Maybe in Another Life

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

  “I’m sure it does,” I say.

  He guides me to his apartment on the second floor.

  “Doesn’t mean anything, though,” he says. “Sleeping with Alicia didn’t mean that I didn’t love you. That I wouldn’t have dropped everything to be with you. If I thought . . . well, you know what I’m getting at.”

  I look at him. “Yeah, I do.”

  He opens the door and gestures for me to walk in. I look at him and walk in front of him into his place. It’s a studio apartment but big, making it cozy without seeming cramped. It’s neat but not necessarily clean, which is to say that everything is in its place, but there are dust bunnies in the corners, a water ring on the dark wood coffee table. He has painted the walls a deep but unobtrusive blue. A flat-screen TV is mounted on the wall opposite the couch, and shelves overloaded with books cover every available space. His bed linens are a dark, forgiving gray. Did I know, back then, that this was the kind of adult he’d grow up to be? I don’t know.

  “It was very hard to get over you,” he says.

  “Oh, yeah?” I say. There is a lump in my throat, but I try to cover it up by being flirtatious and light. “What was so hard to get over?”

  He throws his keys onto a side table. “Three things,” he says.

  I smile, letting him know I’m ready to listen. “These should be good!”

  “I’m serious. Are you ready to hear them? Because I’m not messing around.”

  “I’m ready,” I say.

  Ethan puts up his thumb to start the count. “One,” he says. “You always had your hair up, just like it is now, in that high bun thing. And very occasionally, you would take it down.” He pauses and then starts again. “I just loved that moment. That moment between up and down, when it fell across your neck and around your face.”

  I find myself fiddling with the bun on the top of my head. I have to stop myself from adjusting it. “OK,” I say.

  “Two,” he says. “You always tasted like cinnamon and sugar.”

  I laugh. If I wasn’t sure before, I am now positive that he is being sincere. “From the cinnamon rolls.”

  He nods. “From the cinnamon rolls.”

  “And what’s the third?” I ask. I almost don’t want to know, as if it’s the third thing he says that will undoubtably and irrevocably usher forth all those teenage feelings, a flood of blushing cheeks and quickening heartbeats. It is the teenage feelings that are the most intoxicating, the ones that have the power to render you helpless.

  “You smelled like tangerines,” he says.

  I give him a look. “Orange Ginger.”

  “Yeah,” he says. “You always smelled like Orange Ginger.” He comes ever so close to my neck. “Still do.”

  He is close enough that I can smell him, too, the mixture of laundry detergent and sweat.

  I can feel the skin of my cheeks start to burn, my pulse start to speed up.

  “You smell good, too,” I say. I don’t move away.

  “Thank you,” he says.

  “In high school, you smelled like Tide.”

  “I think that’s what my mom used,” he says.

  “When you left, I smelled your old T-shirts,” I say. “I used to sleep in them.”

  He listens to me. He takes my words, my feelings, and he spits them back out into facts. “You loved me,” he says.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I did. I loved you so much it sometimes burned in my chest.”

  He leans forward ever so slightly. “I want to kiss you,” he says.

  I breathe in. “OK,” I say.

  “But I don’t want to do this if . . . I don’t want this to be a one-time thing.”

  “I don’t know what it is,” I say. “But it’s not a one-time thing.”

  He smiles and leans in.

  It’s gentle at first, the touch of lip to lip, but I lean into it, and when I do, it overtakes us.

  We back up to the closed front door behind us, my shoulders just grazing the door frame.

  His lips move just like they used to, and his body feels just like it used to, and as much as two people can rewind the clock, as much as they can erase time, we do.

  By the time we’re in his bed, it feels as if we never left each other. It feels as if we never broke up, my parents never moved, I never started dating Chris Rodriguez, and Ethan never met Alicia Foster. It feels as if I never felt the chill of Boston in my hands or the wind of D.C. in my hair. As if I never felt the rain of Portland and Seattle on my shoulders or the heat of Austin on my skin. It’s as if New York City, and all of its disappointments, never entered my heart.

  It feels as if I finally made a good decision for once.

  THREE DAYS LATER

  I open my eyes.

  My head feels heavy. The world feels hazy. My eyes adjust slowly.

  I’m in a hospital bed. My legs are stretched out in front of me, a blanket covering them. My arms are by my sides. There is a blond woman in front of me with a stoic but kind look on her face. She’s about forty. I can’t be sure, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen her in my life.

  She is wearing a white coat and holding a folder.

  “Hannah?” she says. “Nod if you can hear me, Hannah. Don’t try to talk just yet. Just nod.”

  I nod. It hurts, just that little nod. I can feel it down my back. I can feel a dull ache all over my body, and it seems to be increasing exponentially.

  “Hannah, my name is Dr. Winters. You’re at Angeles Presbyterian. You’ve been in a car accident.”

  I nod again. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to. But I do.

  “We can get into the details later, but I want to go over the big news now, OK?”

  I nod. I don’t know what else to do.

  “First, on a scale of one to ten, how much pain are you in? Ten being so excruciating you don’t think you can bear it for another second. One being you feel perfectly fine.”

  I start to try to talk, but she stops me.

  “Show me on your fingers. Don’t hold them up. Don’t move your arms. Just show me with your hands at your sides.”

  I look down at my hands, and then I pull back the four fingers on my left hand.

  “Six?” she says. “OK.”

  She writes something down in the folder and starts fiddling with one of the machines behind me.

  “We’re going to get you down to one.” She smiles. It’s a reassuring smile. She seems to think everything is going to be OK. “Soon you’ll have an easier time moving your arms and torso, and speaking won’t be too hard once you’ve been up for a little while. You have suffered blood loss and broken bones. That’s an oversimplification, but it will work for now. You’re going to be OK. Walking, at first, is going to be hard. You will need to practice a bit before it comes naturally to you again, but it will, one day, come naturally to you again. That’s what I want you to take away from this conversation.”

  I nod. It hurts less this time. Whatever she did, it hurts less this time.

  “Now, you’ve been unconscious for three days. Some of that time was because of the blow to the head you sustained during the accident, but the rest is because we put you under for surgery.”

  She’s quiet for a moment, and I see her look off to the side. She turns back to me.

  “It’s perfectly normal if you don’t remember the accident. It may take some time to come back. Do you remember the accident?”

  I start to answer her.

  “Just nod or shake your head for now,” she says.

  I shake my head slightly.

  “That’s fine. That is completely normal. Nothing to be concerned about.”

  I nod to let her know I understand.

  “Now, as I said, we can go over the details of your injury and your surgery when you are feeling a bit stronger. But there is one last thing that I want to make sure you know as soon as possible.”

  I stare at her. Waiting to hear what she has to say.

  “You were pregnant,” she says. “At the time of
the accident.”

  She picks up my chart and consults a piece of paper.

  Wait, what did she just say?

  “It looks like you were about ten weeks along. Did you know? Nod or shake your head if you feel up for it.”

  I can feel my heart start to beat faster. I shake my head.

  She nods in understanding. “OK,” she says. “That’s more common than you think. If you’re not trying to get pregnant and you don’t always have regular periods, it’s possible not to figure it out at this stage of the pregnancy.”

  I continue to stare, unsure what, exactly, is happening right now, stunned silent.

  “The baby did not make it through,” she says. “Which, unfortunately, is also common.”

  She waits for me to respond, but I have no response. My mind is blank. All I can feel is my eyes blinking rapidly.

  “I am sorry,” she says. “I imagine this is a lot for you to digest at once. We have a number of resources here at the hospital to help you deal with everything that has happened. The good news, and I really do hope you are able to see the good news, is that you are going to be physically back to normal soon.”

  She looks at me. I avert my eyes. And then I nod. It occurs to me that my hair is down around my face. I must have lost my hair tie. It feels sort of uncomfortable like this, down. I want it back up in a bun.

  Did she just say I lost a baby?

  I lost a baby?

  “Here is what we are going to do,” the doctor says. “You have a lot of people here who have missed you these past few days. A lot of people who have been excited for this moment, the moment when you wake up.”

  I close my eyes slowly.

  A baby.

  “But I find that some patients need some time alone right after they have woken up. They aren’t ready to see Mom and Dad and their sister and friends.”

  “My mom and dad?” I start to say, but my voice comes out as an unintelligible whisper. It’s scratchy and airy.

  “You’ve had a tube in your throat for some time. Talking is going to be difficult but will come back the more you do it. Just take it slowly. One or two words at a time at first, OK? Nod and shake your head when you can.”

  I nod. But I can’t resist. “They’re here?” I say. It hurts to say it. It hurts on the edges of my throat.

  “Yep. Mom, Dad, your sister, Gabby, right? Or . . . Sarah? Sorry. Your sister is Sarah, friend is Gabby?”

  I smile and nod.

  “So this is the question. Do you need some time on your own? Or are you ready for family? Lift your right arm for time alone. Left for family.”

  It hurts, but my left hand shoots up, higher than I thought it would go.

  I open my eyes.

  My head feels heavy. The world feels hazy. My eyes adjust slowly.

  And then I smile wide, because right in front of me, staring back at me, is Ethan Hanover.

  I stretch slowly and push my head further into the pillow. His bed is so soft. It’s the kind of bed you never want to leave. I suppose, for the past few days, I really haven’t.

  “Hi,” he says gently. “Good morning.”

  “Good morning,” I say back. I am groggy. My voice is scratchy. I clear my throat. “Hi,” I say. That’s better.

  “You haven’t had a cinnamon roll since you’ve been here,” he says. “That’s at least three entire cinnamon-roll-less days.” He is shirtless and under the covers. His hair is scattered and unkempt. His five o’clock shadow is way past five o’clock. I can smell his breath as it travels the short distance from his pillow to mine. It leaves something to be desired.

  “Your breath stinks,” I say, teasing him. I have no doubt that mine smells much the same. After I say it, I put my hand over my mouth. I talk through the spaces between my fingers. “Maybe we should brush our teeth,” I say.

  He tries to pull my hand away, and I won’t let him. Instead, I dive under the covers. I am wearing one of his T-shirts and the underwear that I picked up from my suitcase at Gabby’s yesterday. Other than the trip to her place to grab some stuff, Ethan and I haven’t left his apartment since we got here Saturday night.

  He dives under the covers to find me and grabs my hands, holding them away from my own face.

  “I’m going to kiss you,” he says.

  “Nope,” I say. “No, my breath is too terrible. Free me from your superhuman grip, and let me brush my teeth.”

  “Why are you making such a big deal out of this?” he says, laughing, not letting go of me. “You stink. I stink. Let’s stink together.”

  I pop my head out of the covers to inhale fresh air, and then I go back under.

  “Fine,” I say, and I breathe onto his face.

  “Ugh,” he says. “Absolutely revolting.”

  “What if my breath smelled this bad every morning? Would you still want to be with me?” I say, teasing him.

  “Yep!” he says, and then he kisses me deeply. “You’re not very good at this game.”

  That’s the joke we came up with Sunday night. What would it take to derail this thing between us? What could ruin this great thing we have going?

  So far, we’ve established that if I became an Elvis impersonator and insisted that he come to all of my shows, he’d still want to be with me. If I decided to get a pet snake and name it Bartholomew, he’d still want to be with me. Perpetual halitosis, it looks like, isn’t a deterrent, either.

  “What if everything I put in the washing machine shrinks?” This one isn’t hypothetical. This one is very real.

  “Doesn’t matter,” he says as he moves off me and gets out of bed. “I do my own laundry.”

  I lie back down, my head on the pillow. “What if I mispronounce the word coupon all the time?”

  “Clearly, that’s fine, because you just mispronounced it.” He picks his jeans up off the floor and pulls them on.

  “No, I didn’t!” I say. “ ‘Cue-pawn.’ ”

  “It’s ‘coo-pawn.’ ” He slips on his shirt.

  “Oh, my God!” I say, sitting upright and outraged. “Please tell me you are joking. Please tell me you don’t say ‘coo-pawn.’ ”

  “I can’t tell you that,” he says. “Because it would be a lie.”

  “So this is it, then. This is the thing that stands in our way.”

  He throws my pants at me. “Sorry, but no. You’ll just have to get over it. If it makes you feel better, we will never use coupons for the rest of our lives, OK?”

  I stand up and put my pants on. I leave his shirt on but grab my bra from the floor and slip it on underneath. It’s such a bizarre and uncoordinated thing to do, to put on a bra while you still have a shirt on, that about halfway through, I wonder why I didn’t just take the shirt off to begin with.

  “OK,” I say. “If you promise we will never talk about coupons, then fine, we can be together.”

  “Thank you,” he says, grabbing his wallet. “Get your shoes on.” I pull my hair down briefly so that I can redo my bun. He stares at me for a moment as it falls. He smiles when I put it back up. “Where are we going?” I ask him. “Why are we leaving the bed?”

  “I told you,” he says as he puts on his shoes. “You haven’t had a cinnamon roll in three days.”

  I start laughing.

  “Hop to it, champ,” he says. He is now fully dressed and ready to go. “I don’t have all day.”

  I put on my shoes. “Yes, you do.”

  He shrugs. I grab my purse and head out the front door so quickly he has to catch up. By the time we get down to the garage, he’s narrowly in front of me and opens my door.

  “You’re quite the gentleman these days,” I say as he gets into the front seat and turns on the car. “I don’t remember all of this chivalry when we were in high school.”

  He shrugs again. “I was a teenager,” he says. “I hope I’ve grown since then. Shall we?”

  “To the cinnamon rolls!” I say. “Preferably ones with extra icing.”

  He smiles and
pulls out of the driveway. “Your wish is my command.”

  My dad is sitting to my right, holding my hand. My mom is at the foot of the bed, staring at my legs. Sarah is standing by the morphine drip.

  Gabby came in with them an hour ago. She’s the only one who looked me in the eye at first. After giving me a hug and telling me she loved me, she said she’d leave us all alone to talk. She promised she’d be back soon. She left so that my family would have some privacy, but I also think she needed some time to pull herself together. I could see as she turned to leave that she was wiping her eyes and sniffling.

  I think I am hard to look at.

  I can tell that my mom, my dad, and Sarah have been crying on and off today. Their eyes are glassy. They look tired and pale.

  I haven’t seen them since Christmas the year before last, and it is jarring to see them in front of me now. They are in the United States. Los Angeles. The four of us, the Martin family, haven’t been together in Los Angeles since I was a junior in high school. Our yearly family reunions have since taken place in their London apartment, a space that Sarah very casually and unironically refers to as a “flat.”

  But now they are here in my world, in my country, in a city that once was ours.

  “The doctor said you’re going to be able to walk again pretty soon,” Sarah says as she fiddles with the arm of the bed. “Which I guess is good news? I don’t know.” She stops and looks down at the floor. “I don’t know what to say.”

  I smile at her.

  She’s wearing black jeans and a cream luxe sweater. Her long blond hair is blown dry and straightened. She and I have the same hair color naturally, a deep brown. But I see why she went blond. She looks good blond. I tried it once, but Jesus, did you know you have to go to the salon to get your roots done like every six weeks? Who has that kind of time and money?

  Sarah’s twenty-six now. I suppose she might look a bit more like me, have some curves to her, if she wasn’t dancing all day. Instead, she’s muscular and yet somehow willowy. Her posture is so rigid that if you didn’t know her better, you might suspect she was a robot.