When she got off the plane in Toronto, there was a text from Ren. Her heart squeezed in her chest when she saw his name.
I’m sorry about last night. I want to talk but I need some time to think first.
She wrote back:Okay.And then like a fool, she hoped to hear from him for the rest of the day.
And the next day, too.
And the next.
And then she knew. She should have known right away, maybe. A week passed, and then another. He didn’t write, and Sarah picked herself up and kept working.
8
ANYA’S PARTY, OCTOBER 2016
Two weeksafter Paul and Trish got married, Sarah went to a barbecue at Anya’s house, which was located in a cool little neighborhood in Toronto filled with small, cute houses from the 1940s. Sarah had promised to arrive early so she could help Anya set up while Anya heard all the entertaining details about Paul’s wedding. Sarah arrived with her arms full of bags of assorted party items Anya had forgotten to buy, then followed her friend around the kitchen of their small rental house. She had to dodge around Anya’s daughter Ilona as the girl raced past them and disappeared into the backyard in search of her father. Sarah liked Anya’s husband Jeremy. He was a quiet computer programmer who handled Anya’s roller coaster of moods with a deadpan, gentle calm, and he had remained remarkably stable throughout Anya’s accidental pregnancy, a fast-tracked wedding, and sudden fatherhood. He popped inside to greet Sarah cheerfully before returning to the yard to start up their grill, and she and Anya quickly fell back into their roommate pattern: working together as a team to line up food on trays and pour chips into colored bowls. Kristie was coming, too, though she was following her typical schedule of running two hours late; she would be bringing a new boyfriend who was an actor in Bollywood films.
“Let’s hope we don’t lose Kristie to Mumbai next,” Sarah said as she opened a packet of colorful party napkins. “I feel like we just got her back from L.A.”
“Well, I can’t fault her taste in men. The new guy is gorgeous and has three hundred thousand followers on Instagram. And speaking of, Ren is as beautiful as ever, I assume?” Anya ran a hand through her long blond hair. Her fashion sense had turned more practical since becoming a mother: she had moved from flowing white dresses to flowing embroidered shirts over jeans.
“Oh yes, still stunning. And he…” Sarah took a breath. “He kissed me and then announced that we should definitely not sleep together and left.”
Anya paused in the middle of pouring a bowl of chips to stare at her.
“Or maybe, more accurately, I threw myself at Ren and he turned me down.” Sarah busied herself with the napkins.
“Oh my God.” Anya blinked. “Oh myGod, Sarah.”
Sarah shrugged. “It’s fine.”
“Is it?” A long moment passed.
“Here’s what bothers me,” Sarah admitted at last. “I saw him leaving the hotel room of some redhead the morning I arrived. He met her during Paul’s bachelor party and slept with her, apparently, but then somehow he couldn’t possibly bring himself to sleep with me.”
“Well, he’s always been weird about you.”
“But why? I mean, he literally went through my whole friend group…I don’t mean…I don’t mean, like, he wentthroughyou all.”
Anya laughed. “God, he was so hot and so uninterested in an actual relationship. You know what he told me to get me into bed? That philosophically, I owed it to myself to explore my sexuality. Like sleeping with him was something I should do for myself, like treating myself to a manicure.”
Sarah gave a weak smile.
“Okay so…” Anya considered her. “What exactly happened?”
“Well, we were flirting, I guess. I mean his divorce had just been finalized, which I hadn’t even known about until I got there. But we seemed to be flirting. And then he came to my hotel room, and we were kissing, and I admitted to having been kind of in love with him at university and he said we had to stop.”
“Oh,” Anya said. “Okay. That makes sense.”
“And just to be clear, I didn’t say I loved him or expected a relationship. He lives in Nevada.”
“No, but that makes sense. I mean, I haven’t seen him in years, but at McGill he was…you know, he was Ren. The hot intellectual who had a two-week shelf life as a boyfriend. But with you, he was this other person.”
“Because he wasn’t attracted to me.”
“No. That’s a very you thing to say, Sarah, but no. You may not realize this, but Ren used to talk about you when you weren’t there. Like, ‘Sarah would hate that.’ Or ‘Sarah loves that book.’ It drove Kristie crazy.”
“He just thought I was a big nerd.”
