“Like, collapsed in the pie?”
“Good Lord, Emma, I was speaking figuratively. It’s not funny. A man died.”
“I know.” I was hurt. I’d been trying to make light of the situation, perhaps morph the conversation into a real one by making her laugh. Evidently there was no chance of any real communication between us. “Listen, I’m late to meet a friend for breakfast. Is that it?”
“Yes, Emma,” she responded with a sigh, her heavy annoyance rippling through the phone lines. She was exasperated with me because . . . well, I don’t know why. I’d made a joke—off-color for sure, but we were discussing a pie-eating contest, for God’s sake—in the middle of a conversation about someone I didn’t even really know. Nothing I ever did with her was ever right, and honestly, I was sick of trying.
“Okay, bye, then?” I said, questioningly.
“Good-bye.” And that was it. That was how I found out my father died.
Slumped against the cold red brick of one of Berkeley’s many eclectic structures, this one resembling a tower Rapunzel might inhabit if she decided to move to the Bay Area, I recalled this conversation in vivid detail. Suppose I had reacted differently. Suppose I hadn’t made the terrible pie joke, I wondered, shuddering at the memory. Would she have told me then? Was that why she was really calling, to tell me the truth, after all those years? I closed my eyes and leaned against the wall, mentally recounting the emotional fireworks of the last hour.
After making arguably the most dramatic statement of my adult life, to Tony Brown of all people, I’d fled from his office before he or Liv had time to register what I was saying or ask for details. I definitely didn’t want to talk about it, especially not with the two of them. I wanted to be worlds away from everyone who had been lying to me. The last time I glanced at Liv, her face was still flush and frozen, as if I’d slapped her across the face with my cold words.
The truth is, the second I realized what the words on the computer screen in front of me meant, something inside of me snapped. Part of me felt absolutely miserable, but the other, more self-destructive part felt strangely free. I no longer cared about anything or anyone. Learning the truth about my father and realizing that I would never know him was my Get Out of Life Free card. I didn’t have to search for answers or make any of the tough decisions that had been plaguing me all week. I could give up, something that felt deliciously, wonderfully tempting.
I could do it, I realized, for real. I could start over. I could say good-bye to the lies and manipulation from Sam, my mother, even Liv, and start fresh. I considered this as I watched the Frisbee players on the lawn with their bare feet and chests, hoodies casually tied around their waists, despite the chilly September air, whizzing the Frisbee back and forth in sharp arcs. Perhaps in my next life, I’d play Frisbee.
My phone chimed. I pulled it from my pocket and opened to an e-mail with the subject line: Wedding Cancellation. It was an e-mail from a vintage furniture store in Santa Barbara, confirming the cancellation of a chuppah rental for Saturday.
Even though Sam and I weren’t Jewish, I had always envisioned myself getting married under the antique canopy and had hunted until I found the perfect one to rent for our ceremony. The ceremony that Sam had apparently canceled. I guess he went through with it, I told myself miserably. As instructed. But that didn’t matter much at this point. The pain was real no matter whose decision it was.
No more chuppah, no more wedding, no more Sam.
I felt a thick haze of despair and heartache wash over me, mixed with something like relief. It was over. I was alone. I couldn’t go back on it now. I would not be marrying Sam. I had no chance to mess up our marriage down the line, because there would be no marriage. I would never lose Sam out of the blue, or the stability and comfort that he brought to my life. I didn’t have to prepare for the loss or protect myself against it. Because he was already gone.
I stood up and brushed the grass off my clothes, the blood rushing to my head and making me dizzy. Unsteadily, I crossed the lawn. Where would I go and what would I do? I had the next three weeks off for my honeymoon, and not a single obligation to anyone. I also didn’t have any of my stuff, other than the bag I traveled with, as my suitcase was still in the back of our rental car.
Liv would either head home, probably toss my stuff on the side of the 280, or stay in her illicit love den with Tony. Sam would move on, maybe try it again with Val. Caro wouldn’t notice, and everyone else would reschedule their weekend plans. I thought about Sam’s mom and her big, hard hugs. I thought about her flying in from New York the next day and arriving to hear the news that Emma was not going to become her daughter-in-law. In fact, from this point on, she would probably be a stranger. I shook the depressing thought from my head and reminded myself that it didn’t matter. My life with Sam was over.
Walking down the main street running along Berkeley’s campus, I blindly hailed the first cab I saw. As soon as I sat down on the plush, cracked seat, I knew where I had to go. I would leave the past that no longer mattered behind, and head toward the one person who might be part of my future. I instructed the cabbie to take me to the Marina and rattled off the address. Hours after I broke off my engagement and minutes after I ran out on my best friend, I made my third terrible decision of the day. I headed straight to Dusty’s.
Once I was actually standing in front of the imposing yellow Victorian with its ridiculously steep stairs, I began to lose my nerve. I knew next to nothing about this guy, except for the fact that he had great taste in eyewear and he was fatherless. But short of hanging around Haight-Ashbury and hoping some hippies would take me in, what choice did I really have?
Despite the dearth of parental connections, before today, I’d always had Liv and Sam. Now I had no one. Dusty was it. He was the only person who wanted to see me, as well as the only person who got what I was going through. Everyone else had their own angle, their own interests at heart. Dusty had only mine. That’s because he barely knows you, a little voice added. I politely told the little voice to shut the hell up, and texted Dusty that I was here. We had left the key behind when we “checked out” that afternoon.
Within seconds he was outside. He ushered me upstairs into the now familiar living room.
“Carrick’s out, and I told him to let me know when he was on his way back,” he said, when he saw me looking around.
“Didn’t he ask why?”
“Nope.” Dusty grinned, flashing those goddamn twinkly eyes. “Guys don’t do that.” His smile warmed me, and I felt slightly better for the first time all day. “I missed you when you left earlier. You must have been in a rush. Didn’t make your plane, I guess?”
“Yeah, sorry,” I said, remembering how I’d simply ignored his good-bye text. “Something like that.”
“We don’t have to talk about it. I’m just glad you’re here.”
“Thanks. Me, too.” I paused and glanced at the couch, which looked softer and more inviting than anything possibly ever had before. “Would it be completely rude if I just lie on your couch and watch TV or read? It would be nice to get out of my own head for a while.”
Without missing a beat, he handed me the remote and gestured to a full bookshelf in the corner of the room. “Feel free to help yourself to a book, but I apologize if we don’t exactly have the same taste. Where’s your stuff?”
“Liv has my suitcase.” I didn’t explain why she wasn’t with me, or where she was headed, and as I suspected, Dusty didn’t press it. “Can I borrow some sweatpants?”
“Of course. Are you staying the night?”
“Yes, if that’s okay. I’ll pay you and Carrick, of course.” He refused, as I knew he would. Determining that I didn’t have the mental energy to deal with the logistical problem of how I would continue this new life without any belongings, I turned back toward the books.
The bookshelf was a corner cupboard, nestled snugl
y into the wall, packed with dozens of classics and bestsellers alike, including some of my favorite authors. I scanned the titles, impressed by the variety. Unsurprisingly, I spotted A Confederacy of Dunces—or, as I thought of it, every boy in America’s favorite book.
“Is this your favorite book?” I turned back to Dusty, holding it out accusatorily.
“Nope. It’s good, though. Actually, I think that copy is Carrick’s, so I guess we have two of them around here.” He turned around, looking for something. “Do you feel like Thai food?” he asked, locating his phone. “It’s the perfect ‘sitting on the couch and not talking or thinking’ food.”
“Yes, please. That would be perfect.” I briefly closed my eyes. Then, before I could brace myself or duck my head, I was hit by yet another tidal wave of pain, this time from my memory.
The previous fall, a few weeks after Sam and I were engaged, his roommates were cleaning out their house for a couple new subletters. Dante was heading to Europe, and another roommate, also in the movie business, was leaving for a shoot in Vancouver. They decided to turn cleaning into cash by having a makeshift yard sale, which they did about once a year. This inevitably consisted of them piling junk into their front yard, hours later than everyone else in the neighborhood put out their carefully tagged sales. It was the bargain bin of yard sales, which is saying a lot. I knew from experience that in a couple of hours, when it became clear that no one wanted Sam’s plastic Batman communicator, Dante’s half-missing Level 1 Portuguese Rosetta Stone, or the pile of black auxiliary cords they’d found behind their TV, we would bundle everything into trash bags and bring it all to Goodwill.
“Who in their right mind would want that random tangle of black cords?” I called across the yard to the boys from my position as the cashier—also known as the front stoop, where I sat with a steaming latte on my left and a couple of ones and fives in a shoe box on my right. I wasn’t concerned about having to make change for their nonexisting customer base, but I wanted the boys to think I was supportive, so I pretended to stress about it for a few minutes that morning while they hauled out their castoffs.
“Emma, people need cords,” Dante explained, looking serious behind his hipster Ray-Bans, while he attempted to detangle the mess.
“For what exactly?”
“Loads of things. Stereos and stuff.”
“Do people still have stereos? Don’t people generally have iPhone docks now?”
Dante ignored my excellent point and dropped a box of books in front of me. “Here, nerd, sort these out.” I obediently worked in silence for a few minutes, stacking books while Dante added a price tag to a broken French press.
“Wait a minute, why are you getting rid of all these amazing books?” I asked, reading off some titles. “A Visit from the Goon Squad? A Fraction of the Whole? These are some of Sam’s favorites.”
“Don’t you have them, too?” Dante squinted at the pieces in his hand, probably contemplating if he could sell the grinder and glass carafe separately.
“Yeah, so?”
“He’s getting rid of them because you’re getting married. He said you don’t need two copies of each and you’re really psycho about clutter,” Dante added, his honesty doing nothing to take away from the sweetness of the act.
Dusty called out from the kitchen and I was wrenched back to the present. He walked back into the living room with his hand over his cell phone and looked at me expectantly.
“Did you say something?” I asked, disoriented.
“Fried or steamed?”
I stared, stuck in my memory trance. “Sorry, what are you talking about?”
“The dumplings,” he said slowly. “I’m ordering us Thai food.” His tone was one you might use with a child, or with Brendan Fraser after he emerged from the underground bunker in Blast from the Past.
“Steamed,” I answered automatically. I suppose I was still in wedding dress mode, worrying about calories. Then I remembered the facts. No more wedding, no more wedding dress, no more vague attempts to avoid fried food. “Actually, is it too late to change to fried?” That, my friends, is what they call a silver lining.
The rest of Wednesday evening passed in a coma of Thai noodles and bad USA movies, including The Wedding Planner, which neither of us acknowledged as completely appropriate or inappropriate, pausing only to comment on, and at one point attempt to measure, the enormity of J. Lo’s ass. There was nothing overtly romantic in our interactions, but it was nice. There was something intimate about the casualness of the night. It was almost like we had been dating for years and were comfortable enough to joke around while we slurped wonton soup. What’s more, as the night wore on, it felt increasingly similar to the images of my life with Sam, like a shadowy parallel universe unfolding in the background. It reminded me of when a movie you’ve seen a hundred times is on TV while you’re puttering around the house. No reason to turn it off or pay close attention because you know it so well, but every once in a while one of your favorite scenes draws your attention unexpectedly.
Like when Dusty mentioned that he hated olives—the most controversial fruit, in my opinion—and I recalled a debate Sam and I once had about whether or not we could be in a relationship because we both loved olives. In all successful relationships, I argued, there is one olive hater and one olive lover. You cannot have two of the same. Sam scoffed and said I was crazy, offering a compromise that I could have first dibs on green olives for life, if he could have the black ones. For a moment, the pain that I’d been carefully ignoring about Sam sliced through my stomach—missing him, worrying about him, losing him—and almost made me double over. But somehow, I kept it at bay, in no small part due to the distraction of Dusty.
It felt like a case study of whether I could substitute my entire real life with a fake one, if I could do the exact same things over, with someone else. Maybe it would all fall into place. Maybe Dusty could easily slip into Sam’s role, our dynamic instantly as natural as when I ate breakfast with Sam in Venice a few days earlier. Maybe the grumpy old theory was true, that we end up with whomever we meet when we’re ready to settle down, and the rest are details you could fill in with anyone.
Still, Dusty and I never talked about it, any of it. Presumably he’d figured out that since I wasn’t heading back to Los Angeles the wedding wasn’t proceeding as planned. Luckily he didn’t ask me about it, or about the search for my father—a reality I couldn’t even begin to address at the moment. I knew he would have been more than willing to talk if I brought it up, but I didn’t have an urge to open any cans of worms. One could argue that I was so deeply sunk into a pit of denial, I was caked in it. But most of the night I felt okay. I was comfortably numb. All of the bad things from the week felt very far away.
I woke up on the couch on Thursday morning to see Dusty heading out of the shower and walking back to his room in his towel. He must have been getting ready for work. I couldn’t help noticing how attractive he was. His hair was dark from the shower, his long eyelashes were sprinkled with tiny droplets of water, and there was that scar, sketched haphazardly on his cheek. I idly wondered how he’d gotten it.
“Good morning,” Dusty said. He stopped at his door, clearly unembarrassed by his state of undress, and said deliberately, “I’ve been thinking, I have to go to work today, but we could go away this weekend. I’ll take Friday off. My buddy has a place in Sonoma where we could go relax, do a little wine tasting. As pals, of course,” he added, somehow not awkwardly.
“That sounds really nice,” I responded gingerly. “Although . . . well, I’m not sure.”
“Think about it,” Dusty said easily, heading to get changed.
What was holding me back? Why couldn’t I agree to a free weekend in Sonoma drinking wine with this amazing man? It’s time to move on, I told myself decisively, swallowing hard. I was sick of feeling unsure of myself all the time. I remembered what had happened with Sa
m. With Val. With Mike. I thought about the chuppah Sam had canceled. I felt the pain traveling from my fingertips, down my arms, and through my body like a poison. It was over. I walked into Dusty’s room and found him in blue pants and a soft gray T-shirt, halfway ready for work, standing by his closet.
He turned and I reached up, motioning for a hug. He dropped the collared shirt he was unbuttoning and leaned down to pull me close. I closed my eyes and felt his strong arms circling my back. He was so solid. Here was physical evidence of it. Maybe he could help me forget about Sam. Maybe he could take the pain away. No, I told myself. This wasn’t even about Sam. Dusty is amazing all by himself. He understands me; he gets me. He’s a tall, gorgeous, completely together man. Sam has nothing to do with any of this. I was tired of feeling bad. I wanted to feel good. I tilted my head up for Dusty to kiss me and he read my cue perfectly.
Several minutes later we were interrupted by a loud knock on the door. It was a self-assured knock, an imposing one. I knew that knock.
“I’ll get it,” I said, as Dusty looked at me, bewildered. “I know who it is.”
I straightened my clothes and shut the bedroom door behind me. Quickly, I headed to the front door and pulled it open, filled with a heavy dose of terror, but also certain that if I didn’t open it immediately she’d pull a velociraptor and find a way in.
“Emma Elizabeth Moon, what in the world is going on?”
“Hi, Mom. Welcome to San Francisco.”
CHAPTER 24
“Should I ask the obvious?” I ventured, after I ushered my mother into the kitchen to avoid Dusty. That was an introduction I definitely did not want to make. I inspected her. She was wearing a tailored suit and it looked like her blond hair had been recently highlighted. I wondered if it was for the wedding and was momentarily touched, until I remembered that I had called it off and the wasted time and effort would probably annoy her even more.
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