by Serena Bell
Tonight, though, I can’t settle. I try to do some work, but I can’t write. I start washing dishes, then flit to the laundry, which needs folding, then find myself back at the sink (the dishes still only partially done). I feel aimless and twitchy. I try the usual medicine of bad TV, but that, too, fails me. I change into exercise clothes and go for a run, but I come back just as jumpy, and the hot shower doesn’t help, either.
It just makes me think of Sawyer.
Lavishing attention on my body, washing me, making love to me with an intensity I’ve never known before.
Building a fence, thinking of me, wanting to please me with it.
Watching me at Trevor’s wedding, knowing the best man’s speech would crack me open, protecting me.
So, so good to me, but still not mine.
A dead woman’s.
I blot my tears with my towel and run a comb through my wet hair.
I’ve just finished blowing my hair dry when Hattie and Capria text to see if I want to go to a late show with them.
No thanks.
Getting it on with the neighbor?
The words kick me in the chest, and I have to catch my breath before I can respond.
The neighbor and I broke up Sunday.
Forty-five minutes later, Hattie and Capria show up with supplies.
“Madden here?” Hattie demands, when I open the door.
“Next door.”
“Red wine,” Hattie says, pushing efficiently past me into the kitchen, setting two bottles down on the table. “You should have told us you broke up with him. Why didn’t you tell us?”
“I was doing okay.”
She eyes me suspiciously.
“No, really, I’m fine.”
I’m not sure why I lie. Maybe because I feel so foolish for having deceived myself, yet again, into believing a man was emotionally available when he wasn’t. I couldn’t keep myself out of trouble even though I already knew what trouble looked like.
Capria opens a paper grocery bag. “We weren’t sure, so we brought options. Peanut butter”—she puts a jumbo jar of Skippy beside the wine—“dark chocolate, marshmallows, Ben and Jerry’s, Oreos.”
I grab for the Oreos.
“Ha!” Hattie says. Capria, grudgingly, reaches into her pocket, withdraws a twenty, and slaps it into Hattie’s hand.
“I guessed you’d want the ice cream,” Capria says sadly, reaching for the Ben and Jerry’s.
Hattie moves briskly around my kitchen, gathering tools. Bowls, spoons, a carton of milk, glasses…I pour myself a glass of milk and begin dipping cookies one by one, like a chain smoker, barely pausing between them. Hattie scoops peanut butter out of the jar with a square of chocolate. Capria doesn’t bother with a bowl, just spoons Ben and Jerry’s straight out of the carton. I would give them both a hard time about eating my feelings, but I don’t have the energy for teasing. Besides, it feels so good to have them here.
“I’m going to eat all the Oreos first,” I tell them, “and then I’ll drink wine until I pass out.”
“Before you get too blotto,” Hattie says, biting her lip, “um, I talked to Eve today.”
“Yeah?” I say, like a dope walking into an ambush.
“I wasn’t sure if I should mention this—”
My heart picks up, catching danger before my brain does.
“But I thought maybe it would be better for you to hear it from me. She told me she’s renting the house next door to you to someone new. I guess Sawyer’s renting something on the other side of town.”
“Oh,” I say. “He didn’t tell me.”
Hattie’s eyes are soft.
I bite my lip. “Of course he didn’t tell me. Why would he?”
I’m not aware I’m crying until Hattie and Capria move in, surrounding me with hugs and comfort and lots and lots of tissues.
“Oh, honey,” Hattie says, giving me a huge lemon-scented hug.
“Group hug,” Capria says, and contributes coconut scent and a boa-constrictor squeeze.
When I get ahold of myself, Hattie asks, “Do you want to talk about it?”
I tell them what happened, how the journal fell off the nightstand, how I didn’t mean to read it but did, how I flipped forward to find that the most recent entry was just days earlier. I love you. I will probably always love you.
“And you can’t even hate him,” Capria says sympathetically. “Because he’s actually kind of a decent guy. I mean, any guy that would love his wife that much, and write her all those nice letters.”
“Shhh,” Hattie says, but it’s too late—I’m crying a fresh flood.
“He can’t be such a good guy if he’s breaking your heart like this,” Hattie points out. “I mean, he let you think he was ready to move on when he wasn’t. That’s not such a good-guy thing to do.”
“He was ready to move on. Just not to let go. And he shouldn’t have to let her go. She’s not his ex-girlfriend. She’s his dead wife. He’s allowed to hold on if he wants to hold on. It’s just—”
“It’s just that you don’t want to share him with her,” Hattie says gently.
Despite her kindness, her way of putting it rubs me the wrong way. “It’s not a matter of sharing or not sharing, it’s knowing that I’m his second choice.”
“Of course you don’t want that!” Capria cries. “She deserves better.” She aims this at Hattie as if delivering the zinger in an argument. “He had every chance in the world to tell her he was madly in love with her, and he didn’t.” Capria turns to me, all righteous rage. “You deserve better than that.”
Hattie has a funny expression on her face. I know she’s thinking about the demise of her own marriage. In her case, it wasn’t that her husband preferred someone else to her—it was that he preferred anyone and everyone else to her, a fact that she found out by contracting HPV.
“Hattie?”
“Fuck him,” Hattie says, her gaze snapping back to us. “Maybe that should be our motto? Fuck him.”
“Do you mean Sawyer? Or Rob?” That’s Hattie’s ex.
“Or Trevor,” Cap suggests. “Because none of this would be happening if it weren’t for Trevor.”
“All of them. Fuck ’em.”
“Can we drink to that?” Cap asks. She raises her glass. “Fuck ’em!”
We toast, drink, and resume our attack on the innocent snacks.
Chapter 43
Sawyer
“But it’s better with four players! Why can’t Elle play, too?”
Jonah stomps his foot. Madden wears a sulky expression on his normally angelic face.
“Elle’s busy,” I lie. My stomach hurts, not just from the untruth, but from the grief and anger that have settled under my ribs.
It’s five days since Elle walked out.
Sunday night, I watched, unable to speak, as she gathered herself, swiped tears back, and left.
I wanted to stop her, but I knew she was right.
I’d been so shocked when I came out of the bathroom and realized she’d read the journal. I felt sick, and sicker still when I realized why she’d done it. Because she didn’t trust me with her feelings, didn’t trust me not to be an asshole like Trevor.
And the thing is?
I was an asshole like Trevor.
Hadn’t I said it myself to Brooks? I’m not over Lucy. I’ll never be over her.
Why had I thought it was okay to offer myself in a relationship to Elle when I could still say those words out loud to my brother? Elle deserved a lot more than a guy who was emotionally two-timing her. And for me to be the second guy in a row to do that to her?
That made me an even worse asshole than Trevor.
So I let her go. I let her walk out of my room, out of my house.
I let her walk out of my life.
The boys are still staring up at me with small-man disgust. Madden says, “You didn’t even invite her.”
Jonah says, “You guys are just having a stupid fight and now we can’t play Catan all together.”
Both these statements are so true it startles me, although I’m not sure whether they know that or are just bluffing. Kids, man—they are the dirtiest brawlers. I shake my head. “Guys,” I say. “We can play a perfectly good three-player version of Catan.”
“It’s better with my mom there,” Madden says.
He is so not going to feel that way in four years, but it’s very cute right now. Or would be, if it didn’t make me feel like I’ve been sucker punched. Most of this week has felt like a sucker punch. I’ll just start to feel normal and then I’ll remember the look on Elle’s face as I came out of the bathroom.
I can feel my resolve wavering. What if I just texted her? Told her she’d misunderstood, asked her to come over so we could talk about it. Begged her to forgive me, for the boys’ sakes. Just thinking about it, about being near her again, the conversation and sex that would follow, makes me feel marginally less miserable. But then what? I still wouldn’t be able to promise her any of what she needs, what she deserves. I still wouldn’t be over Lucy.
No, we did the right thing. A little pain now to avoid a world of hurt later.
That doesn’t solve my three-player/four-player problem.
I have a stroke of genius. “What if I call Uncle Brooks?”
“Yeah!” they say in unison. I think they think of Uncle Brooks as an oversized kid friend. Which may not be so far from the truth.
Uncle Brooks, who maybe should also be called Saint Asshole, answers my call and hauls himself out to play Catan with us. He’s never played before, and he gripes a lot about how stupid and fiddly the game is, but he beats us all anyway. Vintage Brooks.
I thought I had the toughest part of the evening behind me, but it turns out I was wrong, as I discover when I head downstairs to square away Madden and Jonah in their sleeping bags.
“Isn’t my mom coming over to say good night?”
“Not tonight, bud.”
But it’s not the same without her, and all three of us know it. It feels…uneven. Like she should be there, on the other side of the sleeping bags, whispering to Madden, looking up to meet my eyes from time to time.
I miss her fiercely, and she’s right next door.
I trudge upstairs, feeling the weight of the day. Brooks has sprawled on the couch in my living room with a beer he’s lifted from my fridge. When I come in with a beer of my own, he lifts his bottle in greeting.
“How’s your neighbor? For that matter, where’s your neighbor?” And then, because he’s my brother and my best friend, even if he is an asshole, and can clearly see the expression on my face, “Oh, shit, Sawyer, what the hell happened?”
“Nothing happened.”
“Bullshit. You look like I hacked in and deleted your season pass to the NFL. Did she dump your ass?”
I hesitate while I try to figure out the answer to that—had she? Or had we reached a mutual decision that we were a bad idea? I honestly wasn’t sure.
“It wasn’t going to work out.”
Brooks squints at me, brow furrowed. “It wasn’t going to work out? Or it wasn’t working out? Because that’s two different things. You going to tell me what the actual fuck happened?”
I bring him up to date. I tell him how after I talked to him, I realized how much I did like her. I tell him about how we talked about giving it a try, how we went to the wedding together and it was—good. Better than good. I tell him about the book landslide and the journal and coming out of the bathroom to find her looking like she’d been kicked in the gut.
And then I tell him about Trevor. And what he did to her.
“And I can’t do that to her. What Trevor did.”
Brooks is shaking his head. “Man, some guys.”
“I know, right?”
“But you know it’s a totally different situation. Still having feelings for your dead wife and cheating on your actual wife—those are two totally different things.”
“Yeah, but to her, not so much.”
“Well, isn’t that more about her than about you?”
“I just—it’s probably for the best, right? It was getting complicated. Someone was going to get hurt.”
Brooks makes a short, harsh noise. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“I know. Caramel, right?”
My words are light, but there’s a tightness in my chest. I’m familiar with it. I met it for the first time when Lucy was sick, when it took up permanent residence. It had eased for a while, recently—but I think it was just the distraction of sex with Elle. Now it’s back, maybe to stay.
“Hey,” Brooks says. “You want to go drinking with Chase and Jack and me Friday night? I could use a single wingman. Those two are no fun anymore.”
The thought of it—of getting drunk, flirting, picking someone up, hooking up—doesn’t appeal, but Brooks is looking at me with the closest thing he’s got to a hangdog expression, and I can’t say no. “Sure.”
“We’ll get you laid. Drown your sorrows. All that.”
I don’t even bother arguing with him.
Chapter 44
Elle
“Elle? Elle Dunning?”
“Speaking.”
“This is Jacinda Walters at Book Smith Literary Agency.”
All the blood goes out of my extremities and I have to sit down at the kitchen table. Jacinda Walters is one of the agents I sent my book to—and not just one of the agents, but the one whose description I loved the most, the one who I’ve most let myself fantasize might be my agent.
“I read your proposal for Splitsville, and I absolutely loved it. I thought we could talk a little bit about what you’re looking for in an agent, and if it seems like we’re a good match, we could talk about the possibility of me offering you representation.”
I open and close my mouth several times, but nothing comes out.
“Elle?”
“I’m just—shocked. In the best possible way.”
Jacinda laughs. “Most people are. I rarely call someone and have them say, ‘I’ve been expecting your call.’ ”
That makes me laugh, and immediately, my nervousness and shock abate. “No, not at all. But I’m exceptionally glad to receive it.”
“Well, and I’m equally happy to make it. Splitsville is terrific. Are you working on anything else at the moment?”
I manage to pull myself together to tell her about myself—that I’ve been a freelance journalist for years; that I would love to see Splitsville find a home with a traditional publisher and be brought out in hardcover and paperback; that I’m not working on any long projects at the moment but that I have, in the course of my journalism work, stumbled over plenty of things I think would make great books; and that Jacinda is, in fact, my first-choice agent. At the end of the conversation, Jacinda offers me representation. She wants me to write longer chapter-by-chapter summaries, but once that’s done (and I’ve signed an agency contract with her), she’ll be ready to send the proposal out on submission to publishers.
“And they’ll want it?” I blurt, then instantly regret it. Jacinda’s being incredibly nice, but she’s still vetting me for things like professionalism and confidence—the traits that would make a writer successful in the world—right? I don’t need to let her know about my self-doubts.
Jacinda laughs, a long, delighted chuckle. “Absolutely. Why, don’t you think they should?”
“Well, I love it,” I say. “But I wasn’t sure—do you think there’s room for another post-marital-disaster memoir after Eat Pray Love?”
She makes a derisive noise. “Oh, sister, there is plenty of room. I was one
of those people who just didn’t get the Eat Pray Love thing. It left me cold, you know? I could see what she was getting at, and I know there are women who say that book saved their lives, and I don’t begrudge it, but there are plenty of women ready for a book like yours. Charming, self-deprecating, funny…”
I blush, even though she can’t see me. Charming! Self-deprecating! Funny!
“I almost didn’t send it,” I blurt out.
Apparently my filter is broken. Or maybe I just like Jacinda that much. The last time I opened my mouth and so much stuff fell out was the night I met Sawyer.
But far from hanging up, Jacinda makes a noise of assent. “Writers tell me that a lot. I think sometimes the scariest ones to send out are the best. Can I tell you something kind of personal?” She laughs, almost nervously, which calms my own nerves, oddly. “I feel like I’ve known you for years, not like I just met you over the phone twenty minutes ago. Maybe it’s reading your chapters. You build trust with the reader exceptionally well.”
“Of course!” I tell her, meaning it. “I feel like I’ve known you for a long time, too.” Which is absolutely true. If—as Jacinda says—I build trust with the reader, Jacinda’s got a gift for building trust with the writer.
She draws an audible breath. “I’m eight months off a brutal divorce, and it was really healing to read your chapters.”
Oh. Of all the things I was expecting, somehow this was not it. I’ve helped someone. And it means something to me that Jacinda wants Splitsville not just because she thinks a publisher will want to buy it or she’ll make money if readers flock to it, but because she has a personal connection to it. To me. The realization comes with a wash of warmth. “I’m, um, glad to hear it,” I say. “I’m really glad to hear it.”
“I think your book is going to help a lot of women. Maybe even on the same scale as Eat Pray Love.”
Holy. Shit.
“But you said you almost didn’t send it,” Jacinda says. “What changed your mind?”