Half Moon Street
“Now, this is interesting,” Jojo says from her arms-crossed position at the top of her front steps. “What am I looking at here?”
“Uh, hi,” Katie says. She checks her watch and sees it’s only eight o’clock. “You’re up early.”
“Help a girl out. It’s been decades, but is this...could it be...a proper walk of shame?”
“Can it really be considered a ‘walk of shame’ if you’re with someone?” Katie asks.
“Hello, Jojo,” Simon says. “Nice to see you again.”
Jojo scrambles down the stairs. “You are a handful, missy!” she says. “It’s almost as though I have a fifth child these days. One who’s about their size, too!” She laughs maniacally and grabs Katie’s hand. “I need a confab with my friend. Leave or wait, your choice. Won’t take but a minute,” Jojo says, and hauls Katie off to the side. “You cheeky devil!” She gives her friend a pinch.
“Ow!” Katie says, and rubs her side. “Why are you acting so weird?”
“Katie, Katie, Katie,” Jojo clucks. “Lover of men, breaker of hearts. Where do you think you are, Paris?”
“Are you mad I stayed out all night?” Katie asks. “I’m sorry. I tried to come back before you were up, but I forgot kids have no concept of weekends. I didn’t mean to set a bad example about unwed overnight guests. I’ll make sure they never know.”
“The kids? Who cares about all that? The last time my brother visited, he brought a new girl to breakfast every morning, though never two at the same time, thank God.” Jojo rolls her eyes. “No, Katie, I’m not mad. Just a bit discombobulated. Thrown off. Forced to make harried, half-assed decisions, left and right. Maybe, next time, a heads-up? A lineup might help.”
“What are you talking about?” Katie says.
“A lineup.” Jojo pretends to write. “Who’s playing, and in what position. Otherwise, we might have people batting out of order! Do you like my baseball reference? Hope I didn’t screw up the analogy.”
“I’m so confused...”
Jojo dips her head toward where Simon stands awkwardly on the street. “He should leave. Don’t get me wrong. I’m impressed. Well done, for sure. Didn’t think you had it in you but, yeah, he needs to go.”
The front door cracks open and Katie looks up, expecting Nigel or, more likely, Clive. A smile starts to spread across her face but stops cold when Katie sees a different but equally familiar face. It’s a man, a man with two-day stubble and a tumble of floppy black hair.
Katie gasps, and Jojo flips around. “What the fuck, Armie!” Jojo shrieks. “I told you to stay inside!”
“Armie?” Simon balks and walks halfway up the stairs. “Armie?”
“I’m sorry,” Armie says, approaching Katie, but from the other direction. “I couldn’t wait a second longer.”
“ARMIE?” Simon says again. He glares at Katie, but she can’t speak.
“God, Katie, it’s so good to see you,” Armie says, and drags her into a hug. “I’ve been out of my mind with worry.”
Katie can’t help it; her body responds to his touch. Her muscles slacken, and her eyes water. Armie feels this change and tightens his hold.
“I’ll be going, then,” Simon says.
Katie claws her way out of Armie’s embrace and shoves him, probably harder than is warranted. Jojo seizes the back of his red fleece pullover.
“I told you to stay inside,” she hisses. “This is why I won’t let the kids have a dog.”
“I don’t know why he’s here,” Katie says, pleading at Simon with her eyes. “I swear. Don’t go. Please! Simon!” she calls out, but he’s already turned away.
“I’ll see you around, Katie,” he says. “Thanks for your help this week. It’s been fun.”
* * *
Katie feels a whoosh of nerves as she sits down. She reminds herself this is Armie, and they’ve known each other for a thousand years. Also, she is extremely pissed off.
“Who does this?” Katie says, her gaze fixed on the green marble fireplace. “Who shows up in another country to ambush their ex-fiancée? Where is Millie, by the way? What’d you do with my dog?”
“It’s always about the dog,” he mumbles.
“EXCUSE ME?!” Katie rotates toward him, their eyes meeting for the first time.
“She’s with your sister,” he says.
“Britt knows about this? Son of a bitch. How come she didn’t warn me? Or talk you out of it?”
“She didn’t love the idea. Who was that guy? And why were you together so early in the morning?”
“It doesn’t matter. Why are you here? Do I even want to know?” Even though the question demands asking, Katie fears his response. This is Armie, and he’s more sentimental than most onward-and-upward types. He might simply say he misses her, or he might mention their baby’s upcoming due date. It’s not a discussion Katie’s willing to have, especially not like this.
“It’s going to sound ridiculous,” Armie says as he picks at his nails, that old nervous trait.
“Oh, we’ve already eclipsed ridiculous, my friend.” Katie exhales, a little relieved.
“I’ve been so bothered,” he continues. “Tormented, almost. I can’t get over how we ended things.”
“You’re upset about our breakup?” Katie eyeballs him, stunned. “What the hell? FYI, you always use euphemisms. You say we ‘ended things’ or ‘called it a day.’ It’s as though you can’t bring yourself to utter the words, We Broke Up.”
“Fine. I don’t like how We Broke Up.”
“Our breakup was fine!” Katie says. “Cordial, even. And it’s been seven months.”
“Yeah, but I said some things that...weren’t nice. I keep replaying it in my head.”
“Which parts?” Katie says, then puts up a hand. “You know what? Don’t tell me. I don’t want to rehash it all. Whatever it was, I know you didn’t mean it, and I don’t recall anything particularly galling. Did I seem mad?”
Armie shakes his head. “You didn’t seem angry, but you’re hard to figure out sometimes.”
“You’ve known me for thirty years!”
“And I know the more upset you get, the more ‘fine’ you act.”
“Now you’re making me sound like Judy,” Katie notes.
“If the shoe fits...”
Katie steams. “Okay, now I am mad,” she says. “This is a very low-performing apology, by the by. D-plus, at best.”
“I don’t know what to tell you,” he says. “Other than it’s weighed on me for months. I’ve been debating about whether to talk to you, but you sent me that text, and it felt like a sign.”
Katie looks at him crookedly. “What text?” she says. “Did I ask about Millie too much? Believe me, that was about her, not you.”
“Per usual,” he says and, frowning, reaches into his pocket.
Like she might’ve done a year ago, Katie tears the phone out of his hand. She scans their texts until she finds a bubble that is more than a few words long.
Sorry if I made things more difficult,
I wasn’t the most gracious there, at the end.
We had some good years, my forever friend,
and even the shit I can’t imagine going through
with anyone else. OK, bye!
“We had some good years,” Katie repeats. “That text?”
He nods.
“What’s the big deal?” Katie says. “Apparently, I was feeling apologetic, which is not the same as inviting someone to get on a plane.”
“It’s the most you’ve opened up to me in a long time,” he says. “Years, maybe.”
“What are you talking about? I’ve always been honest with you. We’ve gotten into multiple fights because you think I’m too freewheeling with my opinions in social situations!”
“Y
eah, but that’s always about politics, or controversial takes on pop culture,” he says. “It’s never about you. Like, what’s going on inside.”
“There’s not much to say!”
Armie snorts. “You know what’s fucked-up? The months before our breakup, we were so happy. You always had a smile on your face. I thought things were better than ever and then, out of nowhere, you ended things.” He clears his throat. “Sorry, you broke up with me. It made me feel like I don’t know you at all.”
“It wasn’t out of nowhere,” Katie says. “And my default has always been smiling through the pain. Not the healthiest thing in the world, but you know this about me.”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” Armie says. “I’ve had to guess at you a lot over the years. That text was more than you ordinarily let on. I saw it as an opening.”
“Well, you were wrong.” Katie tosses the phone back. Armie misses, and it clatters to the ground. “Exactly why I hated having you in center field when I pitched,” she says. “Lack of coordination. Not fast enough.”
“Deflecting with a joke. Classic.”
“Why do you think you started playing second base?” Katie sighs. “Seriously, Armie, you flew to London because I was nicer than usual one time? Either you’re out of your mind, or I send extremely bitchy texts.”
At this, Armie breaks into a grin. “Not always,” he says. He tries to catch her eyes, but Katie won’t have it. She’s too experienced to fall for any of his dumb good guy moves. “The text made me feel guilty,” he continues. “You copped to being ‘difficult,’ but if anyone made it harder at the end, it was me. I was a bit relentless.”
“Yeah, I mean, if a different girlfriend ever has an ectopic pregnancy, definitely do not list for her the fifteen other ways she might parent a child, especially if she’s still in the hospital. So many options available to the willing participant, aside from doing nothing at all.”
“I’m sorry,” Armie says, and his voice quivers. “I was trying to solve a problem. But I only created more.”
“Armando Acosta, always with plans B, C, and D,” Katie says. “Look. It was annoying at the time, but you don’t need to apologize. Your heart was in the right place. All is forgiven.”
“Yeah, but I’m still trying to forgive myself. The worst part is you never wanted kids, and I forced you into it, and it ended so horribly. You must hate me for putting you through all that.”
“Maybe at first,” Katie says. “But only because I wanted someone to blame. Admittedly, it could be hard to separate what I wanted personally from what we wanted as a couple but, by the time I was pregnant, I did want that baby. I was all in. It’s one of the few things in this world I know for sure.”
“You were all in,” Armie says. He clasps his hands and waits before speaking again. “Then why did you refuse to pursue other avenues? Why did you immediately shut everything down?”
“Are you kidding me right now?” Katie says, and she can almost feel herself lift off the seat. “You literally just apologized for your aggressive problem-solving and now you’re doing it again?”
“I’m talking about later,” he says. “Hours later, days, weeks.”
“The doctor said we shouldn’t try again,” Katie says, evenly, and her fury begins to ebb. “And we did discuss other avenues.”
Though Katie liked the idea of adoption, she knew of two couples who went through multiyear processes that ultimately failed, and she never had the guts for that. Britt volunteered to be a surrogate, but Katie couldn’t get past the idea of putting her egg and Armie’s sperm into her sister’s womb, which probably means she’s not very evolved.
“We talked about all the options,” Katie reminds him. “But I wasn’t interested in the other paths. You wanted to be a father, and I wanted that for you, and here we are.”
Katie waits, and Armie says nothing. The minutes tick by as he scowls and continues picking his nails. “I guess the apology isn’t the only reason I came,” he finally admits.
Katie stiffens and waits for him to mention the baby they never had. She could be raising a child with Armie right now, this person she’s known forever but who remains in many ways a stranger. The idea is fantastical. It’s a made-up story, fiction she could never write.
“You really hurt my feelings,” he says.
“Your feelings?” Katie scoffs. “About what?”
“The other day when I picked up Millie from the house. I went into your bedroom, for the crow, and your engagement ring...it was just sitting there, on the dresser. Discarded, like an old coffee cup.”
“Okay... Do you want it back or something? Remember, I tried, but you told me to keep it. I am planning to sell it, just so you know.”
Armie looks up, eyes wide. “You can’t sell your engagement ring!” he cries.
“It’s my ring,” Katie says. “And I’m broke. It’s either that or the house, and the ring seems easier. Most likely, though, I’ll have to do both.”
“YOU’RE THINKING OF SELLING THE HOUSE?”
“There’s no reason to yell,” Katie says. “It’s hard enough as it is.”
With no new book on the horizon, and only a trickle of royalties on which to survive, Katie’s understood this inevitability for months, but it’s the first time she’s faced it head-on. Katie hates the idea of selling off a life she once loved, but what choice does she have?
“Katie, you can’t,” Armie says. “The market is skyrocketing in that part of town. Never mind sentimental value, it’d be a terrible business decision.”
“So is defaulting on one’s mortgage,” Katie says. “None of this makes me happy.”
“You have to keep it,” Armie pleads, and Katie can’t recall him fighting half this hard for her. “Don’t sell,” he says again. “If you need the cash flow, you could easily rent it out for twice the mortgage. Several people at my office want to move into that neighborhood.”
“Really?” Katie says, and performs some basic math. She could live comfortably on double the mortgage, even if she had to rent an entirely new place. “That’s actually a decent idea. Thanks.”
“Better yet,” Armie says, “I’ll pay it myself.”
Katie laughs. “You’ll pay my mortgage? That is a hard no,” she says. “I don’t need a benefactor. Well, I do, but I’d pick someone else.”
“I still love you,” he blurts, and it takes Katie a beat to make sense of his words.
“Armie, that’s not true—”
“We never should’ve broken up. That was the biggest mistake of my life.”
“I broke up with you!”
“Yeah, but you were ‘doing me a favor,’” Armie says, his dark eyes swimming with tears. “Those were your exact words. You were giving me the chance to have kids, but that’s not what I want. However much I’d love to be a dad, I’d rather be with you.”
“Stop.”
“We’re perfect together,” he says, and reaches for her hand. “No one understands you better than I do—not Britt, not your mom, not Jojo. Not a single person in this world.”
“If that were true, you wouldn’t have read into my very innocuous text,” Katie says. She pulls away and stands up. “Don’t you have a live-in girlfriend?”
“We don’t live together,” he says. “She seems to think so, but that’s not the case.”
“Sounds like you two are off to a great start.”
“Forget about her, Katie. The reason you and I broke up doesn’t exist anymore,” he says. “You granted me permission to procreate, or whatever, but that’s not what I want. I’ve taken away that obstacle. Now all of our problems are solved.”
“Are they though?” Katie pauses to contemplate whether she really would’ve gone through with marrying him. Was the baby a pain too big to overcome, or was Katie just waiting for a legitimate excuse to leave the greatest g
uy in the world?
“I feel the same now as I did back then,” she says, speaking as much to herself as to him. “We’re better off apart. We don’t want the same things anymore.”
What Katie wants, she can’t put into words. As Linda Radlett did in The Pursuit of Love, and Nancy in her own life, Katie longs to strike a new path, to find that undefinable “other,” not yet named. She doesn’t want to tether herself to a kinder, more charming version of Prod because of expectations, or time served. Whatever life has in store, Armie won’t be part of it.
“Of course we want the same things,” he insists. “We always have and we’ve built a whole life together. You can’t just walk away.”
“I have to walk away,” Katie says. “And so do you. Otherwise, we’ll both be stuck. Armie, I’ll always care about you. I could live for a hundred years and no one would ever have as much of an impact on my life. But I need something different now. You don’t want to get back together. You just hate to lose.” Katie winks, a little bit joking, a little bit not. “I appreciate your bullheadedness, and how you’ve always challenged me. I’m pretty sure our intense rivalry is the main reason I graduated high school, or went to a good college.”
“Bullshit,” he says. “You’ve always been brilliant.”
“Though not always focused. Anytime I veered off-track, you pulled me back on. Luckily, when I started to go sideways, you were out of your fire-setting phase.” Katie smiles sadly. “I’ve always admired your stubborn nature, but now is not the time to dig in. Come on, you know I’m right.”
Armie exhales and, hands on knees, pushes to standing. “I guess that’s that,” he says, his face showing the rare look of defeat. “Never thought it’d end like this.”
“It didn’t,” Katie says. “It ended months ago.”
Armie smirks and Katie flicks away a tear. “Thanks for being my whole life,” she says.
He opens his arms and Katie steps inside, his nearness warming her head to toe. The feeling isn’t love, but something close to tenderness, a deeply entrenched adoration. Soon enough, Armie will realize she’s done him a favor. He doesn’t want to get back together any more than she does.
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