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“Whatever happened must have been pretty bad.”
“Totally. I’m thinking maybe he stopped showing up for work or something.Ugh, seriously, he is so irresponsible. I think he’s working at some gross dive bar in town a few nights a week. The Tipsy Tavern. But still, he’s probably totally broke. Hanging out with the same loser friends. When I visited, I tried to ask him if he even has any kind of savings account set up. Because even though I’m his younger sister, I feel about a billion years older than him, and I worry about him, and I want to help. So, I tried to tell him it’s good to have three months’ worth of emergency funds set aside and you want to know what he did?”
“What?”
“He threw a Fruit Loop at my nose and told me to chill out.”
“Typical.”
“Sotypical.”
“But still, Carly, none of this changes the fact that I have to at least try. It’s worth whatever pains and frustrations and suffering I have to endure. This is my business, and your dad’s really giving me a shot at huge success. That’s what I’ve always wanted.”
“Oh, I know all about what you want. The Gemma Life Plan. Huge success, plus walking with Mortimer down the aisle, then a honeymoon to Switzerland.”
“Precisely.”
“You have it all mapped out. Wish I had something like that. The extent of my planning is that I seriously have to find a different job. My office is toxic. Did I tell you Serena actually went behind my back and complained to Lance about that software upgrade I pushed through last week?”
For the rest of the drive, we chat about Carly’s work drama. By the time she drops me off at my brownstone apartment in West Cambridge, I’ve done my best to psychoanalyze a long list of behaviors, including her work-nemesis Serena’s tendency toward passive aggressiveness, and her work-husband Lance’s unresolved childhood issues.
Carly leans over the console to give me a hug. “As usual, I talked your ear off.”
“I loved every minute of it.”
“I think everyone should have a best friend who also happens to be a super talented licensed therapist.”
I laugh as we part, and then hurry up the shadowy walkway to my first story unit. Inside, my cat, Queenie, brushes up against my calves as I hang my purse and coat on the rack.
I picked her up from the shelter the day that my then boyfriend, Mortimer Laughlin—a star player in the Gemma Life Plan—broke up with me.
It's sort of hard to walk down the aisle with a man you’re not dating, so I’m going to have to fix that little blip in the schedule. I know Mortimer will want to get back together with me eventually… Once he takes some time for himself, and finishes whatever book he’s working on.
He probably wanted space so he could focus on work, and I get that. I’m career minded, too.
But this “space” he asked for has turned into eight months of barely talking, and that’s a little worrisome.
Also worrisome: the fact that I saw him at the Kendall Square Starbucks with his arm around a petite, ebony-haired woman in a red dress.
I will not dwell on that sight.No problem.
When is he going to come to his senses and try to get me back?
Any day now, I’m sure.
He’ll call, tell me he misses me, and we’ll be right back to where we started, treating each other with respect and civility. Two mature and responsible adults in a committed, loving, mutually-beneficial relationship. After all, he’s my Right Match according to my own process.
It will work out,I tell myself, as I crouch to unzip my boots and then slip them off. I pet Queenie’s back a few times while I’m down near the floor, and she rewards me by arching her petite frame up into my palm and gazing at me with her luminous green eyes.
I wish every relationship was as easy as the one I have with my beautiful cat. A pat here, a dish of water there, a can of Fancy Feast every night. Done.
In the kitchen, I pour myself a glass of chilled mineral water and then join Queenie on the couch, where she’s curled into a ball. As I pet her, I continue an inner pep talk that I’ve given myself almost every day since Mortimer ended things.
The pep talk starts with how he’ll finish writing his current book on economics soon, and it’ll become another best-seller. It includes me steering my business toward international success, and then ends with us checking into a luxurious hotel in the mountains of Switzerland for a cozy, scenic, romantic, fourteen-day honeymoon.
Queenie’s downy, feather-soft fur is warm beneath my fingertips. I give her a few more strokes and then reach for my laptop. Out of habit, I check my work email first, then click to social media. My usual rounds include a quick peek at the Mortimer Laughlin Author fan page, and I note that he’ll be at a big economics forum in Vermont for most of next week. The speaker series starts on Wednesday evening and is scheduled through the weekend.
Next I toggle over to my calendar.
