Love at First Like

by Hannah Orenstein

  “You haven’t called off the wedding,” he guesses.

  “No,” I admit. “Not yet.”

  “And you came here because . . .” he says, prompting me.

  I don’t know if I can say it out loud. I give him a meaningful look, hoping that’ll communicate everything I need him to know.

  “Say it,” he chides.

  I gather my courage. “I came here to ask if you would go through with it for me. Walk down the aisle. Marry me.”

  My words hang in the air.

  “You’re unbelievable,” he says, looking stunned.

  “It wouldn’t have to be legally binding,” I add quickly. “It just has to look real. For my customers. We don’t even need to get a marriage certificate.”

  He takes a long, contemplative sip of his coffee. Since this idea first occurred to me, I’ve tried to ponder how this would sound to him a thousand different times. Every time I come up with a slightly different answer. The truth is that a handful of months is hardly enough time to get to know someone. After all that Blake and I have been through, I’ve scraped just the surface of who he is. The layers of complicated nuance that we all have underneath can’t be cracked so easily. That comes with time. And that’s the one thing I don’t have on my side.

  Finally, he speaks. “This really is just business for you, isn’t it?”

  I consider what to say. I love him, but not in the way a wife should love her husband. I love him as one of many possible routes my life could take—currently, he’s the best and safest one—but he’s never been my one and only. I can imagine myself happy with any number of other lives, and I have a sinking feeling that happily engaged couples don’t feel that way. Aren’t we supposed to feel like we’ve found the most complementary match? The great love that we’ve been waiting for all our lives? The other soul that aligns perfectly with our own? I can’t say in good conscience that I’m here out of love. So I go with the truth. It’s not romantic, but it’s honest. I owe him that.

  “You and I make sense together,” I explain. “Our customer base is essentially the same, only I sell women’s jewelry and you sell men’s. Separately, we each have our own appeal, but together, we’d be unstoppable. Two breadwinners on one team. Think of us like Beyoncé and Jay-Z, or Bill and Hillary Clinton.”

  He raises a skeptical eyebrow again. “Because those marriages are so strong,” he says coldly.

  This is why I loved him.

  I sigh. “The personal stuff, we can work on. But just think about it from a business perspective. I’ve been getting incredible press lately—wouldn’t you want to be named in that? What if we cross-promoted our brands? What if we collaborated on a line together? I mean, you have to admit we’d be a natural fit to work together.”

  He gives me a tight smile. “I used to think that.”

  “. . . but not anymore,” I finish for him.

  Blake sighs and doesn’t answer. He drums his fingers against the lid of his coffee cup and doesn’t meet my eyes. I wish I could tell what he was thinking. The silence stretches on longer than makes me feel comfortable.

  “October nineteenth?” he asks suddenly.

  “What?”

  “The date of our wedding,” he says impatiently. “I mean, the date of the wedding. Your wedding.”

  “Oh, yeah. The ceremony starts at four p.m.”

  He nods carefully. I’m suddenly light-headed with anticipation for what he might say next.

  “I’m not saying yes to you right now, but I’m not saying no, either,” he says, still looking away. “You’ve made a solid case, and I need time to think it over.”

  He pushes his chair back and stands. This conversation is over. I skid back in my chair and stand, too. This time, he looks like he’s contemplating whether or not to hug me. I hesitate before turning to walk toward the door, but the hug never comes. Instead, he lowers his eyes and walks past me across the coffee shop.

  “Goodbye, Eliza,” he says quietly. “I’ll be in touch.”

  • Part 3 •

  October

  • Chapter 25 •

  It’s Thursday. My wedding is nine days away. It’s been a week and a half since I spoke to Blake at Starbucks, and a week and a half of anxiety. I’m fielding letters and emails from Roy, the landlord, about whether or not we’ll re-sign the lease and a flurry of wedding-planning tasks that trigger actual waves of nausea, and I’ve been skipping out on Golden Years to avoid Raj, because I don’t know how to speak to him with the respect he deserves while I’m still waiting on an answer from Blake. My romantic situation is too complicated. I’m tiptoeing around Sophie and Jess and dodging my parents’ calls, because I can’t talk about the shop or our company’s finances without a lump forming in my throat. My Instagram posts have gotten more and more desperate, in hopes of squeezing out any sales possible. At this point, I would be posing naked with all the important bits covered by diamonds if it meant I could sell them. For the sake of keeping my bases covered, I’m still pretending online that the wedding will happen. If I need to cancel it, I’ll do that—but I don’t want to shut down that option before I need to.

  Even though it’s time for happy hour, I don’t have the energy to trek to Bunna Cafe in Bushwick for Ethiopian sangria, or to Otto’s Shrunken Head in the East Village for tiki drinks with tiny umbrellas. I text Carmen that I feel wiped out, and I can only handle something local.

  “Let me buy you a drink at Hotel Delmano,” Carmen texts.

  “You don’t have to do that,” I write.

  “You’ll return the favor with the open bar at your wedding,” she jokes.

  “Don’t jinx it,” I fire back.

  Hotel Delmano is a cocktail bar in Williamsburg that used to be on my regular rotation of first-date spots. The menu has an impressive variety of concoctions using ingredients like green chartreuse, cacao, yuzu, and beet juice. The colorful pink-and-blue walls are artfully faded, and the curved wooden bar is the most elegant thing in the neighborhood. Most crucially, it’s less than a five-minute walk from my apartment. Carmen and I meet after work, and immediately order a round of cocktails and enough oysters to cover every available square inch of the table.

  “Any news from Blake?” she asks, once the waiter has left.

  I shake my head miserably. “Still nothing definitive. I texted him a few days ago just to check in again, but nothing.”

  “Ugh,” she says.

  There is nothing more she can say on the topic. Ugh just about sums it all up.

  “Any news from Raj?” I ask.

  “What, you still haven’t spoken to him?” she asks, sinking down in her chair.

  I shake my head again. “Not since he stayed over.”

  “Come on, Eliza, seriously?”

  I groan. “It’s complicated!”

  I never understood how someone could develop feelings for two people at once—I assumed that was only in the realm of cheesy rom-coms, The Bachelor, and people in open relationships. But lately, I’ve come to the uncomfortable realization that I can want both men at the same time for different reasons. Once I let myself acknowledge that, the full extent of my crush on Raj burst into bloom. Stuffing it deep down inside of me while I wait for Blake’s response has been torturous.

  “I don’t want to mess with Raj’s feelings, you know?” I tell Carmen. “I feel stupid that I kissed him when he didn’t want to kiss me back. He basically said that he likes me, but I don’t treat him the way he deserves. It would be cruel for me to sulk about Blake in front of him. And right now, waiting for Blake’s response is all I can think about, so . . .”

  She bites her lip and gives me a sympathetic look. I know that she talks to Raj regularly because they work together now.

  “He’s fine when it comes to work stuff, but I don’t know, he seems a little bummed lately,” she says. “I don’t know him as well as you do, obviously, but he doesn’t totally seem like himself.”

  “Poor guy,” I say.

  “Poor g
uy,” she echoes. Then, after a pause, “Do you like him?”

  “Of course I do,” I say automatically. “I’d go for him if I could, but I feel like I have to give Blake a chance to come back, since I asked him to. It’s like I can’t even begin to consider Raj as a real option until I know what’s happening with Blake—not because Raj is my second choice, but because I’ve already made myself unavailable.”

  “So you’d settle for Blake, but if not, you’d rather date Raj?” she asks.

  The waiter returns with our drinks and oysters, and I’m grateful for the interruption. We clink glasses, offer each other sips of our respective cocktails, and slurp down an oyster each.

  “So . . .” she prompts again, when it’s clear I’m putting off an answer.

  I groan. In high school, when I couldn’t fall asleep at night, I used to lie awake, imagining what my life would look like when I was older. I tried to envision how my face would mature into an adult one; I dreamed about the expensive jewelry I could finally afford to buy; I assumed that someday, there would be a job and a husband, just because that’s what adults did. The idea for Brooklyn Jewels was far off. But I knew I wanted a career that felt like a big fucking deal—I wanted something meaningful and exciting that I could build my life around. But beyond that, the details were hazy.

  Sometimes, I was an executive at a Fortune 500 company and married to the kind of husband who wears a suit and lives in a penthouse in New York or London. Or sometimes, I was the breadwinner, while my husband was a high school teacher or a stay-at-home dad, and we lived in a charming house with a garden out front in the suburbs. Certain dreams involved becoming a Hollywood stylist madly in love with a sexy guitarist who serenaded me on a sheepskin rug in front of a roaring fireplace when we escaped to our mountain house on weekends. It didn’t matter precisely what the future held, because in each iteration of the fantasy, it always felt right. On those sleepless nights, it never occurred to me that I’d someday have trouble figuring out which choice was right for me.

  The thing is, I finally grew up. The time to pick a version of the future is now. And I don’t know what to do.

  I’ve been banking on the fact that Blake coming around to a publicity-stunt wedding would be the best choice, but is it? Would I be better off in the long run if I embraced my feelings for Raj? Or should I forget about my love life for a second and scrap Brooklyn Jewels because something even better is around the corner? Plenty of entrepreneurs fail the first time around. Maybe all I need is to put my head down for a year or two to come up with a sleek, sharp business plan for a new company. I wish I could fast-forward through life to see which choice will make me the happiest, but I know there’s no way to do that.

  I want to be the kind of woman who would live her life exactly the way she pleases, regardless of whom she’s with (or if she’s with anyone at all)—like Helen did. But I know enough to understand that choosing either man, or any man, would have some sort of impact on my life. If I wind up with Blake, our relationship would be centered on joint ambition. If I choose Raj, I bet life would feel more compartmentalized: work would be work, and then we’d have our world outside that together.

  I consider trying to explain this all to Carmen, but I worry she won’t get it. We’ve debated this for years: she believes that everything happens for a reason and that the universe has a plan for each of us. None of that makes sense to me. I think that bad things can happen to good people for no reason and vice versa, and that the only plan that matters in my life is the one I make for myself. I don’t want to sit through yet another conversation in which she earnestly promises me that a silver lining is on its way when I know that’s not necessarily true. Everyone makes their own choices, whether they know it or not.

  “I want Raj,” I say finally. “But I don’t know if that’s going to happen anymore. I made a mess. And I’d get it if he wanted to walk away from that.”

  Every time I consider this situation, my skin gets hot and I can feel my pulse ticking in my neck. I lift the back of my hand to my forehead; I’m warm.

  She leans back in her chair, thoughtfully slurping down an oyster. “He’s not going to walk away,” she says.

  “You don’t know that,” I say.

  She gives the tiniest close-lipped smile that makes me wonder what she’s not telling me. “Carmen?”

  “He asks about you,” she says. “Not all the time, but often enough that it’s obvious you’re on his mind.”

  “What does he want to know?” I ask.

  She shrugs. “How you’re doing. How your company’s doing. If you’re getting married. If you’re happy. That kind of stuff.”

  “Oh.”

  So maybe he isn’t repulsed by my behavior. Maybe that sloppy, impulsive attempt at a kiss didn’t totally doom us. If that’s the case, then what he said—that he wasn’t upset with me, but he simply needed to be my first choice—must be true. Everyone deserves to feel like someone’s first choice. Everyone deserves to feel chosen and cherished. And that makes me realize something else.

  “Blake is wrong for me,” I blurt out.

  Carmen cocks her head. “What?”

  “Blake is wrong for me,” I repeat, feeling more and more sure of myself. “I should’ve figured this out earlier. But if I have to beg him to marry me this weekend, that’s not okay. If he were right for me, then he’d be sprinting here now to walk down that aisle. He’d forgive me for hiding a secret from him. Or maybe I would’ve felt so comfortable with him from the start that I never would’ve had to keep that secret. I mean, I’ve always been honest with Raj.”

  Carmen simply nods. “Yeah. Honesty. That’s how relationships are supposed to work. Like, if you’re a normal person.”

  I give an exasperated sigh. “Yeah! But I didn’t think I necessarily was a normal person! I thought—I wanted to think—that I was doing something out of the ordinary and it was going to be worth it. I thought I was sacrificing a regular relationship for something even better. I mean, god, look around. Every day, another girl we know announces that she’s going to settle down for a boring life with some bland lawyer or a dude who thinks that lifting weights counts as a personality. And then she gets married, changes her name, and only posts wedding photos on Instagram for the rest of her life. I don’t want to be one of those girls. Are we supposed to think that any of them are actually happy?”

  By the end of my rant, I’m close to shouting. I sound desperate, like I’m trying to rationalize my long string of missteps to myself. Carmen’s eyes widen in alarm. She tucks her hair behind her ears and leans forward, like she’s winding up for a speech.

  “Girl, we have a lot to unpack here, because you are freaking out.” She gets ready to tick points off on her fingers, and I know that means she’s fired up. “For starters, there’s nothing wrong with getting married if that’s what you want. But also, you don’t have to do that. You can just live your life, run your business, and make out with hot men. That is plenty. That is more than fine. If you feel any rush to get married, that’s your own doing. You can chalk it up to societal pressure all you want, but you’re a single girl who planned a wedding before meeting her groom—I can’t help you there.”

  I want to shrink into my cocktail.

  “Second, don’t assume marriage has to be boring,” she continues. “I mean, sure, decades of monogamy might not always be the most exciting thing on the planet, but if you’re dreading a marriage from the start, that’s a red flag. The good is supposed to outweigh the bad: stable love, happiness, and support, in exchange for a promise to be faithful. You know, in all these months of hearing about Blake, I’ve never once heard you sound excited to marry him. It was more like . . . you decided you were going to marry Blake, and that was that. You both deserve more than that, Eliza.”

  “I don’t—” I start to speak up to protest, but she holds out a finger to shush me.

  “I’ve wanted to say this for months,” she spits out. “It’s okay to want to feel something
. That’s not weird; that’s what makes you human. I can only imagine how stressed you’ve been these past few months, but the times you’ve seemed happiest are the times you’re around Raj. He brings out a side in you I haven’t seen since you launched Brooklyn Jewels—you’re chill and goofy and relaxed. I just hope you realize how rare that is. You’re so lucky to have found someone like that. It’s one thing to make sacrifices for a relationship, but it’s not worth it unless it’s the right relationship. And you’ve found it . . . just not where you expected.”

  Even Carmen seems thrown off guard by the intensity of her speech. She slumps back into her seat, shakes her head a little, and downs a heavy sip of her drink. “All righty then,” she mutters to herself. We sit and stare at each other, letting the gravity of her words sink in.

  “I’m not ready to marry Raj,” I say quietly. “At least not for, like, years.”

  Carmen’s laugh echoes around the bar. “God, Eliza, I’m not telling you to marry him! I’m just saying to give him a chance. You’d be stupid to pass that up.”

  She’s right. That would be idiotic. I am an idiot. The right answer has been sitting in front of me for months, and I’ve been too paralyzed by self-doubt and caught up in my own delusions to see it clearly. I look down at the empty oyster shells on the silver tray filled with ice chips, and the same drink I’ve nursed on a half dozen first dates at this very bar, and suddenly, sitting stationary in my own skin feels suffocating. I need to get out of here. I know what I have to do.

  “Carmen, I think I have to head out. I need to fix this,” I say. My voice sounds unsteady, but I feel the comforting sensation of a plan clicking into place. “Thank you for helping me fix this.”