Transit Girl

by Jamie Shupak

  “Oh man, Guiliana. I’m a huge fan! You and Eric are hilarious in the morning. I love when you tell us to ‘Keep both hands on the wheel’ when it’s windy or raining.”

  “Ha,” J-Baker chimes in, “That’s a personal favorite of mine too.” These coattails are long and strong.

  “Oh, come on,” I say, lightly shoving each of their shoulders with confidence. “I figured you for more of ‘Your foot goes from the gas to the brake’ kind of guys.”

  They erupt into laughter as the lights come down on the court, but not before I notice Todd giving J-Baker a sort of “You got a good one” nudge. We take our seats in the front of the box, and I look at the guys sitting around us—with their own history and inside jokes—and can’t help but be a bit overwhelmed. Though the thought of a whole new group of guy friends is exciting too. Being single isn’t just about finding the right guy, but also gaining the acceptance and trust of their inner circle. This isn’t JR, Johnny, and the rest of their friends whom I can burp and be myself in front of—at least not yet. I feel like I’m integrating well, though J-Baker is kind of quiet. Except for the occasional plea for “more defense,” or recap of the last score—“Did you see that shot?”—he barely says another word until halftime. I guess he’s not a big talker, or maybe he’s just focused on the game—I don’t know. Maybe when you’re that good-looking you don’t have to say much. He’s a little mysterious, and while it’s a bit perplexing, it’s hot. But amid the silence, my mind wanders back to Greg Advertising—and if I did the right thing by telling him I didn’t want to hang out anymore.

  We hooked up through the month of October, until one night in the beginning of November when he slept over and didn’t leave with me when I went to work in the morning. I always told him not to—that he should stay and sleep more, no reason to get up at 3:30 and go home. So that night he finally listened and stayed. When I came home from work at noon, my bed was made like a perfect hotel room bed, with the corners of the sheets tucked crisply under the mattress. Weird, but kind, I thought. And then I saw it, staring me down from in front of the decorative pillows that I’ve never put back on my bed each day—a note. No, a novel actually—because a note would be on a Post-it (which I don’t buy anymore) and this was on an 8.5-by-11-inch sheet of printer paper.

  Guiliana, Not sure if I made the bed properly but dammit I tried! It was tough to leave your bed ‘cause falling back asleep in your scent, on your warm side after you left, was heaven. I am a West Village convert. I still feel terribly guilty about not getting up when you did, so let me make it up to you by cooking you dinner tonight. Call me when you get this. Love, Greg

  Like walking over hot coals, each mushy-gushy phrase—ouch—“in your scent”—ouch—burns a different part of my head and heart. Until I get to the last firey step, the “love” signature—the biggest ouch of all—when I realize I’m in way over my head. It doesn’t matter how decent of a guy he is, or how he always calls when he says he will; I can’t have someone saying these heartfelt things to me yet. I don’t know how to process it, and I’m not ready to learn. Not yet, at least. So when I woke up from my nap that afternoon, I called and told him that we shouldn’t hang out anymore. I was confident it was the right move, and Gemma echoed that in her “He served his purpose” speech, but sitting here in this club box with J-Baker two months later, I wonder if I shouldn’t have fought his affection. But then Todd comes back over and interrupts my silly daydream, saying he can’t make it to the next game.

  “Know anyone who’d want my two seats in here?”

  I notice he’s looking at both of us, which I take as an assumption that I’m sticking around. At least ‘til the next game.

  “What’s your friend’s name again?” J-Baker asks. “The stylist one you borrowed the earrings from? Maybe she’d wanna come with her boyfriend.”

  “Gemma, yeah. She and V-Dub would love that,” I say, knowing very well that Gemma has been trying—and failing—to end things with him ever since that night she met Jake Spears outside of Tanuki Tavern. They’ve been exchanging dirty emails and text messages—all of which I’ve had the pleasure of being forwarded—that detail what they would do to one another, given the chance. “I’d pin you against the door with my body and kiss you hard, then soft, with one hand in your hair, the other on your ass,” he’d write. “Go slower,” she’d respond, tempting every bone in his body. Literally, every bone. But neither of them has pulled the trigger on another face-to-face meeting—at least not yet—thanks in part, I think, to the column I wrote for Level about emotional cheating versus physical cheating. Whatever it takes, right?

  Meantime all I’m hoping for is my own rendezvous with J-Baker, as he offers me a ride home in his Uber. My West Village apartment is in no way “on the way home” from Madison Square Garden to his place at Sixty-First Street and Park Avenue—but I’ll happily take the bait. He inches toward me in the backseat and slides his arm around my shoulders. I wish he would just grab my face and make out with me, but he seems nervous, so instead he puts his other hand on my thigh and gives me this sort of stare, like he’s challenging me. This bait I will not take. If he wants to kiss me, he needs to just kiss me. I stare back at him, and if my eyes could talk they would be on both knees, begging for him to lean in and just do it.

  When he finally does, the first thing I feel is his breath on my lips. I slowly open my mouth, and he moves his even closer to mine. Now I feel his breath on my tongue. My whole body warms up and relaxes in the seat. I lean back and slink down slightly to allow him to curve his body around mine. Now he’s facing me with one hand still pressed into my thigh, the other behind my neck.

  “I’ve been waiting a long time for this,” he whispers.

  “Oh yeah?” I ask softly in return.

  And then he kisses me. It feels good for the first second, but then it gets bumpy. Literally. We hit some road construction on Seventh Avenue south, causing an awkward readjustment of our positions. His teeth almost knock into mine—then our noses bump, but not in that intentional cute way—and so we stop. I giggle, but notice he’s just sitting there silent. At least we’re just a block from my apartment now. Guess he’s not that embarrassed, because when we pull up outside my building, he jumps right out of the car and follows me inside.

  We resume kissing and pawing at each other and for a brief moment I think we recovered well. But then it gets awkward again. He’s delicate with his hands—which reads more timid than tender—and the fluttering of chills I felt moments ago in the car have now turned to heebie-jeebies. He fumbles while trying to slide my tights off, and when I offer to help, he just gives up and says he should get going.

  “It’s getting late for you, isn’t it?”

  I nod in agreement, unsure of what him leaving actually means.

  “We should pick up where we left off sometime,” he says, trying to sound smooth. Even though the makeout wasn’t great—lame even, and that might be too nice—I agree. Maybe I had just built him up in my head so much that the reality was never going to live up to something of the Gemma/Jake Spears dirty email variety. Or maybe it’s like his shyness—that being this hot means he doesn’t have to try as hard in bed. Even though Greg Advertising didn’t know how to control his emotions, at least he knew how to control me in bed.

  I get up to open the door for him, and he leans in for one more kiss. This time it’s perfect—with just the right amount of pressure and tongue—so I pull away to end on a high note, and say goodbye. I slip off the tights that proved too difficult for him and crawl back in bed—this time in sweats—and check my phone before falling asleep. Among a barrage of emails from my old sorority sisters who are beside themselves about me going out with J-Baker is one from my friend Daisy. She owns an interior design firm and, as you’d expect, has an apartment that looks like a mash-up of the window display at Anthropologie and the funkiest design blog you’ve ever seen; it’s every girl’s dream. She’s helped me spice up my place a bit, but I still have
a pile of books that need a place to go—so she’s promised to hook me up with her shelf guy, Dustin. She swears by this guy, raving about his design aesthetic, so I’ve been anxiously waiting for him to have time to come over. “Finally, he’s free,” she says in her email. “He’ll come over tomorrow night.”

  I’m in old, baggy green sweatpants and an American Apparel V-neck T-shirt with no bra when the buzzer rings. I grab for the purple hoodie on the edge of my couch and open the door. But it’s not Dustin. I mean it is, but what’s staring me in the face is a pair of rock hard abs hanging on a perfectly sculpted (I’m guessing) six-foot-three frame. I put my hand to my head—half-ashamed, half-pissed at Daisy for not telling me how hot this guy is—but also to gauge how greasy my ponytail is. Why didn’t I wash my hair, let alone put on some jeans? I am kicking myself and in my mind, kicking the shit out of Daisy too. What girl sends a Matthew McConaughey lookalike to their friend’s apartment—single friend’s, mind you—without a little heads up?

  “Hey, you must be Dustin. Come on in. Sorry, just got back from the gym—haven’t had a chance to shower yet,” I say, lying. Gym? I haven’t worked out in a year.

  “No problem. If you want I can take a look around and measure while you shower.”

  “Wow, that would be great actually. Can I get you something to drink first? I think I have some beer in the fridge,” I say, smiling to myself for taking Gemma’s advice when I moved in, to always have ample beer and wine handy in case a guy comes over. Of course, I always have ample tequila too.

  “Sure, I’ll take whatever you got.”

  I hand him a Blue Moon and pray that it tastes okay. It might have been in there since I moved in. Does beer even go bad? I grab for my phone, cute matching bra and underwear—hey, you never know—black jeans, and a chambray button-down, and head into the bathroom. As I turn on the shower, I text Daisy.

  WE ARE SO NOT FRIENDS. MY HAIR’S IN A GREASY PONYTAIL AND I WAS IN SWEATS WHEN I OPENED THE DOOR FOR FREAKING HOTTIE MCHOTTERSON.

  I get out of the shower, and Dustin says he’s already drawn out two options for shelving throughout my apartment. He’d told me in his email that he wanted to watch the Giants game tonight and since the cable in my apartment doesn’t carry NFL Network, we decide to head to a bar to watch. Bonus: I get to peep Darren—that hot sideline reporter I haven’t seen on-screen since that dreaded Sunday at MST—again. We’re also both hungry, so over food we can also lay out the plans and decide which design we like best. I throw my wet hair into a loose, low side braid—not ideal, but better than that greasy ponytail—and skip out of my apartment with Dustin towards Bleecker Street.

  I’ve been out with plenty of guys in the last few months, but this is my first time walking around the neighborhood with one. It feels like a date—but it’s not a date. But it is a date? But it’s not a date. I keep looking at him—tall, strong, sexy him—and think I could get used to this. I like the feeling of a guy bigger than me. I feel protected. I feel confident. I feel like I love this single life.

  It’s a pretty nice night in early December by New York standards, so there’s the usual line forming at the corner of West Eleventh Street outside Magnolia Bakery, where tourists and even some locals are getting their cupcake fix. We walk another block, and as we approach Perry Street, my heart, my feet, my wandering thoughts—all stop. It’s them. Just on the other side of the street I see the leading edge of Zelda’s nose rounding the corner. My eyes, like lasers, follow her leash from the nape of her neck to the hand that’s guiding it. Courtney. No longer a memory of a nightmare stored in the back, dark corner of my brain—she’s now here, in the flesh, maybe fifty feet from me.

  Like igniting a gas stovetop—click click click—I feel a rush of warm blood from the pit of my stomach flame through my throat and into my brain. It’s wild to think that just a few short months ago that was me. The mental stove turns off and cools down just as quickly as it heated up when I realize nothing has changed. She’s walking Zelda alone. No JR anywhere in sight. She had stepped in as an understudy, a small note was inserted into the program, and the show went on without missing a beat. As I watch them turn south onto Bleecker, I grab Dustin’s arm and point to the Ralph Lauren store on the opposite corner.

  “Oh my god, this is perfect that we’re walking right by this. I wanted to show you this shelf in here that might inspire a design for my place.” First the gym lie, and now this. But it works, because now we’re walking east and they’re walking south, so we won’t be right behind them. I couldn’t watch her walk my dog like it’s her own. I should have fought harder for Zelda. I miss her.

  We briefly stroll through the store until he reminds me that we’re missing the start of the Giants game. So we head out, but this time towards West Fourth Street, where the coast will be clear from Courtney. Everyone in this neighborhood has a dog, and each one we pass between Perry and Charles Streets makes my heart jump. First a yellow Lab, then a basset hound, and then a toy poodle. The sidewalk on this stretch of West Fourth is usually only wide enough for two people—and with the piles of snow, it’s more like one and a half—so I momentarily stand behind Dustin to let each dog and their owner pass. As I step back to be along his side, Courtney and Zelda turn the corner in such a hurry that I jump back to behind Dustin’s big frame, putting my head down and holding my breath.

  “C’mon, Zelda, we gotta get home and go see Daddy,” she says—reciting my lines perfectly—and yanking my furry, loveable former child by the green striped leash I bought her years ago.

  They brush by us like a tornado—a whirlwind of sound, emotion, and destruction—and are gone before I even know what happened. I try to play cool and stay as upbeat as I normally am and was just moments ago. I don’t want Dustin to notice anything or realize the trauma I just hid from, but I am shaken up. We finally make it to Barrow Street Alehouse and settle into one of their dark-wooden, cozy booths. The game is on and the noise of the other people mixed with the announcers calling the game being pumped over the in-house speaker system momentarily distracts me from what just happened. We order beers, but decide to wait on food until after we go over the design plans for my apartment. As he lays them out across the table and begins pointing and explaining, my mind races to another far off, dark place.

  Don’t worry baby. No matter what I love you.

  He was sleeping with her. He fell in love with her. She moved in and sleeps in our bed with him. Her clothes are in my drawers and her toothbrush is in my old vanity. Does he use the mirror I bought for it? They didn’t replace Zelda’s leash, so are they still using all our old stuff? Does she hang her jacket on that set of vintage hooks I bought? She took my fiancé. She took my dog. She took over my old life.

  I chug the rest of the beer, and when I look up Dustin is staring at me. “Everything okay, Guiliana? You don’t look so hot.”

  “I am so sorry, Dustin. I really am,” I say, looking down. I’m shaking and I want to cry. “I’m exhausted from being out at the Knicks game too late last night and that workout just killed me before. I need to get some sleep. Can I take a rain check on these plans?”

  “Of course,” he says, visibly confused and worried.

  I offer him some money for my beer and when he refuses, I grab for my coat and run out the door. I then run all the way home—past the intersection of regret and sadness where I just saw Courtney walking Zelda—and push through the door with the last bit of energy inside me. I peel off my clothes in a cold sweat and manage to slink into the green pants and purple sweatshirt from earlier and finally collapse into bed. I curl into a fetal position—knees tucked into my chest—and bury my face in the pillow.

  You can clean up from a tornado. You can rebuild from a tornado. You can start a whole new life after a tornado. But you never forget that it was there and the pain it caused. Luckily I have a recurring alarm set on my phone, because I sob myself to sleep.

  CHAPTER 20

  The next morning when I walk into work, I can a
lready hear Angel’s voice singing above the hum of the typing and TVs before I even turn the corner into the newsroom. I can’t make out exactly what he’s all jacked up about, but it must be some sort of news-related gossip, because that’s his favorite kind. His face lights up like the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree when he sees me.

  “Smiley Riley,” he’s practically screaming, while simultaneously punching his index finger at the headline on the New York Toast that he’s holding in his other hand. “Heading to Splitsville! Have you seen this, G?”

  “Uh, no, Angel. I haven’t.” And I only wish I could have concealed my disinterest and whatever attitude a bit better. “And besides, were she and what’s-his-face ever even really together?”

  “Who pissed in your coffee this morning? This is big news, that she’s back on the market,” he says, gliding towards me to get a closer inspection of my red eyes. “It’s all over Banter, too. I bet Ben loves her.”

  “Ben doesn’t even know her. Please.” And for a second I shudder. The thought of the two of them together. Ugh.

  “It’s his job to know her,” he sasses, and then getting a good look at me, realizes that something’s wrong. “What happened, Mister Knicks Season Tickets hasn’t called?” He pouts his lips and smirks, pausing, waiting for me to respond.

  “I saw Courtney last night. Walking Zelda.” Whenever I say those two magic words—Courtney, Zelda—like clockwork, Angel (and anyone else) will stop and change their tone immediately. I explain everything—step-by-step, block by block—of what happened last night, and, barely skipping a beat, he offers his genius solution.

  “You need a girls’ night out,” he says, and by girls he means gays. “It’s time we go to Splash.”

  Later that afternoon, I wake up from my nap in a cold sweat. My hairline is damp and my cotton tank top is sticking to my back. I’ve had this recurring dream—nay, nightmare—where I’m standing in the middle of a crowd on this ottoman-type thing and everyone is chanting “Zelda! Zelda! Zelda!” She then appears like some sort of goddess, carried out on a dark purple velvet couch by men in ancient Greek-style togas and floral headbands. She always had a regal look about her, and always ruled the household. But when she’s finally close enough to see me, she won’t look at me or even acknowledge my existence, even though the crowd has parted around me, and I’m the only one standing there. I call her name, begging, pleading for her to look at me, love me, understand me. But she won’t. The crowd erupts into laughter, and that noise drowns out my screams for help, and I wake up. Maybe I should have moved to a different neighborhood, just to ensure I’d never see them again. Just as the thought penetrates the bottom barrel of my stomach and I curl up to ease the pain, I feel my phone vibrating from somewhere under my arm.