“No, Halley. The mistake was that I ran. Period. I should have married Cole.”
My jaw is on the ground.
“I shouldn’t have left him. We could have worked through what I was feeling. Not being together is . . . wrong.”
“Marian, I’m sorry if I’m a bit slow, but bear with me. You’ve felt this way for how long?”
“Years,” she says with a sigh.
What is with all the pent-up feelings my girls have been having, for years on end? For that matter, Adam, too, with his paternal instincts kicking in? How is it possible to be so sidelined by so much drama in so little time?
“Years?” I parrot, baffled.
“Yeah, but only once you and Adam separated did I start realizing the gravity of the decisions we make about love,” Marian confesses. “It made me question my breakup with Cole, and it got me to start examining my life. For real. I’ve always missed my friendship with him, and I can’t help but wonder if I made the right decision. You know?” She moans. “I know I have no right to feel this way. I’m the one who ran from him.”
“You always have a right to your feelings, Marian.”
She gives a limp smile. “I guess I wonder what if. So”—she gestures to the living room behind us—“sometimes I look him up on Facebook, Instagram. Imagine what if.” She rolls her eyes.
I think of sex with Adam last night and say, “Doesn’t that make it harder? Doesn’t it make you miss him more? Confuse things somehow?”
“Sometimes. Usually.” She takes another drink. “But it makes me feel a little connected still. Maybe hanging on to silly hope, huh?”
“I don’t know, Marian.”
“It sounds cheesy, and don’t take it the wrong way, but . . .”
“Yes?”
“Seeing you and Adam go through all this shit . . . and now you two hooking up last night! I mean, love’s a complicated thing, isn’t it?”
“That’s putting it lightly.”
“It’s made me realize what I want. What I’ve missed.” She turns in her seat and looks at me head-on. “I know that it’s too late for Cole and me. It wouldn’t be fair to him to tell him I’ve rethought things all these years later. It just sucks to realize that you used to have what you want.”
Trying to regain my footing in all of this, I say, “Marian, you’ve been in the place before where you weren’t certain. When you decided that marrying Cole, the friend, was not enough. Can you say that you’re the same amount of certain today as you were then, that deciding not to marry Cole was the wrong thing to do? That you’re certain you want Cole, the friend and the lover?”
Marian’s green eyes turn slightly glassy, and she swallows hard. “I’ve been as certain as a girl can be, for a long time, Halley. I’ve pined over Cole for years. I don’t think I’ve ever stopped loving him.” She titters to herself. “I guess you realize how much you want something when you can’t have it. I’ve made a mistake, Halley. I know that now. God, more than ten years later. It’s so dumb.”
She rolls her eyes, then reaches a hand out to me. I clasp it.
“That’s why I want you to know how important it is to get this right with Adam,” she says earnestly, squeezing my hand. “Whatever that means. Whether you get back together or you guys d—”
“I know.” She doesn’t have to say the D word.
“Because when you let go and move on, that door closes, Halley. Another one opens, but it’s the door that’s locked shut that you want. Promise me you’ll be as sure as you can be before you decide.”
“As sure as I was when I married Adam,” I say. “The surest I’ve ever been.”
“Good. Because this feeling blows.” She rapidly blinks away the tears.
“Marian?”
“Yeah?” she says, forcing a smile.
“When you told Cole that you couldn’t marry him because you didn’t see him as more than a friend, did you mean it?” I’ve always wondered.
“Yes and no.”
“Ugh, Marian, nuanced answers are not helping.”
“Yes, because our friendship was so strong. We’d been friends for so long, it scared me. Were we really able to be a married couple? Everything happened so fast. We dated, were engaged, and about to be married all within a year. That’s crazy!”
“You’d known each other a lot longer before that, though. It’s not as crazy as you’re making it out to be,” I note.
“That’s part of the problem,” she says. “I felt like our friendship was stronger than our romance.” Again, rapid blinking grips Marian. “It was a very stressful decision to make, leaving Cole. Our relationship had moved so quickly. We were graduating. We were searching for jobs, trying to establish the start of our careers. There was so much change, Hals. Big change. And then the wedding, all the people . . .”
“It was a stressful time, I remember.” I recall my own experiences during that period. “But are those reasons really enough to decide you and Cole shouldn’t be married? You said yes and no. When you told him you didn’t see him as more than a friend, why didn’t you mean it?”
“It was the only way I knew he’d accept my leaving him. What I said hurt him. It hurt me. I didn’t know how else to pull back, so I pulled away the hardest I could. I was afraid, Halley.”
“Oh, Marian.”
“A few days before the wedding,” she says, and then pauses, adding, “I’ve never told a soul this before.”
Immediately my mind is whirling with an abundance of dramatic possibilities. “What?” I ask, waiting anxiously.
“I was a week late,” she confesses. “And that’s not normal for me.” Marian’s period runs like a Swiss train—insufferably reliable and on time. A week late would definitely have her in full-on panic mode.
“Omigod, Marian.”
“I was a complete wreck. Life was moving way too fast for me already. I was not ready to be a mother. I couldn’t even take a test I was so angry. I got my period the next day. It must have been all the stress delaying it. But do you know what ran through my mind when I thought I was pregnant?”
I wait in suspense.
“I was terrified. I didn’t want to have a baby. I didn’t want all of this commitment.”
“Alice came too early for Charlotte,” I say in support. “It’s normal to be scared, but it doesn’t necessarily inform anything about your relationship with Cole.” It may not be the greatest example, seeing as Charlotte’s going through a crisis in part because of that early surprise. “You and Cole could have worked through it, figured it out.”
“I stopped,” she says, “looked in the mirror, and realized that if I was afraid of being pregnant with my husband-to-be’s child, then what the hell was I doing marrying him? How could I not ask myself that?” She has a point.
“It just wasn’t the right time to get married,” I say.
“Definitely. The feeling of relief when I got my period made me the happiest I’d been all week. It was my wedding week, Halley! A girl shouldn’t feel happiest that she isn’t knocked up. She should be looking forward to the honeymoon, the promise to have and to hold, the happiest day of her life!” Another salient point.
“When I finally did think of all that happy wedding stuff,” she says, “even after I realized I wasn’t pregnant, I don’t know, I just . . . I was overwhelmed. I wanted the world to stop. Slow down. Life was flying by, and I felt like I had no control over it. Was this what I really wanted? I couldn’t honestly answer that question then.”
Marian pauses, and neither of us says a word. She dabs at her tears with the palms and backs of her hands, then blows her nose into one of the tissues from the box I fetch from the bathroom.
“I know now that I ran from Cole for all the wrong reasons,” she says. “I was scared and immature. I just wasn’t ready to get married, that’s all. Maybe, had we stepped back and waited, we’d eventually have gotten married. Or maybe we’d have learned that we really were only friends. But now we’ll never know.” She b
lows her nose.
“Losing Cole is my greatest mistake. I’ll never forgive myself. I’m not genuinely happy, Halley. Yes, I have an amazing career, more money than I know what to do with.” She waves a hand at the scenic view. “A killer town house, fancy little convertible Audi, a Carrie Bradshaw kind of wardrobe. I rampage-date, because that’s the only way I know how to do ‘relationships.’ Because I don’t want to fall in love with anyone who’s not Cole. He has it. The it factor. You know what I mean?”
Of course I do. Adam has it. After one date, I knew.
“It’s like,” she says, “what you do end up with—the packed little black book and meaningless sex and nonexistent relationships, all the things you thought you wanted with the freedom and noncommitment you craved—are the very things that make you realize that you want what you lost after all. You’d think I have it all, but I’m missing my great love. I’m missing Cole.”
“Marian?” I say, pensive.
“Hmm?” She folds her arms across her chest and lies back in her chaise.
“You know how we’ve both established how important it is for Adam and me to be absolutely certain about a decision before we commit to it?”
“Yes.”
“And you remember how I told you when you and Cole broke up, how brave I thought you were to walk away? How admirable it was, despite how hard it was, that you were honest with yourself about what you wanted? Or, rather, what you thought you wanted then?”
“Yes.”
“By that logic, then, don’t you owe it to yourself, and maybe even to Cole, to at least see if there’s something still there? Even after all this time?”
Marian bolts upright, a flustered look on her face—mouth open, eyes round, brows raised.
“Looking at Facebook and longing from afar isn’t going to help you heal and move on,” I say. “I know it’s a lot to ask and consider, and I’m sure there’s a valid argument we could make for how this is so unfair to Cole, but you’re talking about examining life, the gravity of love, doors closing and locking, wondering what if. Well what if you saw Cole? What if you told him why you really ran away? What if you told him you made the greatest mistake? What if you told him how you really feel?”
“Telling him I ran because I was terrified at the prospect of having his baby is going to make everything better?”
“It’s honest.”
“He’ll just question the depth of my love for him anyway. I mean, saying I ran because I thought everything was moving too quickly, that I was scared. That’s convincing love!”
“It says you got it wrong. We all make mistakes; we don’t always get it right the first time. It says you’re human, you messed up in a major way, and, even after all this time, you want to try to make it right. Whether right means you get back together or you have a friendship or you just forgive and move on, don’t you think you should give it a shot?”
She bites her cheek and looks off to the side. “I don’t know, Halley. I don’t know if anything could be had between us. After all these years. The damage I did. It’s unforgivable.”
“I think that’s up to him to decide.”
“I couldn’t,” she says, obstinate. “I couldn’t do that to him. Or to me.”
I take a chance and say, “Because you’re afraid of the answer? You have a sliver of hope now. He’s the great lost love, the one you let get away and can secretly pine for on Facebook, without his knowing? Without risk? So long as he’s nothing more than a picture on the screen, there’s hope and fantasy for reconciliation. But when a decision’s made, hope’s time is up. Like Adam and me, it’s about timing. It’s about delaying the painful and holding on to hope. It’s fighting for the hope.”
“Exactly.”
“You think there’s nothing scarier than the answer you don’t want to hear, so you cling to what you’ve got left—hope, possibility, a chance.”
“Yes.”
“Until, Marian”—I lean toward her—“you realize that the scariest thing of all is not the answer but what can happen when you let life beat you. I’m not the best spokesperson for this right now, but I’m trying. Take control of your life, Marian. Chase your happy.”
“And if I do tell him how I feel and he wants nothing to do with me? And I just hurt him all over again?”
“It’s probably a cheap response, but you know he won’t be the only one hurting. You hurt him, you hurt yourself.”
“Ain’t that the truth.”
“Ask yourself if getting your truth is worth the pain and the heartache. The possibility of loss, forever. And then,” I say with a shrug, “if it is, run to him, Marian.”
Eleven
Halley, it’s beautiful,” Nina says, holding up the cream silk newborn onesie I bought at a baby boutique that Charlotte recommended. A small gesture of encouragement after what Nina went through. Nina sets it across her lap and places the matching cap above it. “Thank you. I love it.”
“So is Griffin at your constant beck and call now that you’re on bed rest?” I ask, sitting cross-legged at the end of Nina’s king-size bed. “Treating you like a queen?”
Nina’s seated upright, propped up by a mountain of pillows. She has two large bottles of Evian and various snacks on her nightstand, and scattered across the bed are books, pens and pencils, her laptop, her cell phone, her reading glasses, the television remote control, and stacks upon stacks of papers, one thick sheaf bound.
“Griffin spends half his business hours working from home now,” Nina explains. “And then Desiree, his sister, comes by twice a week for a couple of hours to help me. She’s a nurse, so this is easy-peasy for her.” She scoots up. “And the rest is all me. I sleep, I snack, I work in bed, watch my soaps, listen to music. I can move around lightly for one or two hours a day, but other than that just basically to use the toilet, which feels like every hour with Rylan constantly pushing on my bladder. You’re jealous, aren’t you?”
“You are living in the lap of luxury,” I say with a waggle of my eyebrows.
When I ask Nina how she’s handling being away from work earlier than planned, she holds up the thick bound sheaf—a manuscript with red and blue pencil marks all over it.
“The bonus of the editing gig,” she says. “You can do it in your pajamas in bed.”
She sets aside the manuscript, reaches for the light-pink paperback among her papers, and hands it to me.
“Here,” she says, “I finished reading this. It’s one of our house’s newest women’s fiction releases. Not one of my acquisitions, unfortunately, but a complete gem.”
Following Home, the cover reads. “A tearjerker?” I speculate.
“Only a little. It’s inspiring, actually. In typical women’s fiction fashion, it’s about a woman who sets out to find herself. She’s fresh out of college and embarks on an open-ended trip around the world. No budget or timeline.”
“A trust-fund baby?”
“No. She actually does it all on the cheap—hitchhikes, sleeps in hostels, does odd jobs, and works under the table to earn her keep. It’s about finding yourself and not coming home until you do. It’s really quite sweet. Give it a read. I think you’ll enjoy it.”
“Thanks.”
Nina’s fingers glide over the onesie. There’s a tender and heartwarming quality to the way she stares at it, to the way she lightly smiles as she brings it up to her face. She touches the soft fabric to her cheek, then brings it to her nose and inhales.
“You know,” she says, “it sounds silly, but I can’t wait to smell Rylan. That baby smell, you know?”
“I do,” I say, recalling from Charlotte’s children that gentle, clean scent that only a baby has.
Nina smooths the onesie and cap back out across her lap. “I was absolutely terrified on Saturday.”
“I can’t imagine, Nina.”
“When it was happening, I wasn’t thinking about myself at all. I wasn’t thinking about what was happening to my body or what the pain meant for me. All I cou
ld think about was Rylan and how I wanted him safe. How I couldn’t lose him. How all that matters is that Rylan joins our family.”
“You’re already a mom, and he isn’t even here yet, hon. You’ll be spectacular.”
Nina’s hands move from the onesie to her growing belly. She sighs, a smile peeling across her lips.
“It may not exactly be easy right now, but it’s entirely worth it.” She looks up at me. “I’ve never wanted anything so much in all my life, Halley.”
On my way home from Nina’s, I decide to take a small detour and swing by Griffith Observatory and see my father. It’s been a draining few days. Hell, the whole summer and now autumn are taking their toll. I can’t take away Nina’s worry or do more than give her company and bring her lunch and baby clothes as she sits and waits out this precarious time. I resent this sense of helplessness. But Nina is confident and hopeful. She’s determined that she will deliver a healthy baby Rylan. And I don’t doubt she will.
As for Marian, I don’t know what more to tell her about Cole. I’m just beside myself at how long she’s hidden these feelings, how long she’s swum in conflicted love.
And Charlotte! God, how long she’s battled losing herself, and how she’s had to deal with the burden and guilt of infidelity.
And then what the hell did Adam and I do the other night? Were we ready to finally come to a conclusion? What did it say that our night together was different? Or was it all in my head? Or, even worse, some kind of self-fulfilled prophecy?
I park my car in the nearly empty lot of Griffith Observatory after the long, scenic, winding drive along the slope of Mount Hollywood. The sky is a gorgeous painting of orange, purple, and pink, the expansive view of Downtown and the Los Angeles Basin truly breathtaking. The tall trees bend against the slight breeze that gently whips up high in the mountains, as if to wave farewell to the last of the observatory visitors and welcome the evening skies.
“Hi,” I say to the janitor—Neal, his nametag reads—sweeping the entry, around the Foucault pendulum, which persists in its meticulous and gentle swaying.
Everything the Heart Wants Page 18