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Istood in the middle of the sidewalk, stunned for a moment before I jumped into action. Quickly navigating to my contacts, I found the one for the guy I go through to charter flights.
“Hey, Jim,” I said as soon as he picked up. “Can I get a flight out to New Jersey in the next two hours?”
ChapterThirty-Nine
CIARA
After I sent those texts to Nathan, I turned the ringer on my phone but put it in my pocket, hoping that he would call or at least text me back. But after forty-five minutes of waiting, he hadn’t done either.
I sighed, my chest hurting and my eyes filling with tears. Getting on the flight to go to school had been one of the toughest things I’d ever had to do. All I could see in my mind was Nathan’s hardened expression as I told him goodbye.
My melancholy overshadowed my first few weeks in the program. When I got to campus and met my roommates, the first thing I did was burst into tears. They were both kind and lovely, people I knew Nathan would have liked if he met them. But I couldn’t tell him that because we weren’t together.
It got worse. When I was in class, or enjoying lunch on the quad, or getting to know my cohort, the first thought that would pop into my head wasI should tell Nathan about them, about all of this. He would get such a kick out of it.And then, I would have to fight back tears as my memories caught up with me. The torrent of guilt, disappointment, and sadness often overpowered me and left me breathless.
I had tried to remedy my feelings by reaching out to him, telling him about the program and my roommates, but I was met with silence. For weeks, I kept him updated on everything—where I was living, what the campus was like, et cetera—but still, nothing from him.
My last texts to him were an act of desperation. I was trying to find some way, any way, to get him to respond. Truthfully, I had no plans to file for divorce; I would hold out for as long as he did. But I just needed him to respond to something. To anything.
I wanted him to show me that there was still some glimmer of hope.
The one good thing to come out of Nathan’s silence was that it forced me to examine my own inner thoughts, to see why I was confident that he would leave me. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I had conflated easiness with familiarity.
Somewhere along the course of my life, I’d started to believe that the easiest way to get people to stay was to be agreeable. It felt easier to make waves than to admit that I was a person who had needs and desires just like everyone else. It was “easier” to put my hopes, dreams, and needs to the side, to not inconvenience anyone with my humanity. And any frustration, any potential rejection, just…never happened. Because who would reject someone who agreed with their every whim and desire?
But I soon came to realize that it wasn’t easy to ignore my needs. It was just what I was used to. My stomach churched as I thought of all the ways I had attempted to remedy my lack of fit when it came to Nathan—changing what I wore; making sure to “fit in” with his family; not pushing him to talk about this love we had between us, or about anything remotely contentious—but then, I worried it wasn’t going to be enough—thatIwasn’t going to be enough.
When I brought it up with Brooklyn, she tilted her head, thinking about it. “That tracks,” she said finally.
We had been on the train, heading into New York City to do her favorite activity—people-watching in Times Square.
I turned to her, eyebrows raised. “What do you mean, ‘that tracks’?” I asked.
She shrugged, peeling back the wrapper on her candy bar. “You are pathologically agreeable,” she mumbled around a bite of nougat.
I blinked rapidly, unable to believe my ears even though I had declared myself agreeable not even a full minute earlier. “Pathologically?” I cried. “That’s a little…harsh, don’t you think?”
“I don’t mean it as a bad thing.”
She paused, tilting her head as if considering. “Okay, I don’t mean it as a terrible thing,” she amended. “Just that it seems to be rooted in this rejection thing you have going on.”
“Um, can you explain maybe?”
She was silent for a moment, her eyes flitting back and forth as if she was literally following the path of her thoughts. Finally, she said, “It’s easier to give an example.”
Turning toward me, she asked, “What do you want to do after we leave Times Square today?”
I squinted, knowing I was walking into a trap but not sure how to get out of it. “I don’t know,” I said slowly, “what do you wanna do?”
She pointed at me. “Exactly.”
“But what do youmean?” I pressed.
“I’m your best and oldest friend,” she replied. “And you know I’m down for an adventure. What’s the harm in throwing out a random idea or two?”
“But what if I don’t truly know what I want to do and I’m just trying to get ideas?” I asked.
“Sure, that would be fine,” Brooklyn agreed, “if it was just this one thing. You do that witheverything. It’s like you endeavor to haveno needs, which is impossible, by the way. Another example: I know you hate oatmeal. So why do we make oatmeal cranberry cookies every time we bake?”
