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“I’ll email you the details—I’d better get back to work,” I said quickly.
Marianne squeezed my shoulder. “Let me know what I can bring. I’ve got an amazing recipe for sugar-free apple crumble. And local, organic apples I’ve been saving for the right occasion. Delicious.”
Two extra people in my tiny condo for dinner. One extra person who had a leg up on knowing Garrett. They had history, he and Marianne. The kind of history that meanders around dinner parties when drunk people reminisce about high school and their common experiences and all the fun they had together growing up. And as I emailed her my address and other important details, thinking about Marianne having that with Garrett made me want to throw up.
To distract myself, I turned my attention to sending out feelers for the sewing machine documentary. Pitching was second nature to me, and a few of the local newspapers always reviewed the more esoteric docs, so it was easy to ascertain their interest and line up some early coverage. I called to order the dubs from Erica and tidied up my media release, but still minutes felt like days, seconds like hours. The clock on the bottom corner of my screen blinked and blinked. I put my head on my desk, desperately wanting the day to be over.
Chapter 4
WHEN I GOT home with the items from Rob’s shopping list—plus potato chips and beer, the only cure for a hangover that I knew—my lovely boyfriend had dinner going. The apartment smelled delicious. I’d called my sister on the streetcar ride home, possibly annoying most, if not all, of the other riders. But I wanted to let her know that deep down I was happy for her and Jason. That I couldn’t wait to be an aunt. Me being unable to grow up wasn’t her problem, and she shouldn’t have to feel bad about the happiest moments in her life or have me ruin everything. I had to fake it until I could make it.
Our little condo was in an up-and-coming neighborhood of Toronto, right beside Trinity Bellwoods Park and within walking distance of so many elements I loved about the city. Amazing boutiques with clothes I could afford. Great restaurants and a juice bar that I hit up far more than I should on Sunday mornings.
As much as I had resisted the idea of buying a place, I was glad Rob had had the foresight to insist. Owning real estate felt so adult. And it wasn’t a part of my world growing up. But when I came home to our own thousand square feet of a few sparsely but tastefully decorated rooms, I was happy. The series of slightly run-down apartments Rob and I shared after graduating from Queen’s had been appalling: a grungy basement that leaked, the second floor of a house that had zero insulation and was entirely painted pink, and a very, very (I can’t say that enough) loud place over a bar on College Street, where neither of us slept during the six months we lived there, waiting for the construction on our condo to be completed enough for us to move in. That whole time Rob had been trying to convince me that we had made the right choice and that the place would appreciate like crazy.
We fought so much in those months about how we were going to pay for everything, from the down payment to the condo fees. The refrain: I wasn’t great with money. It slipped through my fingers and caused shiny bits and bobs to appear in my purse or shoes to hide under my desk. With the condo, we needed to live carefully—and within our means—but that wasn’t the cause of our fighting. That subject was the fact that his parents wanted to buy the condo for us. Entirely. In cash and in full.
After the millionth time I said there was absolutely no way, under no circumstances, that that was going to happen, Rob said, “They want to give us the right start in life.”
“No,” I said. “You might feel comfortable with your parents handing over that kind of money so you can live mortgage-free, but I’m not. This is our place. Ours. We need to pay for it ourselves. I can’t feel like I’m beholden. What happens if we split up? They won’t let you put the condo in both of our names—it’ll just be in yours. I’ll be living in your house. Under your parents’ terms.”
“What if they loaned us the money and we paid them back?”
“No.”
“You’d rather support the bank than let my parents help us?”
“It has nothing to do with big banks or any of that crap—it has to do with me and wanting to pay for it myself. If you’re forcing me into home ownership, I need toownit.”
But the underlying emotions were something I never tell Rob outright. No, I wasn’t great with money, but I had always paid all my bills and never skipped a month’s rent, even if it meant eating beans on toast for a straight week. Far too many times, when Meghan and I were small, my mother had been completely broke and broken when whatever relationship she was in—pre my stepfather Carl—fell apart. We’d end up in a hotel for a few weeks until my mother could sort out where we’d live. She’d beg, borrow, pinch, and save until we had our own place again, until the next guy, and the next. I never felt safe unless I had my own place with my own name on the lease and with me paying the rent. I promised myself I’d never let a man kick me out of an apartment or have only his name on the lease promisingbaby, baby it’ll be finebecause for a straight decade when we were in primary school, it was never okay.
We argued about it about a dozen times, once with Rob calling me a stupid idiot for kicking a gift horse in the mouth, but finally he let me do it my way. We saved for the down payment. We paid the condo fees. We had only second-hand furniture for the first year, until we could afford new things. But my name was on that mortgage.
“Hi!” I shouted as I opened the door. “Chicken wings?”
“Yup.”
“Comfort food, come to me. Oh, how I need you tonight.”
Rob laughed. “I knew you’d need something good but still kind of greasy. I could smell the booze emanating from your pores this morning when I got up.”
“Gross. You must really love me to put up with such stink.”
“Christmas parties are always out of control. Remember the size of the steak at ours last year? Bananas.”
Pulling off my giant winter coat and boots, I stashed them both in the closet and came through to the kitchen. Rob’s dark hair was messy, and he was wearing an apron over his at-home outfit of old khakis and a polo shirt from high school that still fit him.
“What time did you get home?” I asked.
“Around quarter after six.”
“Early night for you.”
“Things are slowing down for the holidays. Only one day to go.”
“I can’t believe they’re making you work until end of day on Christmas Eve.”
“Comes with the territory. You want rice or frozen fries?”
