First Comes Love

by Emily Giffin

  Nolan collapsed sideways onto his front seat, his long legs hanging out the door, his untied high-tops planted in the driveway. I held my breath in horror, as he let out a string of obscenities, his voice a low, guttural moan: My God, no. Jesus fucking Christ. Oh fffuckkk. Christ, no.

  My instinct was to flee, escape the sound and sight of Nolan. But I couldn’t leave him. So I finally walked around the front of his car, opened the passenger door, and climbed in beside him. Only then did I register how cold I was, and that I had left my coat at the hospital.

  “Can you turn on the heat?” I asked quietly.

  Nolan shifted in his seat, pulled his door shut, and turned the key still dangling in the ignition. The radio came blaring on before he silenced it with his fist, then followed that up with a hard punch to his dash, splitting open his knuckle. I reached into my purse and handed him a tissue, but he didn’t take it. Blood trickled down his hand and wrist as he announced that he was going to take off.

  “You’re leaving?” I said, suddenly panicking, dreading going into my house, literally afraid of seeing Josie, knowing that we no longer had a brother. That it was just the two of us.

  “I think I should,” he said. “Right?”

  I shook my head, staring at the bag of donuts on the seat between us. “No. Please come in.”

  “Are you sure? Shouldn’t it just be…family?” Nolan’s voice cracked as tears began to stream down his face.

  “You are family,” I said. “Daniel would want you to come in.”

  —

  ALMOST EVERYONE DESCRIBES the immediate aftermath of death the same way—as a surreal blur, at least for those in the inner circle, in charge of the details. I watched people come and go—close friends, neighbors, and relatives, including some I barely knew. They dropped off food, offered condolences, cried. Mom and Dad picked out a coffin and a cemetery plot with the lady from the funeral home and planned Daniel’s service with John Simmons, our longtime pastor. Dad sat in his office and wrote the eulogy, a glass of whiskey on his desk.

  Meanwhile, I can’t remember Nolan ever leaving, though he must have gone home to sleep and shower. At my parents’ request, he sat in the living room with Daniel’s computer, going through all of his contacts, emailing and calling his college and medical school friends, one by one. He even phoned Sophie, within hours of her plane landing, and I listened to his conversation, marveling at how he said all the right things, how much Daniel loved her, how special she was to him. He pored through our family photo albums, putting together a collage that would be displayed at the wake. And when there was nothing left to do, he simply sat with me in stunned silence, the forever of it all just starting to sink in.

  It was hard to call him a comfort exactly, because nothing could console any of us at that point, but there was something about his presence that was reassuring. He was nothing like my brother, but he was still a strong and powerful connection to him, and I could see so clearly why Daniel had loved him.

  —

  ABOUT A WEEK after the funeral, and the day before I returned to Syracuse to finish my junior year of college, Nolan stopped by to say hello and, in his words, “check in on everyone.” Standing in our foyer, he glanced up the staircase as I told him my mom was already in bed with a migraine and my dad was at the office, working late.

  “And Josie?” he asked. “Is she back at school?”

  “Not yet. She leaves next week….I don’t know where she is tonight,” I said, thinking it was par for the course, before the accident and especially since. I wasn’t sure where she’d been going or who she’d been hanging out with, but I had barely seen her for days. We had yet to talk about that night, where she had been or how she’d found out, and I was starting to get the feeling we never would. That Daniel’s death was going to push us further apart than we already were.

  Nolan shoved his hands in his pockets, looked at me for a few seconds, then asked if I wanted to get a bite to eat. Feeling both surprised and strangely flattered by the invitation, I said yes. For the next hour, we drove around Buckhead, trying to decide where to go, vetoing restaurant after restaurant before we finally settled on the OK Cafe, a brightly lit Southern comfort–food diner. Choosing a booth in the back, we ate barbecue and macaroni and cheese, drank sweet tea, and talked about everything but Daniel. Instead Nolan asked me questions—basic ones—as if he hadn’t known me my whole life, which in some ways I guess he hadn’t.

  “Why’d you pick Syracuse?” he asked. “I’ve never known a single person from Atlanta to go to Syracuse. Except you.”

  “Isn’t that a good enough reason?” I deadpanned.

  “Seriously?” he said with a smile, both dimples firing.

  “Yeah, actually. Kind of,” I said, smiling a little myself. “Plus they have a really good drama school.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” he said. “You’re a theater girl. You were in a lot of plays at Pace, weren’t you?”

  I nodded and said that was my thing—one of the reasons I had chosen to go to a different high school from my brother and sister.

  “Daniel was proud of you.”

  I stared down at my plate, trying not to cry, as Nolan distracted me with more rapid-fire questions. “So you want to be an actress?”

  I nodded again.

  “But you’re so shy,” he said, something people often said to me when I told them what I was studying.

  “I’m not really shy. I’m an introvert.” I went on to explain the difference—the fact that being around people didn’t make me uneasy, I just preferred to be alone most of the time. “Daniel was an introvert, too. He was selective about who he spent time with….He loved hanging out with you.”

  Nolan smiled, as it occurred to me that maybe he wasn’t just being nice by inviting me to dinner. Maybe I was a comfort to him, too, his closest connection to Daniel.

  “How else are you alike?” he asked.

  I hesitated, unsure of what tense to use, the present for me, or the past for him. “I have his OCD. And his GPA.” I smiled. “Though you can’t really compare neurosurgery and Shakespearean theater…I’m smart, but he was way smarter.”

  “What you study has nothing to do with your IQ.”

  “True,” I said, though I was still sure Daniel’s had been higher than mine—higher than anyone’s in our family.

  “You two are more alike than you and Josie, aren’t you?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Yeah, she’s a straight extrovert. Party girl. But it’s weird….I’m more like Daniel, but he was closer to her.” I felt a stab of jealousy, then guilt for feeling jealous. “Daniel was drawn to people like you…and her.”

  “Fuckups?” He smiled.

  “Happy people,” I said, wrapping my hands around my warm mug, having switched to coffee. “Fun people. You could always make him laugh.”

  Nolan’s lower lip quivered.

  “I heard him tell Sophie that you were going to be his best man. One day.”

  “He said that?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “But you already knew that, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah. I guess I did,” he said. “But he was the best man. The best friend you could have. God. All the times he had my back…the messes he got me out of…”

  I mustered a smile, recalling some of the funny stories in Nolan’s eulogy, how he had so perfectly captured Daniel’s loyal, solid essence while painting himself as the foolhardy sidekick.

  “I still can’t believe it was him—and not me,” Nolan said. “God, I wish it had been me.”

  I shook my head, although I’d had the same wish about myself. If only it had been me, I’d thought more than once, then my parents would still have a daughter to spare.

  —

  LATER THAT NIGHT, when Nolan dropped me back at the house, he asked if he could see Daniel’s room. I hesitated, feeling uneasy. I had yet to set foot in his room and knew that my parents had only been in there once, and that was only out of necessity, to get Daniel’s burial clo
thes. But I said yes and the two of us walked silently into the house, then upstairs and down the hall to my brother’s closed bedroom door. My heart raced as I turned the knob and peered inside. The room was dark, the shades drawn, and for a second, I actually found myself praying that we would find a miracle: Daniel asleep in his bed, the whole thing a bad dream. But the sight of his creaseless comforter and tight hospital corners confirmed our nightmare.

  “Jesus,” Nolan whispered, as we took a few tentative steps into the room, our eyes adjusting to the dark. I tried to speak but couldn’t begin to think of what to say. There was nothing to say.

  But Nolan found something. “I don’t think I’ve been up here since high school. It looks exactly the same.”

  I nodded, grateful that my parents hadn’t redecorated our rooms the way a lot of parents did when their kids left for school—and wondered if they ever would now. Nolan and I looked around, taking visual inventory of Daniel’s bookshelf lined with paperback novels and tennis trophies and signed baseballs and his snow globe collection. We studied the framed baseball jerseys hanging on his walls and the collage of photos tacked to the bulletin board and the stack of medical books on his desk. His suitcase was open and neatly arranged on an ottoman in the corner, and I could see the pajamas Josie had given him for Christmas, the tags still on them. I stared at the jar of Carmex on his nightstand, sitting on top of Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point, an index card slipped inside, somewhere around the midway point. I had a sudden urge to read the page he had last read, but didn’t dare touch anything. I could tell Nolan felt the same, as if we were standing before a roped-off room in a museum, staring back into history, the end of a young man’s life, a moment frozen in time. We looked and looked until there was nothing left to observe, and then Nolan took my hand in his, pulled me to his chest, and wrapped his arms around me. “I love you, Meredith,” he whispered in my ear.

  Of course I knew what he meant—and in what way he loved me: a fond, surrogate-big-brother way. But the words still caught me off guard, along with the goosebumps that rose on my arms as I whispered it back. I love you, too, Nolan.

  In that second, I could no longer deny what I had been trying to deny for weeks, maybe even years: I had a crush on Nolan. It was absurd on so many fronts. Even the word was flimsy, silly, and stupid amid our monumental loss. Beyond the fact that Nolan was too old and way too good-looking for me, he was my brother’s best friend, off-limits before, and certainly now. Besides, how could I be attracted to anyone so soon after my brother’s death? It was the kind of inappropriate thing that would happen to Josie, not me. And yet, there it was—as unmistakable as my clammy hands and racing, guilty heart.

  I looked away, telling myself that the whole thing was probably in my head, some sort of delusional reaction to grief. Post-traumatic stress. It would pass. And even if it didn’t, nobody would ever know. I would never tell him. I would never tell anyone.

  “We better go,” I said, backing away from him.

  “Yeah,” he said, running his hand through his hair, looking rattled. “I better head out.”

  A few seconds later, we were back downstairs in the foyer, saying an awkward good night.

  “So you’re leaving for school tomorrow?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Tomorrow morning.”

  “Okay,” Nolan said, giving me a quick hug followed by a peck on the cheek. “Take care of yourself, Mere.”

  “You, too, Nolan,” I said.

  “I’ll keep in touch, I promise,” he said as sincerely as you can say anything.

  I nodded, believing that was his intention, but also doubting it would actually happen. Eventually we would lose touch, my family’s connection to Nolan becoming a secondary casualty of our tragedy.

  —

  “SO I HAVE a proposal for you,” I say to Harper when I find her in her bedroom (my childhood bedroom) after officially canceling our dinner plans and changing into my most comfortable pajamas.

  She looks up from her collection of stuffed mice, which live in the bottom drawer of her nightstand, and says, “What is it?”

  “Do you know what that means?” I ask, sitting on the edge of her bed. “It’s a deal. Do you want to make a deal?”

  She gives me a suspicious look but nods, willing to at least hear me out.

  “If you brush your teeth and get right in bed, I’ll read you two bedtime stories and…” I pause to build suspense. “I won’t go out.”

  With a glimmer in her eye, she says, “No babysitter?”

  “No babysitter,” I say.

  She grins at me. Other than my mom, Nolan’s parents, and Josie, Harper hates having a sitter, especially at night, and even the fun, young ones send her into a tailspin of separation anxiety and grief.

  “But you have to go straight to bed after that. Lights out. And you have to stay in bed. No shenanigans.”

  She stares at me, and I can see the wheels turning in her head.

  “Do we have a deal?” I say, knowing that I’m up against the single best negotiator in Atlanta.

  Sure enough, she has a counteroffer. “Four books,” she says.

  I try not to smile as I say, “Three.”

  “No, five,” she says, holding up one fist, then opening it, flashing her fingers.

  I shake my head, calmly explaining that it doesn’t work that way. Once she says four, she can’t go back up to five. But because I admire her moxie, I give in a little bit. “Let’s start with three and see how that goes. If it’s not too late, we’ll do a fourth. Now go on,” I say, gesturing toward her bookcase. “You choose, honey.”

  Jubilant, she skips to her bookcase, strategically selecting three of her picture books with the most words per page. The girl is no dummy. Her first two selections are solid, but then she reaches for Horton Hears a Who! and I let out a little groan. Although I love the book’s strong moral message of tolerance and equality, I’m not in the mood for Dr. Seuss.

  “Can I get one veto?” I say, thinking there are so many great books we’ve neglected for a while.

  “No, Mommy,” she says, putting her hand on her hip. “You said I could choose. And I choose Horton Hears a Who!”

  “Fair enough,” I say. “Now, c’mon. Go brush your teeth.”

  She nods, then heads straight for the bathroom that my sister and I used to share, while I straighten up her toys, tuck in her mice, and settle into her twin bed to wait for her.

  A few seconds later, she is back. I resist the urge to tell her she couldn’t possibly have brushed her teeth thoroughly in that amount of time, and instead just slide over, making room for her. She climbs into bed, smelling of bubble-gum toothpaste, and hands me Sylvester and the Magic Pebble. It is one of my favorites—and one I can remember my mother reading to Josie and me when we were kids. I tell Harper this because she loves hearing about “Mommy and Josie” when we were little. She smiles, her face lit with anticipation as she nestles into the crook of my arm. I open the book and start to read in my most animated voice, savoring the sweetness of the moment. Reminding myself to never take anything for granted.

  chapter five

  JOSIE

  On Friday night, just as I’m about to head out the door on a Match.com date with a physical therapist named Pete, Meredith texts with a last-minute plea to babysit and a rant about a lying teenager. I hesitate before I write her back, actually considering the request because, frankly, I’d rather spend the evening with Harper than make small talk with a random guy, even if his profile picture is pretty cute. But I decide to soldier through with my plans because you just never know when you could be canceling on your future husband.

  I do, however, decide that this will be it. My final, last-ditch, Hail Mary date. If things don’t pan out with Pete the PT, I’m officially done. Admitting defeat. Throwing in the towel on a traditional family and life. I’m not sure what that means, exactly—whether I’ll up and move to Africa to do my own goodwill work, like my faux beau Jack, or whether
I’ll go the sperm bank, single mother route. But I won’t continue on this futile path. I’ve made such claims before, but this time is different. This time I really mean it.

  I repeat all of this to myself as I drive up Peachtree on the way to meet Pete, realizing that I feel no pressure whatsoever. In fact, part of me actually wants the date to outright suck because a bad date is better than a date rating in that murky six-out-of-ten gray area—just enough to get your hopes up, hopes that are inevitably dashed by the second or third date, when you discover that he’s actually a four or five. Or worse yet, you determine by your second or third date that he’s really an eight or nine or ten—which is pretty much a guarantee that he’ll never call you again.

  So instead of giving myself my usual pre-date pep talk, I focus on my preliminary petty criticisms of Pete the PT. For starters, there’s his overuse of emojis, our thread littered with cartoonish outbursts, including the decidedly dorky “thumbs-up” followed by a glass of red wine after confirming the details of our date. Then there is the matter of his Facebook profile picture: a close-up of a black cat (which I only know because he broke one of the cardinal rules of blind dating by friending me on Facebook before our date). And finally his choice of restaurants tonight is Brio, a generic Italian chain—not a bad place for a meal per se, but definitely lame for a first date. Incidentally, the old desperate-to-get-married me would be searching for excuses for Pete, such as: (1) Emojis signal lightheartedness; (2) Highly evolved men, who don’t need to be fawned over every second by a dog, tend to like cats; and (3) Brio is next door to Barnes & Noble and he also suggested that we peruse the store after dinner, a further sign of his enlightenment.

  But that was the old me. The new me says here goes nothing as I pull up to the valet, then walk into the restaurant. I immediately spot Pete sitting at the bar wearing the red polo shirt he texted me he’d be wearing (followed by a winking emoji). He is looking down at his phone, which gives me a few seconds to scrutinize him and form a first impression. He isn’t a heartthrob by any stretch, but he is at least as cute as his photo—unfortunately a solid seven. I can’t tell how tall he is, but he has an athletic build and a strong enough chin to offset his slightly receding hairline. As I remind myself that his chin doesn’t change the fact that he picked Brio, we make eye contact, and he waves. I approach him with a smile and nothing to lose.