Cold Feet

by Amy FitzHenry

  I held up my finger to say I knew exactly what he was getting to. Without a word, I opened up the University of California’s web page on my phone, where they had data on the gazillions of students who had attended the nine campuses over the years. I clicked on the link to alumni relations and typed in my password. I looked for the all-student search box and typed in my last name. One millisecond later, I had two hits. I gripped Dusty’s arm so hard I practically pulled it off the table.

  “There’s me. And there’s . . . Tyler Moon,” I read aloud. “He’s a freshman at Berkeley.” I was suddenly terrified to be so close. Scared that it could be this easy.

  “What’s his home address?” Dusty asked faintly, equally shocked that his idea may have worked.

  “I don’t know, it only has his e-mail address.” This could be it. This could be the moment I found my father. All I had to do was push play on the rest of the scene.

  “Let’s e-mail him,” I said, before I could change my mind.

  “Are you sure, Emma? What are we gonna say?” Dusty said, now looking nearly as nervous as I was. “We can’t exactly ask for parents’ contact information.”

  “Oh, yes, we can,” I said knowingly. “You want a college kid’s address? All you have to do is ask where to send the bills.”

  “Whoa. You’re good,” he said, thoroughly impressed. I felt inordinately pleased by his compliment.

  “Can I borrow this?” I asked, pointing to Dusty’s phone. I figured Tyler wouldn’t question an e-mail from Dusty, given the ridiculous amount of information sharing that goes on these days, whereas emma.moon@gmail.com might alert him that something was up. I quickly typed an e-mail requesting his home address for some overdue tuition bills.

  For the next few minutes after I sent it, Dusty and I tried unsuccessfully to make small talk, both of us distracted by the existence of Tyler Moon across the bay. Finally we heard a small ping of incoming mail on his phone and nearly jumped out of our seats. Dusty grabbed the phone.

  “‘Hey. Sure,’” he read slowly. “‘You can send all bills to my home address below, so I don’t get stuck with them. ROFL’.” Dusty paused. “What does that mean?”

  “Rolling on the floor laughing. It’s stupid. Keep going.”

  “Then he lists a home address, which is less than a mile from here.” I felt my heart jump as Dusty scrolled. “Okay, Tyler, we don’t need the full zip code. Holy shit, Emma. There is one more line at the end.”

  “What?” I demanded. “Read it.” Dusty cleared his throat.

  “‘By the way, the bill should be addressed to my dad. His name is Hunter Moon.’”

  I burst back into the room to tell Liv about our breakthrough. “I think we may have found him, Liv! I really do. Dusty had this great idea. It’s a long story, but I feel really good about this.”

  “Dusty, as in our roommate? That is amazing, Em. You can tell me all about it over dinner because I am starving, but before that, you need to do something else. No arguments, Emma, I’m putting my foot down. I’m not eating until you call Sam.”

  “You’re going on hunger strike?” I laughed, still giddy about our discovery.

  “Yes. You have to deal with it, Emma. You have to ask him what happened with Val. You have to talk to him.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Sam answered the phone after a single ring.

  “Hey, babe! How’s the trip going? I miss you,” he said.

  “Hey. I miss you, too,” I said, ignoring his question.

  “How’s Napa? Are you girls wrapped in seaweed right now and debating which Real Housewives series is the best?”

  “No, we both know it’s New York,” I answered automatically. “Although Beverly Hills is a close second.”

  “I miss you,” he repeated. “Tell me about Napa.” I looked around the small park I found down the street from the apartment to make my call as I considered his directive. Okay, well, how about, I skipped out on the fancy lodge you surprised us with and came to San Francisco to go on a secret mission to find my father. Oh, and I have doubts about marriage in general. Does that about cover it?

  “I’m so glad you called,” he continued, oblivious. “I was worried at dinner the other night. The money fight. And I know you were upset on Friday morning when I mentioned adding another room on to the house. I want our home to be perfect, but I didn’t mean to make you worry. I know how that stuff stresses you out.

  “You didn’t call me back last night,” he went on, without a trace of accusation, only confusion. “Is everything okay?” Instantly, he sounded nervous, his usual steadiness shaken. I wanted to say yes, everything is fine. I wanted to hang up and worry about all of this another time. Actually, I wanted to ignore it for the rest of my life. But the fear had become too much; the dread in my chest had expanded to the point that I could no longer properly breathe.

  “I ran into Val,” I said, before I could consider the wisdom of bringing her up.

  “Who? Which Val? Valerie Babbitt?”

  “Yes.” I was silent, losing my nerve. Before I could talk myself out of it, I blurted out, “She said some stuff about you guys hooking up. While we were together.” When he didn’t respond immediately, my stomach started convulsing. As the seconds ticked by, the uneasiness turned to full-throttle panic. He wasn’t denying it. Why wasn’t he denying it? I wanted to cry, or scream, or find the nearest black hole and fall into it. Because at that moment I knew. The second he paused I knew that Val wasn’t confused, crazy, or lying. I knew it was true.

  “Emma. I don’t know what to say. I am so sorry.”

  “You’re sorry? So it’s true? What is going on?” I exploded, feeling myself lose control as the words escaped my lips. All I could think was, No, no, no.

  “I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am. I would love a chance to explain it all. If it makes you feel any better, I have felt sick about this since the day it happened.”

  “No. It doesn’t. Not at all. How could this be true, Sam?”

  “I don’t know. But it is,” he said miserably.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I cried. “Why did I have to find out like this?”

  “I don’t know, it was wrong. I was wrong. It was the biggest mistake I’ve ever made. I panicked. And I lied because I was scared.”

  “You lied because you were scared?” I said, as meanly as possible.

  “Yes. I didn’t want to lose you. I thought if you never knew, it would be better. It meant nothing. It was nothing. Please believe me. Charleston was such a stupid, meaningless mistake. I was freaking out. I thought we were about to break up.”

  “I don’t care why you did it. I care that you did it,” I practically wailed, thinking that I finally understood the true meaning of the term gut-wrenching. I was pretty sure that if I looked down, I would see my guts down there, lying on the ground. “I thought it wasn’t true.” The last thing I’d been pinning my hope on, the hope on which my entire future depended, was washed away. On the other end of the line, Sam was silent. The only thing he could say that would have made it better—that this awful thing that had happened wasn’t true—was impossible. “But it’s more than that,” I told him. “She was my friend, Sam.” I shuddered visibly. “How long was this going on?” I asked the question before I could change my mind, even though I was afraid the answer might kill me.

  “It only happened once,” Sam answered immediately. “I never did anything like that before or since. I made a huge mistake, but it was only once.”

  “Maybe that’s true. Or maybe you’re lying. I have no idea. What else don’t I know?”

  “Nothing. I didn’t want you to know because it meant nothing. Less than nothing. I didn’t want to hurt you. Because it didn’t matter.” My heart sank even deeper as I started to fully register that there was no possibility this whole thing was a misunderstanding. It was true.

 
“If you didn’t want to hurt me, you shouldn’t have cheated on me,” I spat out. “I have to go. I can’t talk to you anymore.”

  Sam paused, as if assessing his options and choosing the logical and reasonable path.

  “I understand,” he said quietly. “I’ll give you some space to think this through, but please know that I love you. And there’s more to say. More to explain.”

  “I have to go, Sam. I can’t . . . I can’t do this anymore,” I said, not sure exactly what I was referencing. “I have to go,” I repeated, hanging up before he could respond.

  In the law, most crimes require that the person had a certain level of mental involvement at the time of the offense, in addition to the physical action, in order to be found guilty. The Latin term for it is mens rea, which technically means “guilty mind.” This means that what you were thinking or intending at the time you “committed a crime” may determine your level of guilt. Depending on your mens rea—did you do it on purpose, by accident, or because you were being lazy or stupid?—you can be found guilty of a different crime, at a different level of seriousness. This is true despite the fact that each crime requires the same physical component.

  For example, if you intentionally shoot a teller while robbing a bank, that would be murder. However, if you shoot a gun into the sky at a festival to start a footrace—seems unnecessarily dramatic, but maybe you’re in Texas—and it falls and hits someone innocently buying a funnel cake, you’ve committed negligent homicide. But if you’re cleaning your malfunctioning hunting rifle and someone pushes you, causing it to fire against your will and shoot your neighbor Stanley, that’s an accident. All of the acts are the same—shooting a gun and killing someone—but the mental component, and the resulting crime (and accompanying jail time), is vastly different.

  However, there are also crimes that don’t require any level of mens rea, called “strict liability” crimes. It doesn’t matter whether it was your intention to commit the crime, if you had any idea what you were doing was illegal, or if it was completely unavoidable—if you committed the physical act, you’re as guilty as they come. One of those crimes is statutory rape. You can tell an officer of the law until you’re blue in the face that you didn’t know she was under the age of consent and, in fact, you met in a bar where patrons have to be twenty-one to get in. Doesn’t matter. Congratulations, you’re a rapist. Another example is traffic law. If you committed the crime, it doesn’t matter if you meant to or not. So the next time you think about telling the officer you didn’t know the speed limit, try crying instead; that’s far more likely to get you out of the ticket.

  Sam’s crime of sleeping with Val would be, without a doubt, a strict liability crime. Maybe he didn’t intend to break my heart, much less for me to find out about it the week before our wedding, but it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter that maybe Sam’s mens rea wasn’t present when he committed the crime, that his intentions were more stupid and weak than intentionally evil. So what if he didn’t mean to hurt me this badly, or intend to cause the resulting pain? He was totally fucking guilty.

  After I hung up with Sam, I walked down the street like a zombie. I was in desperate, aching pain. The pain of a person who would give anything to alter the current reality. For several minutes I inwardly begged any god I knew to make the entire thing a joke. When I was about to completely break down, I stopped dead in my tracks. I pushed stop. Stop crying, I told myself. Don’t let him do this to you. Just stop. I managed to push the pain slightly out of reach. And that was when the tears in my throat morphed into a mountain of white-hot rage.

  I wanted to hurt them. Both of them, Sam and Val. I wanted them to feel as badly as I did. All of the revenge fantasies I’d ever had in my life—the one about slashing the tires of the guy from Expedia who kept me on hold for an hour, or planting porn on the computer of the TA in college who gave me a D in my Intro to Nineteenth-Century European Art class—seemed like child’s play. I wasn’t going to cry anymore. I was going to break things. I pictured showing up at Val’s new office, lowering my pitch-black sunglasses, and saying mercilessly, You ruined my life, bitch, now it’s my turn to ruin yours. I pictured taking all of Sam’s stuff and starting a bonfire in the middle of his yard. For the first time in my life, I understood the urge to commit arson.

  When I finally made my way back to Dusty and Carrick’s, I crept past the quiet living room and found Liv sitting on the bed of our large room, ready to go. She took one look at my tear-streaked face and asked what had happened, her voice filled with dread.

  “He cheated on me, for real.” I choked out the words, collapsing on the bed.

  “No. Are you sure?”

  “He admitted it. It happened when they were in Charleston. Just like Val said. Val, it turns out, was the only person who was honest with me. This is an actual nightmare.”

  “It is,” Liv agreed quietly. “I’m so sorry. I wish I could do something.”

  We were silent for a few minutes. Me lying there, wishing I were dead. Liv looking at me nervously, trying to figure out how to make everything better.

  “How about some food? Tony’s Pizza in North Beach? A carafe of red and a large margherita pizza?” Liv suggested. I doubted anything would make me feel better, even Tony’s pizza, which Liv knew I considered the best in the world. Maybe I could eat enough pizza to make me fall into some kind of gluten coma. I would eat pizza until I passed out, I decided. Every day, for the rest of my life. I closed my eyes, trying to will myself to stop picturing Sam and Val together, and trying to picture crusts dipped in marinara instead.

  As my eyes focused, I saw Liv looking at me closely.

  “Are you doing that thing where you decide you’re just going to eat pizza for the rest of your life?”

  “Yep.”

  “That’s probably best.” She swallowed and looked at me seriously. “I’m sorry, Em. I don’t know what to say. I want to kill him.”

  “Me, too.” We sat there in sad companionable silence. “I feel like such an idiot.”

  “You shouldn’t. If it makes you feel any better, I didn’t believe it either.”

  “Really?” I asked, sitting up slightly, momentarily comforted until I remembered that it didn’t matter whether or not we had believed it or not, it had still happened.

  “Yeah, not for a second. What should we do now? What would make you feel best? We can do anything you want.”

  What I wanted was to get under the covers and sleep until they invented a time machine so I could go back to before this all happened. But no, I told myself forcefully, there was no way Sam was going to take my dad away from me, too. Not when we’d come this far. And if I did find Hunter, maybe he’d want to kick Sam’s ass himself. I entertained the image of a beefy man who somewhat resembled me slamming one fist into the other expectantly, ready to smash Sam’s nose in, as soon as I gave him the go-ahead.

  “I want to stay. I want to try and find my dad.”

  “If you’re sure.” We sat there in silence for a few minutes until Liv spoke up. “Speaking of Hunter, I tried Facebooking him again while you were gone.” Liv pushed the open computer screen toward me. “All that comes up are some weird groups with pictures of wolves howling at moons.” Liv scrolled through the page of one of the Facebook groups, absentmindedly clicking.

  “Did you know his name is an actual moon phase?” she said, sounding fascinated. “Well, almost. It’s called hunter’s moon.” Great, like there wasn’t enough to worry about, without considering how astronomy could be affecting this whole thing.

  “Apparently, it usually occurs in October. ‘It’s the first full moon after the harvest moon,’” she read. “It says here that the hunter’s moon is especially bright and yellow. Which is good for hunters . . . the bright autumn moonlight . . . stocking up for winter . . . et cetera. Makes sense.” Liv clicked on the profiles of some of the likers. “Also, how is it possible that
some people still don’t understand privacy settings? I’m looking at this random girl’s ‘moon appreciation’ pictures from St. Martin right now. I mean, that’s ridiculous. Ooh, that’s a cute bathing suit. Do you think I could pull off a bandeau?”

  As I listened to Liv try to keep me entertained, I felt myself drift back to what I’d learned about Sam. I could still barely believe it, but the stabbing pain in my heart was slowly spreading into a sickening realization that it was true. I had to press my hand against my heart, as badly as it hurt.

  I thought about the last time my heart had truly been broken, when my study abroad boyfriend, Laurent, a beautiful Parisian with huge mahogany eyes and milky skin, broke up with me.

  Laurent and I shared a lust that was born of passion, given that we never actually discussed anything beyond each other’s favorite body parts, and Hemingway. We would spend entire days lying prostrate in Le Jardin du Luxembourg, his sweater under our heads and our hands intertwined as we discussed how much he loved my ass, me his eyes, and both of us, A Moveable Feast.

  Every day in Paris was a new adventure. A backdoor viewing of the Musée Picasso, a trip to get falafel that somehow turned erotic, him reading French poetry to me in the last row of the bus with his left hand holding the book and his right hand up my skirt. When he took me to the countryside for the weekend to his family’s vineyard, the potent combination of utter desire and champagne vinegar was almost painful. And when he said good-bye in May, on the same street where he first stopped me six months earlier and begged me to have a glass of wine with him—I think he thought the whole thing was very poetic—I thought my heart would stop beating.

  Liv, who was studying in Florence at the time, tried for weeks to help me regain perspective. First from afar and then by actually coming to Paris with two American guys, one of whom I was expected to make out with, an idea that only made me more depressed. There was no way I was going to get over Laurent with some dude from Chicago named Matty who thought Paris was “pretty neat” despite the fact that “they don’t put ice in the pop.” When that didn’t work, Liv tried another tactic, listing people who had it worse.