It Had to Be You

by Georgia Clark

  They’d been together for only a few months when Gorman told Henry he had no intention of ever marrying: I’m from a different generation. It’s just not for me. Henry had just turned thirty. Apart from falling in love with this stylish, erudite older man, he didn’t know what he wanted. He was fine being domestic partners while he and Gorman co-opened Flower Power, Honey! in Carroll Gardens. While purchasing the apartment above the shop together and feeling like an adult for the very first time. While holidaying for Gorman’s fiftieth in Mallorca; while visiting Henry’s family in Flushing for homemade Chinese dumplings and congee; while buying sheets or coffee or bickering about whose turn it was to wash the sheets or make the coffee. They were a committed couple. What was the difference?

  But over the past year, Henry’s ambivalence started to tilt into urgency. All the couples he knew were placing orders for wedding bouquets, then baby shower flowers. Gorman might be part of the previous generation, but Henry was from the current one. He’d started dropping hints, first microscopic, then visible to the naked eye. Henry Chu wanted to close his open relationship and get hitched.

  Ralph Gorman, the old lush, was a consummate deflector. But he could not deflect Henry’s thirty-seventh, a date Henry implied strongly he wanted to be engaged by. In turn, Henry had sensed a softening. He knew Gorman didn’t want to lose him. They lived together, ran a business together, they argued and made love and texted things like can you get half + half love u! . What was the difference?

  “Okay, take my hand.” Gorman led Henry from their bedroom and down the hallway toward their living room. He assumed Gorman’s decorative strategy would be flowers. Which was nice: that was their thing. They loved flowers and the theater and dead French queens, and Henry didn’t care if that made them clichés. He didn’t care if wanting to be married made him a cliché, either.

  Blindfolded, the familiar hallway became entirely new territory. The disorientation was exciting. Maybe they’d find another use for the blindfold later.…

  As they entered the living room, Henry clutched Gorman’s hand extra hard, passing him love and confidence. You got this, babe!

  Gorman loosened the blindfold. “One… two… three!”

  Henry blinked as his eyes adjusted, glancing around for a room filled with red or cream or multicolored hybrid tea roses… but there were none. Or candles. Or champagne, or chocolates. Instead, Gorman was gesturing at a large box on their coffee table. “It’s… a stand mixer,” said Henry.

  “Yes!” Gorman patted it proudly, as if it were a clever pet. “Just like you’ve been saying you wanted.”

  Had he? Maybe once or twice in passing.

  Henry thought he’d been obvious about wanting a ring. But maybe he’d mistaken Gorman’s equivocation for consent. Or, more distressingly, he had made his needs clear—and Gorman had ignored them.

  “Gor—” Henry started, only to be cut off by a flat female voice on the other side of the room.

  “Don’t look so pissed, Henry. You can always take it back for cash.”

  “Liv!” Now Henry really was surprised. “You’re here.”

  She crossed the room to peck his cheek with a dry kiss, handing him a glass of wine. “Happy birthday, Henry. Although I really should say commiserations. It’s all downhill from here. Trust me.” She refilled her own, much larger glass.

  Henry recognized the label. “I thought we were saving the Penfolds.”

  “If the past few months have taught me anything,” Liv said, “it’s drink the damn wine.” She emptied the bottle into her glass and headed into the kitchen. “Why wait? Could step in front of a Fresh Direct truck tomorrow.”

  Henry gave Gorman a look.

  “She just showed up!” Gorman whispered. “Ben’s at his grandmother’s—she said she didn’t want to be alone.”

  “But it’s my birthday.” Henry’s fourth finger felt naked. He couldn’t even look at the damned stand mixer.

  Gorman fiddled with his silk kerchief, as if unsure whether to tighten or loosen his signature piece. “If you want me to ask her to leave, I’ll ask her to leave.”

  Liv’s voice rang out from the kitchen. “You won’t believe who showed up on my doorstep today. The slut.” They heard the fridge door open. “Got any olives, Gor? I feel like a martini. Or seven.”

  In the warm lamplight of the living room, Gorman’s wave of white hair glowed. He gave Henry a small, apologetic smile. “I’m sorry, Choo-Choo. But she’s my best friend.”

  Henry knew what the word friend meant to Gorman. Friendship was not a Hallmark card. Friendship was Shakespearian. A Greek myth, a Russian novel. Friendship was a bone-deep, decades-old understanding of another human’s deepest flaws, and loving them because of those flaws, not in spite of them. Gorman might be a lush, but he was loyal. And his friendships were more loyal than most marriages.

  Henry tossed the blindfold aside. “I’ll put on some pasta.”

  3

  “Obviously, it’s complete lunacy, the entire situation.” Liv speared her third olive. “Showing up like that. As if she could just waltz on into my life!” Anger sparked in every cell in her body. It was a welcome respite from the cold, airless muteness that pressed on her heart and lungs most days. People expressed sympathy for “her pain,” websites talked about “the pain” of loss, everyone seemed to think she felt “pain.” All Liv usually felt was absence. Nothingness. Savannah’s irritating, sun-bright confidence revved her up, like gasoline on a fire. The anger felt good: clean and enlivening.

  Liv broke the olive’s flesh with her teeth. “That business is my life’s work. I’m not going to share it with some twenty-three-year-old ditz.”

  “You might have to.” Gorman removed his glasses and handed Liv a piece of paper with a figure circled several times. Having balanced the books for Flower Power, Honey! since they opened, Gorman knew his way around a profit-and-loss statement. Over marinara and martinis, Liv had allowed him to extract the Goldenhorns’ full financial picture. And it was no masterpiece.

  Liv blinked at the circled number. “That’ll get us through this year, at least. It’s actually more than I thought.”

  “That’s your debt, darling,” Gorman said.

  “What?” Liv snapped to attention. “What about the life insurance?”

  “It’ll float you for a minute. But it’s not a permanent solution. Eliot left behind some pretty impressive credit card debt, and you’re still paying off the last of the mortgage. Plus you haven’t contributed to Ben’s college fund in years. You’re going to have to…”

  “What?” Liv asked.

  Gorman took a perfunctory sip of his martini. “Get a job.”

  Liv blanched. “They don’t hire forty-nine-year-old women, Gor. They use us to scare millennials into wearing sunscreen.”

  Henry emptied the leftovers into Tupperware. “Would it really be so bad to bring on a business partner? I thought the deck she made was very impressive.”

  “Yes, you really need to get better with the computer, darling,” Gorman said. “Being flustered by attachments makes you seem positively Jurassic.”

  “Don’t you mean geriassic?” Liv quipped, and Gorman laughed.

  Henry put the leftovers in the fridge and shut the door a little harder than necessary. “All I’m saying is Savannah seems very keen. Organized. Passionate.”

  “So was Hannibal Lecter!” Liv exclaimed. “Besides, I barely have any vendors on the books anymore. No caterers want to work with me, after the whole shitshow with the pigeons.” The Long Island Bridezilla made a point to mention the escaped non-doves in her one-star review, as well as the bee sting, the broken arbor, and the fact Liv left an hour before the ceremony.

  “You still have us.” Henry patted her shoulder. “At our usual generous rate.”

  “Thank you,” Liv mumbled, unable to meet his eye. Humility was not Liv’s strong suit.

  Gorman pushed aside the bank and credit card statements. “Do you still think she had something to d
o with it? Getting E to change his will, I mean.”

  It was a theory Liv palmed back and forth over the last few months. But now it was clear Savannah Shipley was less a conniving mistress and more a shiny red convertible. “No. Unless she’s a sociopath, and I don’t think she’s that interesting.”

  Gorman and Henry exchanged a glance that indicated Savannah’s innocence was something they’d already come to believe. “How are you?” Gorman’s voice was gentle. “Really?”

  Liv lifted her hands in tired bewilderment. “What do you want me to say, Gor? Shocked. Sad. Angry, hurt, humiliated, just really… blargh!” She slumped over the table. “Is this really still something I want to do? Be a wedding planner? I am a feminist, you know, and somehow, I’ve ended up in this archaic industry that forces women to do even more unpaid emotional labor while worrying about being too fat. The whole system is designed to equate spending with happiness, and it honestly makes me sick! Maybe I should become a communist and move to the mountains! Get some goats. Goats are easy to keep, aren’t they?”

  Henry and Gorman traded another look. Liv-the-commie-goat-farmer had made her appearance in a few other conversations since the funeral.

  Henry went first. “Sure, the wedding industrial complex is a hysterical money pit designed to emotionally manipulate couples—we all know that. But the way you plan weddings helps people realize what they actually want. To put a sensible budget first and everything else second. You’ve always kept your prices market rate, and you never upsell couples on things they don’t need.”

  It was true. If clients wanted to custom color match the table linens to the bouquet, or ride in on a bucking white bronco, Liv would make it happen. But she also made it clear to couples who had concerns about throwing the now-standard three-day wedding extravaganza that a wedding was to a marriage what a birthday party was to the year ahead: you could skip the party and still have a fabulous year. More than once, she’d talked couples out of hiring her, knowing the resentment and panic of the final bill would not be worth it. Liv also understood that many couples in love in New York (especially Brooklyn) didn’t want a normative, traditional wedding, they wanted a fun, classy party where two people happened to be legally wed. As such, In Love in New York had garnered a healthy reputation for being the city’s best alternative-wedding planner.

  “You always plan events that are authentic to the couple,” Gorman said. “Plus, for better or worse, people are always going to get married and hire wedding planners. Why not you?”

  Liv harrumphed. But she was listening.

  “Besides, don’t you want to go back to work?” Gorman speared an olive from the jar. “You love work. They’d barely cut Benny’s umbilical cord and you were running out for a site visit.”

  “For Chrissake, she’s my husband’s girlfriend!” Liv slapped the table, sloshing half a glass of gin.

  “Not to sound crude, but he’s not technically your husband anymore,” Henry delicately pointed out. “You can’t be married to someone who’s been deceased for three months.”

  “And barely his girlfriend,” said Gorman. “She was a fling! You were his wife. And from what you’d been saying to me for the past few years, he was your husband in name only. Things weren’t exactly thriving, were they?”

  Liv made a petulant face—no, not exactly.

  “So be the bigger woman,” Gorman continued. “Transcend all that female competitive bullshit.”

  “Besides, maybe E really did know something you don’t,” Henry mused. “He must have had a reason, as weird as it all is.”

  Liv slurped the rest of her martini, the liquor bitter in her mouth. The truth was, she wanted to want to work. As ludicrous as the meeting with Dave and Kamile had been, it’d given her a taste of her old life. She missed ambition. That invisible, powerful impulse that guided and goaded and gave a day meaning. Liv Goldenhorn had no idea how to get her lust for life back.

  But that’s because she hadn’t yet met Sam.

  4

  Jammed into a subway car so crowded she couldn’t even check her phone, Savannah Shipley was beginning to think she’d made the biggest mistake of her life.

  Giving up everything in Kentucky had been the hardest thing she’d ever done. Not to mention the fact she’d basically—okay, she’d definitely—lied about the origins of her new “dream job” to her loving, trusting parents, Terry and Sherry. Her parents’ devotion to their only child was as unwavering as their Sunday church attendance. If they knew their daughter had once purchased a vibrator, let alone carried on an affair with a married New Yorker, Terry and Sherry would have twin heart attacks.

  Savannah’s extended circle of friends had been excited for her move to Brooklyn, but her best friend, Cricket, took the news as a betrayal. Savannah tried to make it sound like an exciting, short-term opportunity for both of them—Come visit me! I won’t be there forever!—but she wasn’t surprised to see something crumble behind Cricket’s eyes. It was essentially a nonsexual breakup.

  Her internship, her best friend and the apartment they shared, her proximity to clean air and wide streets and place in the order of things: all gone.

  At first, that all seemed worth it. As represented by her New York vision board, Savannah’s future in the greatest city in the world was one of bright lights and laughter, yellow cabs and pink cocktails. The words she’d placed at jaunty angles—Love! Success! Adventure! Romance!—felt like certainties. As did the image in the center of her vision board, the one that held the most mystery, the most promise: a gorgeous man in a tux. A twinkle in his piercing blue eyes.

  Who are you?

  Where do I find you?

  Savannah Shipley hadn’t just moved to work for In Love in New York. She had moved to find this person, and in the meantime, fall in love with New York itself.

  But so far, it was no romance.

  The city was cold, dark, and confusing. Home was now a matchbox-size room in a grotty loft with three strangers in a neighborhood where no one said hello to one another and everything was three times more expensive than it should be. When Savannah finally pushed her way off the sardined subway and onto the chilly, wet streets of her new neighborhood of Bushwick, raw, painful thoughts formed in her mind: Was she in the right place?

  Living the right life?

  How did you find love in a city that, so far, didn’t seem to believe in it?

  Shivering, she turned a corner and stumbled across ’Shwick Chick. A down-home fried chicken joint. The restaurant’s cheery neon sign shone through the cool, misty rain enveloping the city. Even though she was living on her savings and on a budget, Savannah pushed open the door. The warm, salty-sweet smell almost brought her to tears.

  Home.

  It was late on a rainy Monday, but customers filled the dozen tables, which were decorated with red-checkered tablecloths and vases of daffodils. She didn’t mind waiting. The energy—of the patrons, the hip-hop playing, and four staff members doing the work of ten—lightened her dark mood. Finally, a seat opened up at the bar. Savannah’s mouth pooled in anticipation of a plate of her favorite food in the world. As Cricket always said, “Fried chicken is like sex. Even when it’s bad, it’s good.” Savannah had laughed in agreement with this, but now, as she studied the small, handwritten menu, she realized it wasn’t true… when it came to sex. In her experience, sex was often just bad: awkward and unromantic, less magical, more mechanical. Even Eliot was a better conversationalist than he was a lover.

  A bartender in a cute Rosie the Riveter bandanna and plaid shirt rolled at the sleeves slid in front of her. She had two delicate gold earrings in each ear and wore her curly dark brown hair in a pixie cut. Ruddy freckles sprayed across skin that was pockmarked with acne scars. Like all the staff, she appeared overworked but cheerful. “Whatcha havin’, darlin’?” Her Southern twang sounded as cozy as hot toddies in front of a fire.

  “How’s the fried chicken?” Savannah asked. “And I hope you say it’s damn good.”

/>   “It’s damn good, Kentucky.” Then, off Savannah’s look of surprise that this woman had picked her accent so precisely, she added, “And so am I, apparently.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Savannah was presented with a meal that was better than sex. The juicy, golden-brown chicken was crispy and crunchy on the outside, moist and tender on the inside. Each deep-fried piece was soaked with a spicy-sweet honey sauce that was so good, Savannah asked for an extra side of it. She resisted the urge to moan as she ate, every bite sating a desperate, bone-deep craving. Around her, the staff whirred like a well-oiled machine. The girl with the pixie cut was the most efficient of all, equally friendly and adept. Savannah had been done for less than ten seconds before she swept by to clear her plate, flashing a brief, gap-toothed grin.

  “That was just about the best fried chicken I’ve ever had,” Savannah hurried to offer. “Usually the leg is my favorite, but that breast was perfect.”

  “Breast is best, right? Actually the honey-fried chicken’s my recipe. Named after myself.” The woman thumbed her necklace. Honey, in cursive, on a gold chain.

  “Are you the owner?”

  Honey tipped her head back and laughed. “I wish! One day.” Her arms were inked with fine tattoos: a dachshund, a triangle, the words Girl Almighty in tiny block letters. The only makeup she wore was a bright slash of red across her lips. “What about you, Kentucky? What do you do?”

  “I’m a wedding planner.” At best it sounded like a fantasy. At worst, a lie. It’d been almost a week since the meeting with Kamile and Dave. Liv wasn’t returning her calls. “But not a very good one. I can’t even find a caterer.”

  “You live here or just visitin’?”

  “I live here.”

  “Then I expect to see you back here,” Honey said, sliding the picked-clean bones into the trash.

  “I’ll be a regular at anywhere serving Pappy Van Winkle.” Savannah pointed at her favorite bourbon whiskey. “Best bourbon in the world.”

  Honey arched an eyebrow, seeming impressed. “I agree. And we’re the only restaurant in Bushwick who serves it.” She grabbed the bottle. “This one’s on me.”