“Excellent.” He smirks at the corner of the room, avoiding my eyes. “It’s a date.”
I open my mouth to protest, but before I can refute the statement, he is already walking away and out the door to the courts.
A few hours later, I wait for the bus home, tired the way only a new job can make you tired—even a half day. It’s the memorization of new names, new rules, new social and professional protocols.
In my hands are half a dozen pages of scribbles, doodles I made in the downtime between tasks. They’re not much to look at, but I’m proud nonetheless. I’m proud that I created anything at all.
The last few years working for Clive at the magazine, I started to worry that the creative impulse had abandoned me entirely. I used to spend every spare minute sketching, but the longer I worked as his assistant, the less I felt the desire to pick up a pencil or paintbrush.
When I first moved to New York City, I was twenty-two years old and thought I had reached the center of the universe. I could see the Empire State Building from my cramped apartment in Murray Hill, the air through the open window was warm but not humid, and the sun beamed bright and fearless. Later, I would find out that it was in fact the Chrysler Building, not the Empire State, and maybe nothing good happens at the center of the universe.
Clive wasn’t outright abusive at first. He never screamed at me, but he raised his voice until I learned to cower, avoiding anything that might trigger an outburst: a wrong coffee order, an email with a minor typo.
“You’re an idiot,” he told me firmly and often. “Do you even want this job? Do you even want to be here?”
I suspectidiotmay have been his favorite word.
A few weeks in, I developed a stutter in his presence. I stopped speaking up in meetings. I worked twelve-hour days, and then went home to answer more emails until my eyes were so sore, I couldn’t respond to texts from my mom without going cross-eyed. I was easy to work with because I didn’t hold enough power to be difficult yet. Eventually, I got so good at playing dumb, some days I even believed my own bit.
That’s when the panic attacks started. Every passing day, I felt less and less myself.
At first, I didn’t tell Rose or Lottie what was happening, because I knew they would encourage me to quit, but I did tell Henry.
He said, “This is just how you earn your keep. First-years always get treated like shit.”
I bit my tongue, wanting to point out that since he had joined his father’s company, he probably had a different experience than the rest of us. Regardless, I stuck it out.
Then, the pandemic happened. Lottie’s breast cancer came back, worse this time. I moved back to the island and worked remotely for what I thought would be a week but became a year. Henry and I took a “break,” because I couldn’t risk seeing anyone while Lottie was going through her treatments. What if I got her sick? I’d never forgive myself.
The break became a breakup, I moved back to the city, got fired, and now here we are.
All of it is so tied together in my mind, a spiral of unfortunate events: It’s like I lost my career, my great aunt, and Henry all in one fell swoop.
The bus pulls up with a laborious exhale and I get on board. We make a turn onto Milestone Road, and after a few minutes, pass Sankaty Head Golf Club: the site of my first kiss with Henry.
It was an early June night. It felt illicit sneaking onto the course: the absolute quiet, beyond the rumble of the nearby ocean, just over the bluff. The only source of light being the moon and someone’s iPhone flashlight. Henry lent me a sweatshirt, and as we were hopping over the tall grass of the rough, he mustered up the courage to reach out and grab my hand, leaning in quick and brief, lips light as a passing prayer.
While I was walking home that night, I spotted a discarded tee on the outskirts of a putting green. Without thinking, I quietly picked it up and shoved it in my purse, a part of me, even at the time, missing the innocence of the moment as it rolled on by. I still have it to this day.
What I wouldn’t give to go back to that summer now, before everything got so messed up.
Now Henry is worse than a stranger. In August, he will be someone’s husband, and the past will stop being part of an ongoing narrative. It will just be past. And me, the only ghost still betrothed to it.
I know I have to let go of Henry. He deserves happiness with someone else, and his fiancée deserves it, too. I know psychics are silly and probably fake, but last week when the woman said my soulmate’s name started with the letterH, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that hope the shape of a white lie took hold in my chest.
When the bus drops me off at ’Sconset center and I arrive back home, the renter, Thomas, is outside reading in the garden. It’s odd seeing him, given the little I now know about his relationship with Rose, but I’m also surprised I haven’t bumped into him sooner. Has he been avoiding us? I wouldn’t blame him. I squint at his salt-and-pepper hair and try to imagine him younger. Who is this mysterious man who once wanted to marry Rose? And who was the version of my mom who almost went through with it?
When he spots me, Thomas stands up, placing a finger in the crease of a worn paperback to hold his spot. I notice where he is sitting: Lottie’s old bench by the honeysuckle bush. No one uses it anymore. Rose and I never discuss Lottie’s chair, but wordlessly, it has remained empty, an unspoken agreement.
“I’m sorry,” Thomas says, brushing dirt from his pants. “I thought no one was home.”
“Oh, hi!” I arrange my features into my best imitation of a smile. “No problem. I’m Lily by the way. I realize I forgot to introduce myself the other day.”
I reach out to shake his hand, inspecting it for signs of the aforementioned wedding band. I don’t see one, but perhaps he took it off to go to the beach.
“Thomas.” He shakes my hand back. “Apologies, I thought no one was home.”
“It’s okay, please don’t let me disturb you. I’m just stopping by to drop off my bag and change into sneakers to go for a walk on the beach.”
