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“Is he still trying to get back into your good graces?” I ask.
“That’s the thing—he was never out of them. It’s not like there’s something he can do to magically make me fall in love with him,” she says. “I wish he’d understand that instead of … I don’t know … texting me about every little thing ten times a day. And he still calls me ‘babe.’ It’s almost like he’s trying to manipulate me into casually getting back together.” She turns to me, placing her hand on my forearm as she walks sideways. “He asked if he could stay with me when he’s back in town next week for work. Can you believe that?”
Yes. Yes I can.
“What’d you tell him?” My heart beats faster than it should.
“That I didn’t think it was a good idea …” She faces forward, chuffing under her breath. “Come on. You and I both know that if I give this man an inch, he’s going to expect a mile.”
I exhale, more relieved than I deserve to be.
“Maybe you should stop taking his calls,” I say before adding, “as much.”
“Yeah. I’ve thought about that,” I say. “But ghosting people isn’t my style. It’s so juvenile.”
“And harassing them into getting back together isn’t?”
Brie shoots me a look, though I don’t know that she realizes it. I can only assume she’s wondering where my loyalties lie and why I’m telling her to ignore my best friend whose heart she recently annihilated.
“Grant gets really fixated on things sometimes. Like a dog with a bone,” I say.
“So … I should just yank it out of his mouth and chuck it over the fence?”
I snort. “Something like that, yeah.”
We reach our destination—The SoHo Book Collector’s Expo—and stop outside a table layered in vinyl-wrapped classics.
“I don’t even know why he’s into me,” she says, tucking a dark strand behind one ear as she traces her fingertips over a copy of Anne of Green Gables. “He’s always saying he’s never met anyone like me, that he’s crazy about me, loves my family, sees a future with me … but it never goes deeper than that, you know? It’s superficial. He has to feel it too, right? It can’t just be me. He’s got to be projecting some fantasy onto me or something. That’s the only explanation.”
She moves onto the next table, but I stay behind.
Now that she says it, I realize that I’ve witnessed the same thing. He tells me how wonderful she is and how wild he is about her—but he never says why. And while he looked at her with stars for eyes the first time I saw them together, I’ve seen divorcing couples more in sync than the two of them.
But if I’m being fair … love is one of the hardest things to put into words.
Sometimes it’s nothing more than a feeling.
Maybe he just looked at her and he knew.
“Do I have something in my teeth?” Brie laughs and points to her mouth. I realize now that she’d been talking to me, though I didn’t hear a word since I was lost in thought. When she smiles, I realize her front tooth has the tiniest chip in it.
Just like the dream.
“No. Sorry. What were you saying?” I ask.
“I said I think you’re right. I need to yank the bone out of his mouth,” she says. “When I see him this week, I’m going to tell him to stop contacting me. I think it’ll be for the best.”
There’s a glimmer in her bright green irises. Hope or sunlight, I’m not sure.
Moving onto the next table, she fastens her attention to a small paperback before whipping around to show me.
“Look, it’s our book,” she says, head tilted and beaming ear to ear as she displays a first edition of The Alchemist in all its gold and purple eighties glory.
Our book.
Something that’s ours and only ours.
One thing she’ll never share with Grant.
Wide-eyed and rising on her toes, she says, “I want to buy it for you.”
“You don’t have to do that …”
“Yeah, well I want to. So I am.” Brie winks before tucking it beneath one arm and sliding down to the next stack of books. A few minutes later, she chooses two more books—an unauthorized biography on Jackie O. and a Paula Fox tome, and she tells me she’s going to read them on the plane this week.
I peel my attention off the poor girl and grab a first edition of Franny and Zooey before following her to the check-out table.
It’s barely mid-afternoon when we’re done.
“What do you want to do next?” she asks. “Don’t suppose I could interest you in a matinee of Chicago?”
“I hope you’re joking,” I tease, though the truth is I’d suffer through All that Jazz a hundred times if it meant being next to her a little while longer.
