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“What does ready look like in that scenario?”
He shrugged. “Cheryl and I . . . we’d been together since we were sophomores at MIT, and she was studying botany. I took three horrible plant and soil classes just to be near her. . . .” He shook his head. “I guess it’s hard sometimes to last . . . when you’ve lasted.”
I took back the bourbon bottle. I held it by my mouth, feeling floored. I wanted to reach out and touch him and tell him it was going to be okay. But I also knew I had no idea if that was true so instead, I put down the bottle, and looked back up. At the stars. At the midnight sky.
“Man,” I said, “you sure know how to put someone else’s problems into perspective.”
He started to laugh, all over again. And then I was laughing too. “Glad to help,” he said. “But I wouldn’t be too high and mighty if I were you.”
“Why’s that?” I said.
“I know what I want. I’m just trying to figure out how to get there.”
I started to ask what he knew he wanted—to go back to Cheryl? Be there to help Jude? But before I could get there, he kept talking.
“You, Annie Adams,” he said, “are still a mountain’s worth of walking behind all that.”
I wanted to argue that that wasn’t true—that I knew exactly what I wanted. I wanted to be with Griffin, and make my life work here. I wanted to stay. But in my head, my admittedly bourbonsoaked head, Griffin came out as Nick. So I knew saying the rest out loud was probably not the wisest move right then.
“But consider this,” Jesse said, picking the bourbon back up, “maybe you aren’t in this position because you forgot yourself, but because you started getting hon
est about who you really might be.”
Before I could say anything to that, Jesse tilted the bourbon my way.
“Welcome to the deep end,” he said.
23
The next morning I woke up to the telephone ringing—ringing in a desperate way that let me know it was certainly not the first time the telephone had rung, not the first time the caller was trying to get through.
My head was spinning from leftover bourbon and not enough sleep. As I reached for the phone, I slowly started to realize what was happening around me: that I was in the bedroom alone, Griffin’s side of the bed not slept in, yet my mostly destroyed photographs no longer strewn across the floor, and somehow cleaned up.
Then, suddenly, all I could do was focus on lying very still, the bourbon moving around my stomach, dangerously close to coming up the wrong way. The phone mercifully stopped ringing.
And then it started again. Because I was in no position to think of another way to make the ringing stop, I picked up.
“Hello?” I said.
“Are you ready to start singing to me?”
“What?”
“I think you should sing to me that Bette Midler song, the one about the unsung hero. The one who holds up your wings? Or if you prefer, you can sing the one by that girl who won American Idol. About having a moment in the sun.”
It was Peter. It was Peter, former editor extraordinaire, who was on the other end of the phone making these terrible references to easy listening songs.
My arm was covering my eyes, my elbow pointing straight up, fighting the spinning in my head.
“Peter,” I said. “My head is spinning so badly you are coming out as an echo. Can I call you back?”
“Absolutely not. Not when I’ve been calling you incessantly for the last two hours to tell you the great news.” He paused for effect. “You are unfired!”
I moved my arm off my eyes. “What?”
“There has been an uproar in your absence. Well, uproar may be a bit strong, but the point is that they want you back, my love. They want you and they want me. Thanks to the minor uproar and some crafty maneuvering on my part. The A-Team! Peter and Annie. Back in business!”
“I can’t believe it.”
