(Almost) Happily Ever After

by Annabelle Costa

I make a face at him. “Are you a real estate agent or something?”

  “No.” He rolls his eyes. “Anyway, Park Slope is prohibitively expensive. But Windsor Terrace is right nearby, not nearly as expensive, and it’s a great residential neighborhood.”

  It takes me a second to realize what he’s saying.

  “Wait,” I say. “Have you been looking at houses? In Brooklyn?”

  “Sort of,” he admits. “I mean, I haven’t actually looked at any houses, but I had a few conversations with a real estate agent, and she left me the key for one place so I could take a look on my own.”

  “She just gave you a key?” That’s amazing. When my best friend Mia was looking to buy apartments with her husband, she told me that the real estate agent was looking over her shoulder every second, like she was afraid Mia might swipe something.

  Will shrugs. “I guess I seem trustworthy.”

  That’s probably true. Will is a wealthy, Jewish lawyer in a wheelchair—he definitely doesn’t look like someone who’s going to ransack an empty house in Windsor Terrace.

  “So…” I stare out the window at the other cars speeding next to us, trying to make sense of this. “You want to buy yourself a house?”

  “No,” he says, “I want to buy us a house.”

  “Us?”

  He glances at me and smiles. “Yeah, the two of us. Me and my future wife. Like, to live in. The usual stuff.”

  “But…” I still feel uneasy. “You already own an apartment. In Manhattan.”

  “Right,” he agrees. “But this is bigger. And it’s got a fenced-in yard, in case you want to get…”

  “A dog!” I exclaim. Will knows I’ve been desperately longing for a dog since I moved to the city, but his apartment doesn’t allow it. And even if they did, it would be borderline cruel to keep a dog locked up in such a small space. Unless it was a really tiny dog.

  I have to say, I love living in Manhattan. But I wouldn’t mind commuting in from Brooklyn if I got to have a dog again.

  “Exactly,” he says. He adds, “Also, it’s got three bedrooms.”

  I grin at him. “Petunia and the dog can each have their own rooms.”

  “Yes,” he says vaguely. “Petunia and the dog. That’s exactly what I was thinking about.”

  That just sort of sits between us. I’m nearly thirty-three and Will is thirty-six. We’re getting to an age where people have kids. I want kids and I’m fairly sure he does too, but for some reason, it’s something we never, ever talk about in any sort of realistic way. I’m almost afraid to. Mostly because I’ve been off birth control for nearly two years and… well, that says it all.

  Still. I’m not going to think about that. I’m going to think about getting a dog. The biggest dog I can find. A big, mean dog that’s frightening to burglars and also possibly to little children.

  I think the two of us are both pretty excited by the time Will pulls up in front of the house in Windsor Terrace. I’m going to be honest though—it doesn’t look as great as I thought it would. When I imagined a house, I was imagining something more like the house I lived in as a child, which was big and sprawling, with a long driveway as well as a front and back yard. But this house is narrow, more of a brownstone really, and smooshed between two other houses. Just from the outside, it doesn’t appear to be much bigger than Will’s apartment.

  “I don’t like it,” I announce.

  He sighs. “We haven’t even been inside yet.”

  I study the offending house carefully, and something occurs to me: “It’s two stories!”

  “Yeah, I realize that,” he says. “The lady who used to live here had some medical issues and they apparently already have a stairlift installed. That’s why the real estate agent thought it would be good for me.”

  I look over at Will, and I can tell he’s disappointed too. But we already drove all this way to get here, so we may as well go inside.

  There are actually also two steps to get into the front door. Stairs are not the easiest thing for Will, for obvious reasons. He can go down them okay, especially if there’s a railing, but up is hard. With one step, he can do a wheelie and jump over it without any trouble. Two can be tricky, but these are small so it doesn’t look like it will be too difficult. Usually though if it’s more than one step, I end up pulling him up backwards. If it’s an absolute emergency, he can do it himself by holding onto the railing, but he says it kills his shoulder.

  Will is able to do a wheelie and hop up the steps to the front door with only slight difficulty. The bigger issue is that the landing at the top of the steps is too tiny for Will to keep his chair on while he’s opening the door. He ends up having to go back down the stairs, wait for me to open the door, then come back up to join me.

  “Didn’t you always want a home that you can’t actually get into?” I say.

  “We can fix that,” Will says, although I don’t hear much confidence in his voice.

  We enter the house, and the first thing I think to myself is: Oh my God, it’s so small. What appears to be the living room is much smaller than Will’s living room in his apartment. The kitchen is only like a half-kitchen that attaches to the living room. We barely have room to enter the place without practically bashing into the staircase. It’s so small.

  And the second thing I think is…

  “What is that smell?” I say, covering my nose.

  Will gives me an apologetic smile. “The agent mentioned to me that one of the pipes backed up and leaked onto the floor. But she said they’re getting it cleaned up.”

  “It smells like sewage!”

  “I think you’re exaggerating.”

  I’m not exaggerating. Trust me. This place smells worse than the Hudson River.

  Will notices the chair attached to a railing at the bottom of the stairs. He picks up a remote that’s lying on the seat and studies the controls. “You want to look upstairs?”

  “I guess so.” I really don’t. “Have you ever used one of these things before?”

  “Sure,” he says. “Didn’t you notice there was one at my parents’ house? They got it installed after my accident. It wasn’t my favorite thing, but it wasn’t that bad.”

  Will pulls on a lever and the seat swivels to face away from the stairs. He lifts the armrest on the seat, and transfers his body over in one swift movement. He then grabs his legs and pulls them onto the footrest attached to the chair. He buckles himself in, then pulls the lever to get the seat back in position.

  “Can you bring my chair up the stairs?” he asks me.

  “Let’s see if that thing works first,” I retort.

  “It will work,” he says with confidence that belies the expression on his face.

  He punches a button on the remote. The seat sputters a bit, then starts to very, very slowly ascend the stairs. I absolutely can’t imagine him using this thing on a daily basis. I swear to God, two flowers could copulate in the time it takes him to ascend one foot.

  “It might need new batteries,” Will says.

  “You think?”

  The seat manages to make it another foot in the air, then it just…. dies.

  “Shit,” Will says.

  I wonder if this is an insensitive time to say “I told you so.” Oh, to hell with it. “I told you so,” I say.

  “Yeah, yeah,” he sighs.

  I don’t offer Will any help because I can’t imagine what I could do, and I know he can handle it on his own. Hell, his upper body is strong enough to get up a whole flight of stairs without a stairlift if he had to. But dragging himself down the stairs one by one clearly isn’t the most fun thing in the world. By the time Will gets down to the bottom of the stairs, and transfers back into his chair from the floor, I can tell he’s on the same page as I am about Sewage Manor.

  “We’ll keep looking,” he says.

  “Good idea,” I agree.

  There’s no amount of dogs in the world that could get me to live here.

  Chapter 4

&n
bsp; At three o’clock on Monday afternoon, I show up at Reid Shaw’s office. I took ample precautions to avoid any suggestion that I might be amenable to advances. I’m wearing jeans and an ugly green sweater with lots of lint on it, and my hair is pulled back in a simple ponytail. Also, I’m wearing my glasses. I texted my friend Mia a photo of me, and she assured me I was rocking the schoolmarm vibe.

  When I arrive, the door is cracked open. When I push it the rest of the way open, I see Reid sitting in a reclining desk chair with his feet up on a stool. Despite the fact that it’s October and getting nippy out, he’s still wearing shorts and sandals. Also, he’s smoking a joint—at least, I’m pretty sure that’s what it is based on the fact that it’s little and white and smells like Washington Square Park. I can’t even believe it. Granted, he’s got two fans set up by the window, which deflects most of the smell, but the door was open. Anyone could have walked in and seen him!

  “Reid?”

  Reid’s eyes widen when he sees me and quickly hides his joint. He smiles sheepishly. “I was just… having a cigarette.”

  “I don’t care what you were smoking,” I say.

  His wide shoulders sag in relief. “Good. I mean, most people are cool, but… you never know.” He glances around the room. “Does it smell like pot in here?”

  I take a deep whiff of the office. “Not too bad. Why? Do you think it smells a lot?”

  “I actually have no sense of smell,” Reid says. He gestures at his slightly crooked nose. “Broke my nose when I was a kid and lost it.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, although I’m not entirely sure how loss of a sense of smell might impact a person’s life. Frankly, I can see an up side.

  He shrugs. “It’s okay. I’m used to it.”

  I venture further into the office, clutching the gigantic biology textbook to my chest. “So… you wanted to talk?

  Reid nods eagerly and gestures at the stool where his sandaled feet had been planted about two seconds earlier. “Sit. Please.”

  I sit down gingerly, thanking my lucky stars I’m wearing black jeans, considering there are two footprints where Reid’s sneakers had been.

  “First off,” he says, “I just want to say how awesome it is to see an older lady like you going back to school and getting your college degree. I respect the hell out of you.”

  An older lady like me? Is he freaking serious? He makes me sound like I’m some grandmother on the bus handing out butterscotches.

  “Thanks,” I mumble.

  “What do you want to do with your college degree?”

  Now I feel shy. “Actually, I want to be a veterinarian.”

  Someday, I will be able to say that and not feel like I’m a five-year-old child telling her parents’ friends what I want to be when I grow up.

  “That,” Reid says, “is really righteous.”

  I can’t suppress a smile. “Thanks. I know I’m on the older side to be starting on such an ambitious career track, but it’s just something I always wanted to do.”

  He nods enthusiastically. “Yeah. I mean, it’s so great to see women who don’t mind putting all that marriage and kids garbage aside to focus on their careers. I really admire you, Libby.”

  “Thanks,” I say again, even though… well, I’m not really putting marriage and kids aside. I’m going to get married as soon as Will can manage to get a day off from work. And the only reason I haven’t gotten pregnant is because… well, apparently, I can’t.

  “Anyway.” Reid toys with the bracelet around his chubby wrist. It’s made from tan-colored twine or… wait, I think that might be a hemp bracelet. And the ponytail holding his messy, straight brown hair together is made from the same material. And there’s a little emblem on his baggy shirt that says, “Made from 100% hemp.” Christ, are all this guy’s clothes made from hemp? “I know you told me you’re also working part-time, but I think if you just put a little more work into this class, you could ace it. Listen, how do you memorize things best?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know. In high school, I used to make flash cards.”

  “So there you go,” Reid says. “Go to the store, buy some index cards, and make yourself some flash cards.”

  “Making flash cards just seems a little… immature,” I say carefully.

  Reid’s blue eyes meet mine. “Libby, nothing about you is immature.”

  Wow. He’s probably the first person I’ve ever met in my whole life who has ever said something like that to me. Usually, it’s the opposite. “Libby, you are so immature.” Maybe I’m finally growing up. Or maybe I’m just benefiting from the comparison to college freshmen.

  Also, I’m almost positive Reid is hitting on me. Schoolmarmy glasses aside.

  “My boyfriend might be willing to test me on the flashcards,” I say. Will absolutely would be willing to test me on flashcards, but I have no intention of spending my meager hours with him learning biology. I only said that because I felt compelled to mention a boyfriend, just to act as a further deterrent of advances.

  Maybe I should have mentioned the fact that Will isn’t just my boyfriend—he’s my fiancé. But soon after my engagement to Will, my friend Mia read me the riot act for what she described as my “egregious overuse of the word ‘fiancé.’” Okay, I did sort of like going around saying I had a fiancé. And maybe it did start sounding pretentious or irritating at some point. So I’ve made an effort cut back on that. Plus Reid seems like the sort of guy who would especially find the word “fiancé” pretentious.

  “Sounds great,” Reid says, not sounding at all deterred by the existence of a significant other. “And I think you should come to all my office hours so I can give you some one-on-one time.”

  Yeah. He’s definitely not deterred. But what can I do? I don’t want to fail my very first class on returning to college.

  “I’ll be there,” I say.

  Maybe next time I’ll wear a fat suit.

  Chapter 5

  Monday night is my official Dinner With Mia night.

  Mia Maharaj (well, now Freedman) has been my best friend since I moved to the city ten years ago. If I were a Disney fairy tale princess, Mia would be my sidekick. You know how the heroines in those stories always have sidekicks, right? She’d be like the mice in Cinderella. Or the dwarves in Snow White. Or that Jamaican crab in The Little Mermaid.

  Mia would literally kill me if she heard me comparing her to a crab.

  My friendship with Mia is a great example of opposites attracting. She’s this gorgeous, serious, successful woman, and I’m… me. But somehow we just work. I can’t explain it.

  We used to hang out several times a week, but now that she’s married and trying to get a promotion, we had to reserve Monday nights, just to make sure we actually found time to get together. Once a week really isn’t enough. By Monday, I’m always spilling over with things I want to tell her, although to be fair, we also text each other quite a bit. Still, you can only say so much in a text message.

  When I burst into our favorite conveyer belt sushi bar my typical five minutes late, I see that Mia is already sitting at a table. She’s wearing her glasses (I ditched mine for contacts for our night out) and she’s studiously reading something on her phone. I look at my friend for a minute before she notices me.

  There’s something different about Mia. I can’t put my finger on it. She’s just…

  “You’re late,” Mia comments, shoving her phone back in her purse.

  “I’m always late and you know it,” I retort. “Therefore, I am on time. For me.”

  “Right.” Mia flashes me a wry smile. “I forgot to account for Libby Time.”

  “Exactly.” I glance over at the plates of sushi going by. In case you’ve never been to a conveyer belt sushi bar, it’s exactly what it sounds like. The sushi goes by on a conveyer belt, like the kind you put your luggage on in the airport, and you just pull off the plates you like. It’s an amazing concept that I feel should be embraced by all cuisines.

  Toni
ght is salmon night at the sushi bar, which means that all salmon plates are discounted. I have a weird relationship with sushi in that I hated it until I came to live in New York, and now I absolutely love it—especially eel. It was actually Mia who got me into sushi.

  It’s awful too because it’s such an expensive food to fall in love with. I could easily blow a week’s paycheck pulling plates off this conveyer belt. Why couldn’t she have gotten me addicted to… like, fish tacos or something?

  “I’ll stick with salmon tonight,” I say, pulling a plate of sashimi off the conveyer belt. “I don’t want to break the bank.”

  “What are you worried about?” Mia says. “Will is loaded.”

  As she says it, my phone beeps from within my bag with a text. I surreptitiously pull it out of my purse and glance at the message, which is from Will:

  Great news! Talk later.

  If this is about another house in Brooklyn, I don’t know. That reminds me, I have to tell Mia about Sewage Manor. She’ll really appreciate the story after her apartment hunt.

  “Aren’t you getting any food?” I ask Mia. If she tells me she’s on a diet, I’ll scream—the woman weighs at least twenty pounds less than I do and is two inches taller.

  “Actually,” she says, “I’m not really in the mood for sushi. I thought I might order the chicken teriyaki.”

  I stare at Mia. “You’re pregnant.”

  Mia’s chocolate-colored eyes go wide. “What? How does me ordering chicken teriyaki translate to being pregnant?”

  Yeah, she’s totally pregnant.

  “Well,” I say thoughtfully. “We’re in your absolute favorite conveyor belt sushi restaurant, yet you don’t want to eat anything that is raw. The only reason I could think of that you’d possibly do that is because you’re pregnant.” I pause. “Also, you and Paul just bought an apartment, and that’s like a cue to get knocked up. And you’re not denying it, just asking horrified.”

  “You are scarily perceptive,” she sighs.

  I clap my hands together. “I’m right then! You’re pregnant! Oh my God!”