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I assume she means geographically, so I don’t correct her. “Yeah. I came back to Charlotte after a short stint in Manhattan in my early twenties, and I’ve been here ever since.”
“We must’ve just missed each other in New York. I was in law school in D.C.”
“Ah.”
“But I’m so glad to finally be back home.” She tosses her hair over her shoulder and meets my eyes. I wait for my body to react. She’s gorgeous, and she looks fantastic in her lawyerly blouse and skirt.
But all I feel is . . . tired. And thirsty. And my head already hurts from the anticipation of coming up with more small talk.
I fucking hate small talk. I hate the will-we-talk-about-Lizzie-or-won’t-we tension even more. Margaux and Lizzie were tight back in the day. Margaux attended the funeral. It was the last time I saw her, come to think of it.
Her parents have remained good friends with mine. They’re good people who raised a good girl. Margaux stuck to the straight and narrow in high school, and I can tell by her pleasant smile and pearls she still does as an adult.
She deserves a good guy. The kind of guy I’m trying to be. I have to give this a chance. For my parents. And for me.
I really am sick of feeling tired and lonely. Lost.
A decade and a half later, I still feel like I’m out at sea. All this swimming, this constant motion, has worn me out.
So I shove all thoughts of Greer aside, order an old fashioned, and put on a smile. “Welcome home. What prompted you to make the change?”
“I love New York,” she says with a shrug, “but I knew I didn’t want to stay there forever. It’s a tough place to settle down, you know?”
I give her credit for being so forward with what she wants. Ultimately I’d like a family too. But that’s a can I keep kicking down the road. Probably because I keep waiting to stop feeling like I’ll inevitably fuck up a relationship, the way I fucked up my relationship with my sister.
My therapist tells me to trust the universe. To believe in things like abundance and second chances. You were a kid, she keeps telling me. Barely eighteen.
On a rational level, I get it.
But my heart? My heart would like to tell my therapist and the universe to fuck right off.
“Charlotte’s a great place to raise a family,” I hear myself saying as I sip my cocktail. “Or so my married friends tell me.”
“The work/life balance seems better for sure. Also helps that I’m not working eighty-hour weeks anymore.”
I raise my brows, immediately thinking about Greer and those dark circles around her eyes. I imagine she’s working more than eighty hours a week and getting paid a hell of a lot less than Margaux is.
What does that have to do with anything?
“Because you made partner?” I manage.
“I did.” She grins. “Turns out being the boss is as awesome as it sounds.”
“Cheers to that. Congrats.” I tap my glass against hers. “Must feel great.”
“Not gonna lie, it does,” she says with an appropriately light-hearted laugh. “I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it through the slog. But I’m glad I stuck it out.”
Everything about this woman is appropriate. I see why Dad wanted me to meet her. In his eyes, she’s the total package.
Successful. Beautiful. Polite.
If only I reacted to Margaux’s appropriateness the way I react to Greer’s complete lack thereof.
Greer’s age. Her clothes. Her delightfully lurid taste in entertainment.
She couldn’t care less about being appropriate. She’s too damn busy being herself.
I dig that.
But I want to dig Margaux, goddamnit. So I order an appetizer and resolve to . . . I don’t know. Feel a flicker of something.
“What are you into, Margaux?” I inwardly wince at the awkward, obvious attempt at first-date conversation.
She sips her cocktail. “What am I into?”
“Yeah. What do you do for fun? What are you listening to?”
“Oh. Right. Great questions. For fun, I like to workout. Running, circuit classes. That kind of thing.”
I workout like a beast, but running is definitely not my thing. “Are you a masochist?”
I say it with a smile, but the joke must not land because she frowns. “I find that running clears my mind. It relaxes me.”
“Oh. Right. Cool. I give credit to people who enjoy running. I wish I did. It’s a great workout.”
“The rush after a long run is real, yeah. As for listening . . . I guess I listen to mostly classical music. My old boss listened to Bach on repeat, and he kind of got me hooked.”
I don’t know a damn thing about classical music, so I just say, “Very cool” and hope she doesn’t ask me about it.
“What about you?” she asks.
“I rowed crew in college, so I still do a lot of that. Good excuse to get outside, especially when I’m chained to my desk twelve hours a day during the week.”
