But for God’s sake, did it have to be tonight? I needed cover! I couldn’t saunter around the room with a couple. That would perhaps be the only scenario worse than showing up alone.
“Are we ready?” Tess looked at me, thanking me with her eyes.
“Yes,” I said, my game face in full effect.
And off we went, the three of us, to the party.
The restaurant, Panacea (Danny Meyer’s latest), was packed so I could hardly see beyond the cluster of blown-out blondes in front of me. I felt the familiar anxiety that I always experienced when I walked into a social event of this level. I was at one of my best friend’s engagement party—a party that I had practically co-produced—and I still felt slightly intimidated. I needed to be confident. I needed to be in control. I needed a bathroom stall, and a stain stick, for the love of God.
As soon as we walked through the door, Tess had been enveloped by at least ten people who “just had to say hello,” which really meant that they just had to quiz her about her newly acquired arm candy. Even in this room, Macho Macchiato stood out.
I navigated my way through the throng of people, searching for my beacon of hope, a bathroom, brushing off the inevitable stares at my chest (a new thing for me, certainly), some of the more trend-obsessed wondering if mud splashes were the new thing, no doubt.
And that’s when I saw him. He sat at the bar, cupping a beer. The past five years could have been rendered nonexistent at that moment. I could have just come from a long research session at the library. He could have just gotten out of class. We could be meeting up for another lazy night of drinking too much and talking about everything and nothing at the same time. Time just seemed to move more slowly back then.
He wasn’t bald and he wasn’t bloated. He was handsome, still—perhaps more so. And he was well dressed. Of course he was. And I was standing six feet away, caked in mud, with the bathroom accessible only by crossing directly through his line of vision. The evening was off to a splendid start!
I inhaled deeply, straightened my shoulders and assumed the rigid posture of one who is about to dive into a pool of freezing water.
“Greg?” I said, dizzy with the surrealness of his proximity.
“Lena?” He smiled. “I can’t believe it’s you.”
I felt a warm rush of familiarity and the instant dissolution of anything bitter or unseemly that may have transpired between us. Why had I dreaded seeing him? It was all a mystery to me now.
“Do you want to grab a table?” he asked, still beaming.
“Sure.” And I meant it.
We headed over to one of the few free tables left, which bore a red sign marked “Reserved”—only Parker would set aside a VIP area at her own engagement party. I plucked the sign away and placed it on a passing waiter’s tray.
“Breaking the rules?” Greg teased.
“I know the host,” I responded.
“You always were a rebel,” he said. “You ran off to New York, after all.”
Just like that, we slipped effortlessly back into our comfortable repartee. It felt so comforting to use phrases like “Remember that time” and “That’s so like you.”
The din around us dulled to a whisper as I listened intently. He filled me in on the missing five years, this strange separation that now required us to quickly fill in the blanks so that we could again say we knew absolutely everything about each other.
He had hung around school for a while after graduation, not sure what to do. Eventually he moved up to Jackson Hole with some other similarly wayward post grads with an ambition for little but to further hone their hobbies. He had gotten to know one of his ski students, a banker, who took a liking to him, offered him a job, which he took, and which he discovered he did well. Long story short, he had moved to corporate headquarters in Chicago, and was quickly working his way up the ladder there.
My turn went as well as it could, I thought. He laughed at my small-town girl in the big city stories, my Nadine stories, my Parker and Tess stories. I glossed over my broken heart/world turned upside down predicament and he admirably did not probe for details.
“It’s just so weird to see you again,” I marveled, resting my chin on my hand as I, once again, took it all in. I felt relaxed for the first time in a long time. “Where do you think we went wrong?” I asked before I could ponder whether it was appropriate.
“Oh, Lena, that was all so long ago.”
“No, I’m serious. What happened to us?”
“We were young. Neither of us really knew what we wanted, I don’t think.”
“Did I try to make you into something that you weren’t?” I asked.
“No, of course not,” he said, but I could tell by the way he bit his lip that he was lying.
“Greg, just tell me. I kind of need to know.”
“Lena, this is silly,” he said.
“It’s not silly. I wanted to move to New York and I couldn’t understand why you didn’t. I couldn’t imagine why you would want any other life than the one I wanted,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said, finally. “But we both know I was a little lost back then. I could have used some direction,” he said.
“Oh Greg, that’s so not true. I was just living in a dream world. I guess I couldn’t see what was right in front of me,” I said.
“Lena, I have to tell you something,” Greg said nervously.
“What do you think would happen if we just sat down here tonight and started over,” I wondered out loud.
“Started over?” Greg sounded confused.
“Yeah, like we put our old relationship aside and started fresh? A whole new thing. Can people do that?”
“Well, I don’t—”
“If they’re fully invested and honest with each other?”
“Lena, please just let me—”
“Don’t you think? I mean, is that possible? Can two people redefine a relationship after knowing each other for so long?” My mind was churning now.
Greg rested his head in his hands.
“I mean, the fact of the matter is we already know all the bad stuff about each other. We’d just build on the good—”
“Lena,” Greg interrupted suddenly. “I’m actually seeing someone. Her name’s Beth. We just started dating, but I have a really good feeling about it and as great as it is to see you again—”
“Oh, Greg! That’s wonderful!”
“It is?” He looked confused.
“Wait.” I thought for a moment. “Did you think I was coming on to you?”
“You weren’t?”
“No!” I said. “Oh, no. No, no, no!” I wanted to laugh. “You thought I meant us? No! I was thinking about just the idea,” I said. In reality of course, I was thinking about Jake. If I could imagine being friends with Greg after having a relationship for so many years, why couldn’t I have a relationship with Jake after being friends for so long?
“Oh, thank God,” Greg said, palpably relieved.
We shared a look and then both started laughing.
“You really had me worried there,” he said.
“You poor thing!” I said sympathetically.
“You know what, Lena Sharpe.” Greg looked at me now. “You haven’t changed a bit.”
And that’s where Greg was wrong. I had changed so much—I was only recently beginning to realize just how much. The old me would have looked at Greg, sitting in front of me bathed in nostalgia and flattering candlelight, and would have wondered: Is he the one? Is this a sign? Are we meant to be? But I didn’t have to wonder and I didn’t have to conjure images of our hypothetical life together. I was a completely different person than the girl Greg was remembering so tenderly right now. I liked her, too, I remembered her fondly, but I was finally ready to let her go.
“Excuse me, I believe this is our table.”
I turned my head in a way that, in hindsight, I feel must have had the dramatic effect of the cinematic slow motion used to depict, say, Lindsay Wagner morphin
g into the Bionic Woman or perhaps that seminal Brady Bunch episode in which Marcia gets hit in the nose by a football.
It was Sienna Skye.
Oh no, it doesn’t end there. It gets better….
Slinking behind her, looking like a pathetic column of corduroy and cowardice, was…Colin Bates.
“Oh my God! What is on your breasts?” Sienna squealed.
I looked over at Greg, but his gaze was locked steadily on the other pair of breasts involved in this conversation.
“It’s mud,” I answered, feeling my voice grow stronger as I elaborated without prompting. “I was mistaken for a male prostitute on the street earlier and his car sprayed mud on me when he sped off after realizing that I was a woman.”
Greg’s mouth hung agape. Colin’s face was ashen.
“So, like, we need this table right now.” Sienna was back on track. And then, by way of explanation of her authority I suppose, she added, “The groom happens to be one of my lawyers.”
I was wondering why she was here.
“I don’t think so,” I replied, ostensibly to Sienna, but my eyes remained fixated on Colin. I was not afraid. But I could tell he was. He started to slink away.
“Oh, Colin,” I called out to him.
He froze in his footsteps.
“May I speak with you for a moment?”
I didn’t wait for an answer as I grabbed his arm and led him to a corner. I really didn’t know what I was going to say to him. I just knew I had to say something.
“Lena, I should explain.” Colin shifted his feet, trying his luck at a preemptive strike.
“Okay,” I said.
He paused, clearly not expecting the opportunity and clearly unprepared for it. “I just want you to know that the feelings that I had for you—the feelings that I think we shared for each other—” he looked at me for affirmation “—were completely, entirely real. Absolutely. It’s just that Cecily, well…” He lowered his voice as if he were about to share some information in confidence with me. “She’s going through a rough patch right now and I just couldn’t. Well, you know. You’re a sensitive person, after all.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “And so, this thing with Sienna is just, you know, it’s just really nothing, is what it is. She just, you know, likes my writing and wanted to talk to me about it. It’s really just a professional meeting, in a sense. A real sense. I know you’re hurting but you’re going to feel much less awful about everything as soon as time has passed and you have, you know, healed. So, I just want to say that, well, I forgive you. I want to do that for you.”
I realized in that moment that if I had been guilty of visiting my imagination a little too often, then Colin had apparently taken up full-time residence in his.
“You forgive me?”
He nodded his head and smiled beneficently. “Absolutely.”
“City Boy.” I spat the words at him. They expressed my contempt perfectly. There was nothing else I wanted to say to him, so I turned and walked away.
“Wait? That was you?” I could hear him try to follow me, but he must have gotten tangled in the crowd, because his voice just faded away into nothing.
“Lena! I am so proud of you! Lena Sharpe!” I felt a tug at my dress and I turned to see none other than an out-of-breath Sheila Sunshine smiling wildly at me. She was wrapped in blue chiffon and her hair was pulled up in what appeared to be a “special occasion” silver scrunchy. Despite her formal wear, she still carried a canvas tote, crowded with buttons encouraging early mammograms and reproductive freedoms.
“Sheila? I didn’t expect to see you here,” I said. Wow, this party was just full of surprise special guests.
“Lena!” She sounded winded. “Was that Colin you were just with in the corner?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, it was,” I said, wondering how she figured that out.
“I knew it! I have an instinct about these things,” she said, beaming. “Your body language was amazing, I have to say. You’ve learned so much!”
As much as I wanted to roll my eyes at Sheila and tell her that I didn’t buy into any of her “life coaching” techniques, I couldn’t. She looked so small and vulnerable standing in front of me, her eyes filled with genuine goodwill. Sheila Sunshine was on my side. Maybe that’s why Parker got such comfort from her. Maybe that’s all a person really needs at the end of the day.
“Thanks, Sheila. You helped me a lot,” I said.
“You helped yourself, Lena.” She smiled up at me. “Now, what’s next for you?”
“I don’t know exactly. But it’s all about the future, not the past. You certainly got that right.”
“You’re going to be just fine. I can sense that about you,” Sheila said with a wink. “Now, go have some fun tonight.”
“That sounds like a great idea. If you’ll excuse me, I have to go congratulate the bride-to-be,” I said, noticing Parker out of the corner of my eye. I moved toward her, but the closer I got, the more I could sense that something wasn’t right.
“Parker, what’s wrong?” I said when I finally reached her.
“Everything.” She grabbed my wrist and I noticed her eyes were damp. Tears? This was in public, this was her moment, and she didn’t say anything about the mud on my dress. This was not Parker.
Parker pulled me through the crowds of people, almost all of whom attempted to win her attention, offer their congratulations and gasp at her engagement ring. She expertly weaved through the crowd, never stopping for a beat as she air-kissed, beamed and waved her way through the assemblage of revelers. Finally we reached the kitchen and, as the swinging doors swished behind us, it was if they had flicked a switch. Parker began to cry.
“Parker, what is it? What happened?” I had never seen her cry before. Had anyone? She hunched over, clutching her stomach. It occurred to me that she might have appendicitis. I steered her away from the trail of bow-tied waiters, marching in formation in and out of the kitchen.
“Carlos, we need more pâté, not so much crudités,” Parker instructed the head waiter with her last breath before collapsing on a sack of flour and launching into a suspended stretch of heaving and moaning.
“Parker, are you okay? Are you sick?”
She shook her head, which was now buried in her hands. We sat like that for a few minutes. In time, she raised her head again and looked at me. Her brows furrowed together (as much as they could given her prenuptial Botox treatments), her lips parted slowly, her eyes searched mine…and then she was gripped by another fit of tears.
“There you are, Lena. I’m so sorry we got separated!” Tess burst through the doors, looking exuberant, but she immediately sobered at the sight of Parker.
“Parker, what happened?”
Parker didn’t answer and I could only offer a confused shrug and a concerned look. Tess pulled up an empty wine crate beside us and took a seat. And there we sat. Finally, deliberately, Parker spoke.
“I can’t get married,” she said. An eerie calmness had crept into her voice.
“Why not?” Tess asked, in such a way that implied we were ready and able to smooth away any anxiety or allay any fear.
Parker didn’t hesitate and her voice didn’t waiver. “You know how they always say, ‘When you know you’ve found the one, you just know.’ Well, I know. And Brad is not the one.”
“Parker, it is completely normal to be nervous before something as major as marriage,” I said, but now she was making me nervous.
“But I don’t love him,” she said. “And I don’t think he loves me, either.”
The words hung in the air between us.
Her tone made things clear. This wasn’t last-minute fears or prenuptial jitters. This wasn’t Parker drama. Brad hadn’t worn the wrong shoes or picked the wrong restaurant. He was the wrong man. It was as simple—and as complicated—as that.
Parker had spent the past year and a half picking just the right shade of ivory invitations (not too eggshell-ish, but certainly not ecru), just the
right butter-cream to ice the cake (not too sour, but not too sweet), just the right bows for the flower girls’ hair (not too garish, but not too plain). She had gotten only one thing wrong. The groom.
“Have you talked to him?” I asked gently.
“We just talked.”
“And what did he say?”
She paused. “It’s more what he didn’t say.” She looked forlorn. “He wasn’t devastated. He wasn’t traumatized. He just stood there, sort of like he was annoyed.”
“He’s probably in shock. It’s just his way of dealing with things,” Tess countered.
“No.” Parker was firm. “It’s just him.”
I was certainly in shock. Parker and Brad always seemed to be a fait accompli. He had all the preliminary qualifications that she required: Ivy League undergrad (double major in econ and poly sci), top twenty law school (a little bit of trouble with that NY bar exam, but everyone knows it’s the toughest and the third time was the charm, so…), good-looking but not ostentatiously so, good family, good teeth, fiscally conservative but socially liberal, adept at home repair. Perfect. Sure, they argued, but Parker argued with everyone. And Brad was a lawyer, which meant he argued for a living.
More importantly, it was Parker’s time. Her life had unfolded in the orderly progression of a prix fixe dinner. Boarding school—Prom Queen—College—Serious boyfriend— Cohabitation—and then finally, inevitably (cue chorus) Marriage. If Parker didn’t get married, my whole view of the universe would be altered. She was that girl in the Sunday Times wedding section with the perfect pedigree, the perfect résumé, and the perfect groom. I was the one who was supposed to be searching, wondering, hoping for that missing piece of the puzzle, that ideal, hypothetical someone who, I was half convinced, would fall directly from the sky onto the park bench in front of me (when I was wearing lip gloss and enjoying a clear complexion).
We sat there splayed out like starfish, silently contemplating what had brought us to this moment.
“Parker, where is all this coming from?” Tess said, delicately.
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