”
“That sounds… honestly, painful.”
“Oh, it’s all about the lube. I can give you some recommendations if you want.” She pops her gum. “I’m sure you need it more than anyone, all that health-class diagrambaby-makingyou’re probably soldiering through.”
Natalie may fuck anything with a face now, but she hasn’t forgotten the first commandment of her megachurch past: thou shalt make others feel harshly judged whenever the opportunity arises.
“You’re being safe, right?” I ask, pivoting away from her dig.
“Oh, come on, give me some credit. Yes, Mom!”
“All right, all right.”
Far be it for me to give a shit. It’s not like anyone else is lining up to help Natalie. Her lobbyist ex is already engaged again (don’tfeel too bad—he pays enough alimony to cover all her rent). Her parents are still mad about the divorce, and from the way she talks about her other friends, it sounds like they’ve all settled happily into their own newlywed routines. I would’ve cut her loose a long time ago, too, if it wasn’t for Fritter. She leaves him alone so often, he’s basically half mine.
“You know I’m always happy to take him if you can’t make it home,” I say, nodding down at him as he eagerly investigates patches of U Street grime. More than once, I reach over and jerk him away from a chicken bone. You’d think Natalie might get the hint and start paying attention.
“I know, girl. You’re the best. But we were at my place last night.”
Now I feel bad that Fritter probably had to witness all that. I shoot him a sympathetic look.
It’s twelve forty-five and the crowd at the farmers market is already starting to thin. Some vendors are packing up. I hustle over to the produce section for carrots and thyme; then I hit up the dairy lady for a container of fresh butter. (The weekend market in Grovemont has a much better selection than this—and it’ssomuch cleaner.)
I spot Natalie at the smoothie stand, leaning into the counter just enough to push up her cleavage. The guy working there—he looks barely out of college—crouches to pet Fritter. I wonder if that’s why she keeps him around, for the extra attention he attracts. While I wait for her, I rummage for my phone in my crossbody bag. Still no word from Ian.
“Everything okay?” Natalie asks, a heaping acai bowl threatening to drip down the front of her white zip-up.
“Oh yeah, it’s nothing.” I stash my phone again. “Just an annoying email from a client.”
We pick up the pace on the way back since the sky has turned angrier. I remind Natalie that I have a work event this Thursday—one of her late-shift nights—but that I’ll still come by to let Fritterout as soon as it’s over. We say goodbye on the street, and I detour to Whole Foods for the rest of my dinner ingredients.
The lights are off when I get back to the apartment, the whole place cast in the same stormy gray as the clouds outside the floor-to-ceiling window. Part of me expected him to be here by now, parked on the sofa, waiting to apologize—he’s almost always the first one of us to say sorry.
Before him, I’d been a magnet for assholes (“daddy issues,” any armchair shrink would say). But I could tell right away that Ian was different.
When we first started dating, he lived by himself in Chinatown and I had two roommates in Columbia Heights, so we spent a lot of nights at his place. It didn’t matter how little notice I gave him that I was coming over, if it was after dark, he would be there waiting for me at the Metro. And every Sunday, rain or shine, he’d meet me at my place to go grocery shopping. Neither of us had a car back then, and that way, he could help me carry the bags.
Ian shows up. It’s just what he does. So where the fuck is he now?
At five o’clock, I give in and send the first text:Are you coming home for dinner?
I stare at the screen, willing those three little dots to materialize. Nothing.
