“Wow,fine. I bet Clarke would love that as a Yelp review.”
“It was a good date,” she defended it.
“You were bored, weren’t you?”
She rolled her eyes dismissively. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I know you.”
“Yeah, when I was sixteen.”
“Some things don’t change.”
“I’m not the same girl I was when I was sixteen.”
“It’s Wednseday. Are you wearing a pink bra?”
She pulled her hand away and looked down at her dress, then up at me. “How did you…?”
My lips curled at the edges. I’d been guessing that she still did it, but clearly it was a good guess. “You used to always wear a pink bra on Wednesdays because your favorite movie wasMean Girlsand on Wednesdays they wear pink, but you would never be caught dead in anything pink.”
“How did you know that…I mean back then?”
“Because whenever you were having your black cloud days, or you were sick, that’s the movie you would want to watch.”
“No, I mean how did you know I wore a pink bra on Wednesdays?”
“I was a horny teenage boy and you were…you.”
“Yeah but how did you see…what made you notice?—”
“I noticed everything.”
She stared down at me, her chest heaving. “Goodnight.”
I watched as she collected her coat, scarf, and purse, then shut the living room light off with the practiced efficiency of someone who’d been closing doors behind her all her life. She switched off the kitchen light on her way to the stairs, the click echoed through the silent house. I stayed frozen on the couch for a second, my hand still hanging in the air like an idiot, then I let it fall to my lap.
The bathroom light flickered when I turned it on, revealing the same exhausted face I’d been seeing for days, my beardfully grown in, and hair that never quite remembered where it was supposed to lie. I brushed my teeth, spit, and watched the foam swirl down the drain. When I got back to the living room, the TV was still glowing faintly, I ignored it and collapsed onto the couch. The cushions had molded to the shape of my useless body. I pulled the throw blanket over myself and tried to focus on the pattern of light and shadow playing across the ceiling.
The date was fine.It was a good date.My gut told me she was bored, but my gut could be wrong. Three hours—that was how long she’d been gone. Not long enough to be swept off her feet, probably, but not short enough to be a disaster either. It was the Switzerland of date outcomes, neutral. I wanted to read more into it. I wanted to believe that it hadn’t worked, that maybe she’d spent the whole time thinking about me with my busted-up back and my ever-increasing grumpiness, but odds were she’d just had a good time. It was Russell Clarke. She was probably already setting up a second date.
It didn’t matter. If it wasn’t Russell Clarke it would be some other guy lying in her bed every night. Kissing her awake every morning. Would she invite Russell to Bailey’s wedding? That was just a few weeks away, maybe that was too soon. But she’d definitely invite him to Birdie’s, which was this summer.
I shifted, partially because of my physical discomfort and partially because of my emotional discomfort. I wanted to scream into the pillow.
The past ten days that I’d been unable to do anything had given me a lot of time to think. I’d wasted so many years because of what? The first ten years, I’d stayed away because I was scared. Scared that if I came back to San Francisco and saw Billie again, I’d never be able to leave. Scared that she wouldn’t forgive me, and equally scared that she would. And if she did forgive me, I’d ask her to marry me, and that would be it. If I let her in that much, then she could walk away, just like my mom did…that’swhat I’d been terrified of. But I don’t think I knew that, it was all on a subconscious level.
Now that I figured it out, it was too late. Our lives were on different paths. I was a single dad, she wanted to live a child-free life. Those couldn’t be more fundamentally different core needs and values.
Whether it was NHL star Russell Clarke or some attorney, or doctor, or teacher, or whoever, I just needed to figure out a way to truly want her to find the right relationship.
So maybe it made sense, after all these years, that what I wanted most was to want better for her. I wanted to see her with the kind of person who was built for her—someone who could keep up with her, challenge her in the way she liked, and then actually stick around after the challenge was over. I could tell myself that she would find it, eventually, and maybe that was enough. Maybe that’s what adulthood was: learning to live with what you can’t have, and pretending—just well enough—that it doesn’t hurt.
"Let’s do it.” Billie’s voice cut through my thoughts.
My eyes opened and she was standing beside the couch, hovering over me, her silhouette backlit by the moonlight shining in through the kitchen window, the TV casting a pale blue hue over her face. Her hair was pulled up in a pile on top of her head, a thin gray shirt and sweatpants. She looked adorable and huggable, and I wanted to wrap her in my arms and pull her down to snuggle. How could one woman be so sexy and cute at the same time? It was infuriatingly frustrating.
“Let’s do what?” I asked, my voice strained from pain and something else.
