“What?!” Tom exclaims. “What happened? How is that possible? You two are just...wow. I can’t believe it.”
“I can’t believe it, either,” he says. “But there it is. Long distance is hard. And long distance when the other person wants a new life is impossible.”
“Fucking America,” Tom says.
J knows it’s not really the country’s fault, but the country is easy to blame.
“Yeah, fucking America,” he says, raising his glass. Tom clinks it.
“I’m sorry I don’t have any words of wisdom,” Tom says. “I’m here for you, though. I’m sure it’s hard.”
J is moved by this, more than he’s willing to say to Tom. He understands he’ll be seen as the wounded party, and that he has friends who will want to help him with the wounds, some moregently than others. It’s another part of the breakup that he will have to endure.
He tries to resume his normal life. He runs errands, talks to his manager about more touring, meets people for lunch or dinner. He does not go on any apps, or call any exes whose ex status could be easily compromised. He knows that other people rebound with either hope or nihilism...but he can’t really muster either. He has boarded up that part of his life.
He takes his lead from V about communication. When she doesn’t text or call, he decides he won’t, either.
A strange thing happens, something that’s never happened before on this scale: Weddings begin to fall through.
The first cancellation isn’t technically a cancellation—a couple who had emailed about his availability emails back to say that they’ve decided to keep their wedding small, at a family cabin, and there won’t really be need for a singer. J wouldn’t give it much thought, but a few hours later, another email comes in. This time it’s from Janek, a guy in Poland who first wrote to him even before he was engaged. J was heading to Warsaw for Janek’s wedding in October...only now it looks like the trip is off, because the wedding is off.I don’t know what to tell you,Janek writes.She loves someone else. I guess I’m happy it happened now and not after the wedding. But still, it’s a mess. A total mess.
The next day, the email is from Greta, a stranger in Stockholm who’d contacted J after reading about his wedding gigs in the paper. Her fiancé was a huge fan, and had been too nervous to ask J himself. So she’d emailed, and he’d set up a time to talk to both of them. She’d told him a little already—they’d met at a library, where she was an archivist and he was researching a book about Swedish crime novelists of the 1920s and ’30s. On their first date, he’d takenher on a walking tour of grisly murders and unsolved mysteries. The song practically wrote itself.
Now it’s their engagement that is chalked onto the pavement. Greta doesn’t tell J why—it’s not like she owes him an explanation.
I’m sorry we took up your time,she writes.But the wedding is no longer happening. Again, I am so sorry.
J writes back, tells her it’s not a problem for him, and that he’s sorry to hear the news.
Then, the next day, he is scrolling mindlessly and sees a headline: “Trouble in Paradise...Already?”
Underneath are two photos—one of Celestia and Roger’s gala wedding (luckily without a cake shot) and then one with Celestia out walking her dog, looking forlorn. The gossips are saying that contractors are after Roger for unpaid wedding expenses...and that Roger has sought comfort not from Celestia but from an unnamed woman with whom he was caught sharing a straw at Starbucks on a day Celestia was posting Hot Sex Tips for Married Women on her TikTok.
It’s enough to push J into a serious bout of Kryptonite Syndrome—the implausible yet potentially true belief that your mere presence is souring other people’s lives. In this case, J feels like romantic kryp-tonite. What to do? He’s tempted to contact Andreas and Kerstin or Jun and Arthur to see how they’re doing, but he’s afraid of what he might discover.
Three weeks after his return home, the Talk of the Town piece appears inThe New Yorker,accompanied by a drawing of J with a guitar, standing on top of a wedding cake.
One of the joys of J’s career has been the way great things have happened well outside the bounds of his anticipation—people he’s met that he never would have dreamed of meeting, places he’s gone that he never would have presumed to get an invitation for. Seeinghis name and image inThe New Yorkerfont is like that—a completely unexpected goal achieved, not through a master plan but through serendipity.
He posts it on Instagram and the response is fantastic. Other friends see it first in the magazine itself and reach out. Skye DMs with a whole lot of exclamation points. Tara emails with a link and asks him if he saw it. Tom’s mom even texts to say she’s impressed and told all her friends that someone inThe New Yorkerplayed at her wedding—especially the friends who hadn’t bothered to show.
J scrolls through the list of likes on his Instagram post and sees that V has liked it. But she doesn’t text or email or call him to congratulate him. These, it appears, are officially the new rules of engagement. He looks on her Instagram, to see if there’s anything he can like in response, but she hasn’t posted in two years.
The closest contact he gets is an email from Thor, who is completely delighted with the article, especially because his secret wedding wasn’t mentioned. He tells J,There will be a lot of big news soon!but doesn’t elaborate, except to say that he still hopes J will be available to play his and Meta’s official wedding.It is looking like we’ll be coming back home for it,he writes.I will let you know dates. Other things have to happen first.
J looks at his calendar and sees most of his upcoming weekends are free.
He doesn’t like it.
Six days later, secret project is no longer a secret. Its purchase is front-page news in Sweden, and it hits a lot of influential sites in both the gaming and finance worlds. The gist in most of the coverage is the same:Swedish teen wunderkind sells his billion-dollar idea!
The finer print reveals that Thor hasn’t exactly received a billion dollars—just the promise of it, if all goes well. J scours all thecoverage for quotes from V, who mostly sticks to the same talking points no matter who she’s talking to. “It’s the next evolution,” she keeps saying. And now it has the funders and tech know-how to become a reality. The new company will be partly based in New York and partly based in Stockholm, thanks to a subsidy from the Swedish government.
J breaks the rules of engagement and texts V. He congratulates her and says he’s sure it took a lot of hard, good work on her part to pull it all off. In response, she texts back a simpleThank you.
It is unclear to J whether V will be in the New York office or the Stockholm office, and there is no way for him to clarify. Or to know if it even matters.
It doesn’t matter,he tells himself.Remember, it’s over.
