Playing with Matches

by Hannah Orenstein

  — Chapter 20 —

  The summer has been hectic, and I miss seeing Caroline as often as I’d expect to see a conjoined twin, the way we hung out in college. My occasional hours in the apartment rarely overlap with hers anymore, so today, the Sunday after Labor Day, she texted me to hang out with her during a shift at Flower Power. I’d been in a few times before, and it’s always dead quiet, save for the occasional willowy woman toting a yoga mat and a bottle of kombucha who pokes her head in but doesn’t buy a thing. Sure enough, the shop is empty when I arrive. Flower Power lies a few steps down from the quiet, tree-lined stretch of East Ninth Street. It’s dimly lit inside, with wooden floors that creak and walls lined with jars of shredded this and flakes of that and powdered whatever to cure your aches and pains and appease the gods. It smells like the inside of Shailene Woodley’s dreams.

  Caroline is perched on a bar stool behind the counter, watching someone’s Snap Story on her phone.

  “Hi,” she says, without looking up from the screen. “One second . . . ugh. Have you been following Kylie Jenner’s Snapchat today?”

  “No. Should I?”

  “No, you wouldn’t actually care. Take a seat, I want to hear about your week. It’s been, like, a week, right? Crazy. I never see you anymore.”

  I slip behind the counter and take the bar stool next to hers. She fills me in on the latest. Apparently, a mildly successful television writer followed her on Twitter, which her mother believes is a sure sign that a network is about to pick up her pilot (um, sure). She likes Owen, but he hasn’t offered to be exclusive yet, so she responded to all “wanna have sex?” messages from Tinder fuckboys with “No, I’m looking for a serious relationship.” Two of them wrote back variations of “Oh, cool, good luck with that.” Two didn’t respond, another three pressed for sex, and one asked for nudes. But at least she was entertained. Also, depressed. The highlight of her week was when the Duane Reade checkout guy forgot to charge her for a pint of Ben & Jerry’s on Tuesday.

  “So, anyway. That’s that. What have you been up to?”

  “I met some of Adam’s friends last night. One of them, Ryan, invited us over for dinner.”

  “Like, at his apartment?”

  “Yeah, for a dinner party.”

  “Like, he had a dining room table?”

  “Yeah. And matching chairs.”

  Caroline bites off the corner of her nail and thinks this over. We get by with a portable card table and two folding chairs.

  “Wow.” She sounds bored.

  I know she’s tired of talking about Adam, but I need to gush about him to someone—it’s not like I can gush to the matchmakers or any of my sad, single clients.

  “So, anyway, Ryan works in consulting and has a really nice one-bedroom in the East Village with his girlfriend. They invited over a few couples, and—”

  Caroline sputters to keep from choking on the herbal tea she’s drinking.

  “Couples? You’re a couple now?”

  “Well, I mean, not technically. But I feel like we will be soon.”

  She doesn’t smile. “Sasha, it’s been, like, what, three weeks since you broke up with Jonathan?”

  I cross my arms defensively over my chest. “Almost six.”

  I’ve actually counted.

  She looks like she’s about to fire back, but a customer wearing faded overalls pushes the door open. Caroline gives me a withering look, then turns to greet her customer in a sugary-sweet voice.

  “Hi, welcome to Flower Power. Are you looking for anything in particular today?”

  The customer shakes her head and wanders over to examine a wall of glass canisters holding dozens of varieties of herbs: agrimony, alfalfa, ashwagandha root—and that’s just half of the As.

  “All right. Let me know if you need anything.”

  Caroline swivels back to face me. “Girl, I’m just worried about you,” she whispers. “You’ve hardly had time to get over Jonathan.”

  “I’m fine,” I whisper back.

  “You’re not. You must be miserable.”

  “Caroline, I said I’m fine. I’m really happy with Adam.” I bite down hard on the inside of my lip to keep from snapping at her.

  “You’re not. Relationships take time to get over.”

  “Oh, right, I forgot. You’ve had so many long, fulfilling relationships, you would know, wouldn’t you?”

  She recoils. It feels like I’ve slapped her, and I want to apologize, but she also just doesn’t get it. The most significant relationship she’s ever had was with a guitarist in an NYU band during sophomore year who never wrote any songs about her and ghosted after six months of sleeping together. She still talks about him sometimes—wistfully, even—but claims to now think his music is “kinda overrated.”

  “Look, Caroline, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “No, you shouldn’t have,” she snaps. “But you did.”

  The customer approaches the counter with a small dark vial with a sticker that reads JOY IN A BOTTLE!

  “I was just curious if you could tell me how this works. The ingredients are just water and alcohol.”

  Caroline takes the bottle from her and examines the fine print on the back.

  “Well, yes. But it looks like there’s also trace amounts of St. John’s Wort and lemon balm, which are both mood lifters.”

  The customer looks skeptical.

  “It’s very soothing,” Caroline adds, handing the bottle back to her, barely concealing the annoyance in her voice.

  “Hmm.” The woman runs a finger over the price sticker: $17.95. “Thank you,” she says, turning on one Birkenstock and heading out the door.

  There’s an awkward silence in the shop.

  “I never tell you what to do with your relationships,” I say quietly, staring straight ahead so I don’t have to look her in the eye. “So don’t assume that you know what’s best for mine.”

  She gapes.

  “Are you kidding me? You’re a matchmaker. You make a living telling other people what to do with their relationships, which is hilarious, because yours are a mess.”

  I roll my eyes. The thing is, she’s right.

  “I know, I know. But my relationship with Adam isn’t a mess.”

  “You dumped Jonathan and rebounded with an off-limits guy who’s eleven years older than you are that very same day. Come on, that doesn’t sound great.”

  Again, true. I know that I’ve only been with Adam for a few weeks, but it feels like so much longer than that—so much more important than that.

  “But I really like him.”

  “I’m sure you do.” She sighs. “And I liked meeting him, too. But it just doesn’t seem healthy to jump into a new relationship right away, especially when things ended so disastrously with Jonathan. You were a wreck.”

  Now would not be the right time to tell Caroline that I still Insta-stalk Cassidy Greer. There’s definitely a male hand lingering in the corner of the photo she posted last Thursday—it’s holding a fucking homemade organic biscotti—which sent her followers into a frenzy of rumors. Is she dating someone? Who is it? Or is that maybe just her brother? Does she even have a brother? No, she’s definitely seeing someone. Ugh. I can’t tell if it’s Jonathan’s hand. I think it is. I bet it is. I hate her.

  “Look, I’m not trying to pick a fight,” she continues. “I’m just concerned about you. I think you’re clinging to Adam to avoid being single.”

  “Mm. Thanks.” I pause. “I have to go. Mindy asked me to go shopping with her on her lunch break. She has another date coming up this weekend and needs something to wear. Hope the rest of your shift is okay.” I gather my purse and my phone and get up to leave.

  “Love you!” Caroline calls as the door swings shut behind me.

  I hate fighting with Caroline. I care about her more than anyone, and I know she feels the same way about me. But all those years of living together and sharing everything means we know exactly how to hurt each other. F
riendship doesn’t cover what we have—we’re more like sisters, or at least I think this is what it must feel like to have a sister. I can see whatever we have stretching out forever. And that stability, that security, makes it easier to toss cruel comments back and forth. Forgiveness is a given.

  I wind through the bar- and boutique-lined streets of the East Village to Union Square to catch the uptown 4 train to Bloomingdale’s, where I’m planning on meeting Mindy at 1 p.m. The subway pulls into the station just as I reach the platform. I hop on and squeeze into a seat next to two people wearing bright sneakers and backpacks examining a subway map. Tourists.

  Inside Bloomingdale’s, I see I have texts waiting for me. The first is from Mindy.

  “Running two mins late!!” she writes. “So sorry, see you soon.”

  The next is from Mary-Kate. I’ve barely heard from her since the wedding—partly because she and Toby spent two weeks in Tulum on their honeymoon, and partly because I don’t know where our friendship stands now that Jonathan and I are no longer together.

  “Babes—I need help narrowing down jewelry choices for an accessories story we’re doing in the magazine. I love them all and can’t pick just one haha. Pick your favorite . . . thx!”

  She sent the text and an accompanying photo to her group thread of bridesmaids. I guess this means our friendship can still stand, if I’d like it to.

  The other bridesmaids have all chimed in already. I tap open the photo. Six rings rest on a plush black background—a round diamond set in rose gold, an oblong sapphire set in platinum, a pear-shaped diamond with a glitzy halo. Most of them are too ornate for my tastes, but the simplest piece catches my eye. It’s an emerald-cut stone set in yellow gold.

  “The yellow gold one’s gorgeous,” I write back.

  “Classic. Chic. Tiffany’s. Great choice,” Mary-Kate shoots back, adding a fanfare of diamond emojis.

  It’s a weird note for Mary-Kate to resume our friendship on, but that’s how Mary-Kate operates. She doesn’t like to dig into uncomfortable emotions. The more she can avoid experiencing actual feelings, the better; she and Jonathan have that in common.

  “Hi, dollface!”

  Mindy’s voice rings out across the store. She hurries toward me, clad in a flamingo pink dress and metallic silver pumps.

  “Again, so sorry to keep you waiting.” She kisses me once on each cheek. “Work is insane right now. And I can feel myself getting sick, too, which absolutely cannot happen. I refuse to be sick right now. So, let’s shop! I want to wear a new dress for my date, and I only have an hour before my next meeting.”

  I follow her as she flies expertly through the women’s floor, picking up a purple dress with a full skirt, a little blue off-the-shoulder number, and a heap of black dresses. She never pauses to look at the price tags. She foists the dresses on a twenty-something saleswoman, who hauls them to a fitting room. I linger behind Mindy, feeling the soft cashmeres and slick leathers, trying to keep up the conversation like I’m a girlfriend and not hired help. But the conversation is one-sided—she gabs fluidly about Rosh Hashanah services, her friend who is inexplicably moving out of a rent-controlled Upper East Side apartment, the açai juice cleanse she wants to try, and so on. We dissect her previous dates with Gordon, wringing as much meaning as we can out of the kind way he treated their waiter and the length of his good night kiss outside her apartment.

  Our conversation never veers toward my own life. She knows the basics, like where I’m from and where I went to college, but I don’t offer anything more. It’s cleaner this way. I lean against the door opposite her fitting room and watch as she twirls out in each dress.

  “I’m obsessed with this one,” she announces, trotting out the third black dress. It has a slit that reveals enough leg to make me worry about a wardrobe malfunction. “But I wonder if it might be too much.”

  “A little much, yeah,” I concede. “It’s just dinner.”

  “Well, why not make an entrance?”

  She walks to the three-way mirror at the end of the row of fitting rooms and steps up onto the pedestal, twisting to see the back of the dress. Then, she gives me a panicked look and rubs a hand over her stomach.

  “Oh, god. I really don’t feel well. I need to—”

  She covers her mouth and sprints down the hall to a small black trash can. She picks it up, tosses off the lid, and vomits inside. The fitting-room attendant leaps back. I feel like I’m obligated to help, but the prospect of running toward a bucket of vomit is just . . . ew.

  “I’m so sorry,” Mindy says to the attendant, panicked, picking up the lid of the trash can and setting it back down on the carpet, covered. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. “I think I’m coming down with something.”

  I approach her timidly and rub her back in small circles. Her face is drained of color.

  “I’m so embarrassed,” she says quietly. “Let’s go.”

  She scurries back to get changed. The fitting-room attendant gives us the fakest smile I’ve ever seen and a faux-cheery “Hope you feel better!” on our way out.

  “I’m so sorry,” she says as we exit onto Fifty-Ninth Street. She disappears around the corner, and I take the subway downtown to my place for an afternoon of phone calls and Tindering.

  I’m so lost in my own world—headphones in, music on full blast, sunglasses on—that the figure in a sharp-shouldered navy blue suit leaning against my front door hardly registers. I’m about to breeze past him when he snaps into action, shoving his BlackBerry back into his pocket and taking two quick steps toward me.

  “Hi,” Jonathan says, a look of bemused confidence spreading across his face.

  I hate the effect he still has on me. My stomach drops, the exposed skin on my shoulders tingles. This is a primal response, fight or flight, and I’m supposed to be running away. But my feet feel glued to the sidewalk. If I ignore him and head inside now, I’ll never find out what he wants—and I can’t help but be curious. I take a step backward, crossing my arms tightly over my chest.

  “Hi,” I respond.

  “I know you’re probably wondering what I’m doing here.” He’s eerily calm.

  “Considering you normally don’t leave Goldman Sachs’s bat cave during daylight hours? Yes.”

  He takes a deep breath, and there’s something about the measured quality of his voice that makes me think he’s practiced exactly what he’s going to say.

  “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about how we left things between us, and I want to tell you again how sorry I am. I really ruined everything. I ended it with Cassidy and I deleted my Tinder. I’m not going to mess around anymore, I promise. That was the worst mistake of my life.”

  I squeak out something like “Oh.”

  He takes this as an encouraging sign. His eyes blaze blue.

  “I shouldn’t have ever taken you for granted. I know that there’s no excuse for what I did, but I want to make it up to you, if you’ll let me. I want to spend the rest of my life making it up to you, because you’re worth it. I don’t know a single other person like you, Sasha. You make me see the world differently, and you laugh at my nerdy jokes, and you support me, no matter what.”

  I start to understand what’s about to happen, but I don’t know how to process it. This is the grand romantic gesture I’m supposed to want, but I’m not sure I want it anymore. Behind Jonathan, a shirtless homeless man with a full beard pushes a grocery cart full of trash. I should be paying attention to the sincerity in Jonathan’s eyes and the vulnerable tinge to his voice, but I can’t. I feel paralyzed. It’s like my entire future—and Jonathan’s future, and maybe even Adam’s future—is wrapped up in what’s about to happen, and I don’t feel confident enough to give Jonathan an answer right now. I don’t know what I want; I only know that I’ll have to decide fast.

  “I know this is crazy, but I couldn’t let another day go by without doing this. I have to put this out there, even if you hate me, even if you say no.”


  He drops to one knee and pulls a small black velvet box out of his pocket. I’m both flooded with panic and entirely numb; I can see my hands trembling, but I can’t feel my fingers. He flicks it open to reveal a ring that glints brightly in the sun—the diamond I had selected from Mary-Kate’s text today rests two feet in front of me, nestled in velvet, clasped in Jonathan’s hands.

  “Sasha Goldberg, will you marry me?”

  — Chapter 21 —

  I crash through the front door of my apartment. My knees shake. Orlando, alarmed by the noise, leaps up from his reclining position on the couch and scurries away. I can hear the rush of the shower at the end of the hall.

  “Caroline? Caroline?” I drop my purse on the floor and fly toward the bathroom. I pound on the door with the side of my fist. “Caroline? I really need to talk to you.”

  Damn it, she doesn’t care if I see her naked. I wrench open the door. She yelps.

  “Oh my god, Sasha, is that you?” She whips her head around the shower curtain. Thick trails of eyeliner and mascara have pooled in smudgy streaks below her eyes, and she has shampoo suds in her hair.

  I don’t mean to break down, but I do. I try to steady my trembling hands long enough to open the black velvet ring box. She gasps. I’m heaving to catch my breath.

  “Jonathan. Two minutes ago. He proposed.” My voice is getting higher and more hysterical by the second.

  “Oh my god, Sasha. What did you say?”

  “I didn’t know what to say! I couldn’t say yes, but I didn’t want to say no, either.”

  I snap the box shut. I don’t even want to look at it.

  “You—what?!”

  “I don’t know, okay?” The acoustics of the bathroom’s cramped tiled walls make my wail sound so mournful, or maybe I really am that sad. “I didn’t know what to tell him.”

  She tips her head back into the stream of water to wash the shampoo out of her hair.

  “Give me two secs. I’ll be right out, I promise.”

  I’m only slightly indignant that she doesn’t hop out of the shower immediately. I try to sit on the couch in the living room, but sitting requires more stillness than I’m capable of at the moment. Orlando saunters in to sniff at my feet. When I scoop him up, he sits in my arms for a minute, but then spots a fly on the wall and wriggles away to chase it. It’s stupid to feel rejected by a cat. I pace around the living room and think this through, trying to make sense of this ugly mess.