Maybe in Another Life

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

  When I was a kid, my dad used to take me to this doughnut shop called Primo’s Donuts. They had big, warm cinnamon rolls. We’d go get one every Sunday morning. As I got older, we got busier. Eventually, a lot of my parents’ time was spent shuttling Sarah to and from various rehearsals and recitals, so it became harder to find time to go. But when we did, I always ordered a cinnamon roll. I just love them so much.

  When I moved in with Gabby’s family, Tina used to buy the cans of raw cinnamon rolls and bake them for me on the weekends. The bottoms were always burned, and she had a light hand with the prepackaged icing, but I didn’t care. Even a bad cinnamon roll is still a good cinnamon roll.

  “With a lot of icing,” I tell Mark. “I don’t care if it’s a day’s worth of calories. Gabby, if you’re up for it, I can try to find Primo’s, and we can go there tomorrow.”

  “Done,” she says. “OK, we’re almost at the museum. Up on the right here. You can sort of see the lights now, just right there.”

  I look forward, past her head, and I think I see what she’s talking about. We breeze through the green light, hitting a red in front of LACMA, and now I see it perfectly.

  Streetlight after streetlight, rows of them, tightly lined up and lit. These are not the streetlights that you see today, the kind that shoot toward the sky and then curve over above the street. These are vintage. They look as if Gene Kelly might have swung on them while singing in the rain.

  I look at the installation, staring with purpose out the window. I suppose there is something very simple and beautiful about it. City lights against a backdrop of a pitch-black night does have a sense of magic to it. And maybe there’s a metaphor here, something about brightness in the middle of . . . Oh, hell. I’m lying. The truth is, I don’t get it.

  “Actually,” Gabby says, “why don’t we get out? Is that cool, Mark? Can we park and take a quick picture by the lights? Hannah’s first real night back in L.A.?”

  Mark nods, and when the light turns green, he pulls up to the curb. We get out of the car and head to the center of the lights.

  We take turns taking pictures of each other, round robin–style. Gabby and I stand between two rows of lights, and Mark takes pictures of us with our arms around each other. We wear oversized grins. We kiss each other on the cheek. We stand on either side of a lamppost and mug for the camera. And then I offer to take a picture of Mark and Gabby together.

  I switch places with Mark, getting out my own phone to take the photo. Gabby and Mark tuck themselves together, holding each other tight, posing underneath the lamps. I back up just a little, trying to frame the picture as I want.

  “Hold on,” I say. “I want to get all of it.” I can’t get far enough away from them to get the top of the lights in the shot, so I walk to the edge of the sidewalk. It’s still not far enough away, so I push the walk button and wait for a signal so I can stand on the street.

  “Just one sec!” I call out to them.

  “This better be good!” Gabby yells.

  The light turns red. The orange hand changes to a white-lit pedestrian, and I step down into the crosswalk.

  I turn around. I frame my shot: Mark and Gabby in the middle of a sea of lights. I hit the shutter. I check the photo. I start to take another for good measure.

  By the time I hear the screeching of tires, it’s too late to run.

  I am thrown across the street. The world spins. And then everything is shockingly still.

  I look at the lights. I look at Gabby and Mark. The two of them rush toward me, mouths agape, arms outstretched. I think they are screaming, but I cannot hear them.

  I don’t feel anything. Can’t feel anything.

  I think they are calling to me. I see Gabby reach for me. I see Mark dial his phone.

  I smell metal.

  I’m bleeding. I don’t know where.

  My head feels heavy. My chest feels weighed down, as if the entire world is resting on it.

  Gabby is very scared.

  “I’m all right,” I tell her. “Don’t worry. I feel fine.”

  She just looks at me.

  “Everything is going to be OK,” I tell her. “Do you believe me?”

  And then her face blurs, and the world mutes, and the lights go out.

  So I decide to stay out with Ethan.

  I’m eager to spend time with a good man for a change.

  I turn and say good-bye to Gabby and Mark. That very second, “Express Yourself” comes on in the bar, and I know I’ve made the right decision. I absolutely love this song. Sarah and I used to make our parents listen to it over and over in the car, singing at the top of our lungs. I’ve got to stay and dance to this.

  “You don’t mind, right?” I say as I hug Gabby. “I just want to stay out a bit longer. See where the night takes me.”

  “Oh, please, go for it!” she says as I hug Mark good-bye. I can see a sly smile on her face, visible only to me. I roll my eyes at her, but a small grin sneaks out at the last minute. Then Gabby and Mark head for the door.

  “So,” Ethan says as he turns to me, “the night is ours for the taking.” The way he says it, with a little bit of scandal in his voice, makes me feel as if we’re teenagers again.

  “Dance with me?” I say.

  Ethan smiles and opens the door to the bar. He holds it for me to walk through. “Let’s do this,” he says.

  We only get a minute or so before the song ends and another starts playing. This new one has a Spanish feel to it, a Latin beat. I feel my hips start to move without my permission. They sway for a moment, back and forth, just testing the waters. Soon I just let go and allow my body to move the way it wants to. Ethan slips his arm around the lowest part of my back. His leg just barely grazes the inside of mine. He moves back and forth and then pulls me quickly against him. He spins me. We forget about everyone else around us, and we stay like this, song after song, moving in tandem. Our faces stay close together but never touch. Every once in a while, I catch him looking at me, and I find myself blushing ever so slightly.

  By the end of the night, when the dancing is over and the bar is thinning out, I look around and realize that everyone else in the group has gone home.

  Ethan grabs my hand and leads me outside. As our feet hit the sidewalk, away from the din of the bar, I feel the effects of a night spent in a small place with loud music. The outside world feels muted compared with the bar. My eyes feel a bit dry. The balls of my feet are killing me.

  Ethan’s leading me down the street as the rest of the bar funnels out.

  “Where’s your car?” I ask him.

  “I walked. I live only a few blocks from here. This way,” he says. “I have an idea.”

  I stumble to try to keep up with him. He’s going too fast, and my feet are killing me. “Wait, wait, wait,” I say.

  I bend over and take my shoes off. The sidewalk is grimy. I can see wads of gum so old they are now black spots in the concrete. Up ahead, a tree has rooted itself so firmly into the ground that it has broken up the sidewalk, creating jagged edges and crevices. But my feet hurt too much. I pick up my shoes and follow Ethan.

  Ethan looks down at my feet and stops in place. “What are you doing?”

  “My feet hurt. I can’t walk in these. It’s fine,” I say. “Let’s go.”

  “Do you want me to carry you?”

  I start laughing.

  “What’s so funny?” he asks. “I could carry you.”

  “I’m good,” I say. “This isn’t the first time I’ve walked barefoot through a city.”

  He laughs and starts walking again. “As I was saying . . . I have a great idea.”

  “And what is that?”

  “You’ve been dancing,” he says as he pulls me forward.

  “Obviously.”

  “And you’ve been drinking.”

  “A bit.”

  “And you’ve been sweating up a storm.”

  “Uh . . . I guess so?”

  “But there is one thing you
haven’t been doing.”

  “OK?”

  “Eating.”

  The second he says it, I am suddenly ravenous. “Oh, my God, where do we eat?” I say.

  He quickens his pace toward the major intersection up ahead. I start to smell something. Something smoky. I run with him, my feet hitting the gritty concrete with every step, until we make our way to the crowd forming on the sidewalk.

  I look at Ethan. He tells me what I’m smelling. “Bacon. Wrapped. Hot dogs.”

  He cuts through the crowd and walks up to the food cart. He orders two for us. The cart looks like a glorified ice cream wagon that you might see someone pushing at the park. But the woman running it is keeping up with the orders of all the tipsy people out on the street.

  Ethan comes back with our hot dogs nestled in buns. He puts one under my nose. “Smell that.”

  I do.

  “Have you ever smelled anything that good this late at night in any other city you’ve been to?”

  Right now, this second, I honestly can’t think of a time. “Nope,” I say.

  We walk around the block and find ourselves on a residential street. The sounds of the crowd and the smoke of the cart are gone. I can hear crickets. While standing in the middle of a city. I forgot that about Los Angeles. I forgot how it’s urban and suburban all at once.

  The street is lined with palm trees so tall you have to throw your neck back to see their full scope. They continue on up and down this block, up and down the blocks to the north and south. Ethan walks to one of the trees and the surrounding grass. He sits down on the thin curb that separates them from the street. He puts his feet on the road, his back up against the tree. I do the same next to him.

  The bottoms of my feet are black at this point. I can only imagine how dirty I will make Gabby’s shower tomorrow morning.

  “Dog me,” I say, holding my hand out, waiting for Ethan to give me the one he has decided is mine.

  He does.

  “Thank you,” I say. “For buying me dinner. Or breakfast. Not sure which this is.”

  He nods, having already taken a bite. After he swallows, he says, “Ah, I made a rookie mistake. I should have gotten us water, too.”

  The world is starting to come into focus a bit more now that we have left the bar. I can hear better. I can see better. And maybe most important, I can taste this delicious hot dog in all of its bacon-wrapped glory.

  “I know it’s become a cliché now,” I say. “But bacon really does make everything else taste better.”

  “Oh, I know,” he says. “I don’t want to sound pretentious, but I really feel like I knew that before everyone else. I have loved bacon for years.”

  I laugh. “You were into bacon when it was just a breakfast food.”

  He laughs and adopts an affected tone. “Now it’s changed. It’s so commercial.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “You probably put bacon on a doughnut back in oh-three.”

  “All kidding aside,” Ethan says, “I really do think I figured out candied bacon first.”

  I start laughing at him between bites.

  “I’m not joking! When I was a kid, I would always put maple syrup on my bacon. Maple syrup plus bacon equals . . . candied bacon. You’re welcome, America.”

  I laugh at him and put my hand on his back. “I’m sorry to break it to you,” I say, “but everyone’s been doing that for years.”

  He looks right at me. “But no one told me about it. I came up with it on my own,” he says. “It’s my own idea.”

  “Where do you think people got the inspiration for maple bacon doughnuts or brown sugar bacon? All around the country for years and years, people have been putting maple syrup on their bacon and loving it.”

  He smiles at me. “You have just ruined the only thing I’ve ever considered a personal achievement.”

  I laugh. “Oh, come on. You’re talking to a woman with no career, no home, barely any money, and no potential,” I say. “Let’s not bring up personal achievements.”

  Ethan turns to me. His hot dog is long gone. “You don’t really think that,” he says.

  Normally, I would make a joke. But jokes take so much effort. I wave my head from side to side, as if deciding. “I don’t know,” I say. “I sort of really think that.”

  Ethan shakes his head, but I keep talking. “I mean, this is just not where I thought my life was going, at all. And I look at someone like Gabby or someone like you, and I mean, I sort of feel like I’m behind. It’s not a big deal,” I say, finally realizing that I’m complaining. “Just something for me to work on. I mean, I guess I am just hoping to find a city and stick with it one of these days.”

  “I always thought you should be back here,” Ethan says, looking at me directly.

  I smile, but when Ethan doesn’t break his gaze, I get nervous. I slap my hands on my thighs lightly. “Well,” I say, “should we get going?”

  Ethan stares forward for a moment, his eyes focused on the ground underneath his feet. Then he sort of comes to, snaps out of it. “Yeah,” he says. “We should head back.” He stands up as I do, and for a moment, our bodies are closer together than either of us anticipated. I can feel the warmth of his skin.

  I start to back away, and he lightly grabs my hand to stop me. He looks me in the eye. I look away first.

  “Something I’ve been wanting to ask you for a while,” he says.

  “OK,” I say.

  “Why did we break up?”

  I look at him and feel my head cock to the side ever so slightly. I’m genuinely surprised by the question. I laugh gently. “Well,” I say, “I think that’s what eighteen-year-olds do. They break up.”

  The tension doesn’t dissipate.

  “I know,” he says. “But did we have a good reason?”

  I look at him and smile. “Did we have a good reason?” I say, repeating his question. “I don’t know. Teenagers don’t really have to have good reasons.”

  He laughs and starts walking back in the direction we came from. I walk with him.

  “You broke my heart,” he says, smiling at me. “You know that, right?”

  “Excuse me? Oh, no, no, no,” I say. “I was the heartbroken one. I was the one who got dumped when her boyfriend went to college.”

  He shakes his head at me, smiling despite himself. “What a load of crap,” he says. “You broke up with me.”

  I smile and shake my head at him. “I think we’re dealing in revisionist history here,” I tell him. “I wanted to stay together.”

  “Ridiculous!” he says. His hands are buried deep in his pockets, his shoulders hunched forward. He is walking slowly. “Absolutely ridiculous. A woman breaks your heart, comes back to town a decade later, and pins it on you.”

  “OK, OK,” I say. “We can agree to disagree.”

  He looks at me and shakes his head. “Nope!” he says, laughing. “I don’t accept.”

  “Oh, you’re being silly,” I say.

  “I am not,” he says. “I have proof.”

  “Proof?”

  “Cold, hard evidence.”

  I stop in place and cross my arms. “This should be good. What’s your proof?”

  He stops with me, comes closer toward me. “Exhibit A: Chris Rodriguez.” My senior-year boyfriend.

  “Oh, please,” I say. “What does Chris Rodriguez prove?”

  “You moved on first. I came home from Berkeley for Christmas ready to knock on your door and sweep you off your feet,” he says. “And the minute I get into town, I hear you’re dating Chris Rodriguez.”

  I laugh and roll my eyes just a little bit. “Chris didn’t mean anything. I wasn’t even with him by the time you came home from school for the summer. I thought, you know, maybe you’d come home for those three months and . . .”

  He moves his eyebrows up and down at me, the visual version of hubba hubba.

  I laugh, slightly embarrassed. “Well, it didn’t matter anyway, right? Because you were with Alicia by then.”
<
br />   “Only because I thought you were with Chris,” he says. “That’s the only reason I dated her.”

  “That’s terrible!” I say.

  “Well, I didn’t know that at the time!” he says. “I thought I loved her. You know, I was nineteen years old at that point. I had the self-awareness of a doorknob.”

  “So maybe you did love her,” I say. “Maybe it was you who moved on from me.”

  He shakes his head. “Nah,” he says. “She broke up with me when we got back to school that year. Said she needed someone who could tell her she was the only one.”

  “And you couldn’t do that?”

  He looks at me pointedly. “Nope.”

  It’s quiet again for a moment. Neither of us having much to say or, maybe more accurately, neither of us knowing what to say.

  “So we broke each other’s heart,” I say at last. I start walking forward again.

  He joins me and smiles. “Agree to disagree,” he says.

  We continue walking down the street, stopping at a red light, waiting for a cross signal.

  “I never had sex with Chris,” I tell him as we walk farther and farther into the residential section.

  “No?” Ethan says.

  “No,” I say, shaking my head.

  “Any reason why not?” Ethan asks.

  I sway my head from side to side, trying to find the words to explain what I felt back then. “I . . . I couldn’t stand the thought of sharing that with someone other than you,” I finally say. “Didn’t seem right to do it with just anybody.”

  I was twenty-one by the time I had sex with someone else. It was Dave, my college boyfriend. The reason I slept with him wasn’t that I thought he might mean something to me the way Ethan did. I did it because not doing it was getting weird. If I’m being honest, somewhere along the way, I lost that feeling that the person had to be special, that it was something sacred. “I bet you didn’t turn down Alicia’s advances,” I say, teasing him. For a moment, I think I see him blush.

  He guides me toward an ivy-covered building on a dark, quiet street. He opens the lobby door and lets me in first.

  “You have me there,” he says. “I’m embarrassed to admit that there have been times in my life when rejection from the woman I love has served only to encourage me sleeping with others. It’s not my best trait. But it does numb the pain.”