“Feeling better?” he says, and opens his arms to me.
I step into his embrace, feel his arms close comfortingly around me. For a long time, we say nothing. Tears sting my eyes as I pull back to look at him.
“Why do you love me, Ryan?”
He drops his arms, rubs his face. “Lanie, what are you doing?”
“I’m being honest. It’s an honest question.”
He shakes his head and turns away, facing the street and the traffic, the cabs stopping and spilling out happily chattering young people, looking for the heart of Saturday night.
“I don’t understand what happened to us,” Ryan says, not looking at me. “We used to be so happy. The night we got engaged I was ecstatic. Kissing you on that jumbotron, my ring on your finger, I felt so proud that everyone could see we were the perfect couple. Now . . . recently, you act like you’re being held at gunpoint just to pick a date for our wedding—”
“I don’t think I want to be a perfect couple,” I say.
He laughs like this is crazy. “What?”
I take his hands. “I just want to be me. I want you to be you. Complete with all our eccentricities. I want us to write poetry to each other, even if it’s bad.”
“I don’t think I follow. . . .”
I close my eyes. “I wasn’t happy that night we got engaged.”
“What?” This is a record-scratch moment. Ryan’s tone draws eyes from strangers on the street.
“I’ve been happy in our relationship. I’ve been mostly very happy. But I wasn’t happy the night you proposed.”
He squints at me. “You wept! You have that picture on your wall!”
“I didn’t weep out of joy,” I say.
Ryan thinks. “Okay, yes, I remember you started freaking out about your mom—”
“That was part of it.”
“And the other part?” he asks.
“I’m a Dodgers fan.”
“Come again?” Ryan asks.
“I’m a Dodgers fan. You know that.”
“I know you have an old Dodgers T-shirt. I know you love Vin Scully. But what was I supposed to do, fly you out to a Dodgers game and propose there? It makes no sense to be a fan of a team in a city you’ve never lived in! You don’t even like Los Angeles!”
“I’m a Dodgers fan because of Sandy Koufax,” I say. “I’ve told you that. My mom was four years old the year he sat out game one of the World Series on Yom Kippur. BD told you the story of taking the train across the country with my grandfather to watch Koufax pitch his no-hitter against the Yankees. He’s a hero in my family, like he’s a hero for most Jewish families in America. You’re supposed to remember things like this about the person you want to marry. But that’s not even the point.”
“What is the point?” Ryan asks.
“The fact that I’m a Dodgers fan has almost nothing to do with our relationship. But the Washington Nationals have even less to do with our relationship. They’re your team, and that’s great. I had fun at the game with you. But there’s nothing special about them or that stadium to us. You could have proposed to me at the bodega where we buy coffee, and it would have meant more. I wasn’t happy, Ryan. I was in shock when you proposed. Or should I say, when the jumbotron proposed. It asked me to marry you. You never even said the words.” I sigh. “I could have been anyone in the crowd.”
“You’re not anyone,” he says, his voice cracking. “You’re Elaine Bloom and I love you. Uniquely.”
“I know that you love me. And I love you. But I don’t think we love what our future looks like together. You want me to be all the things you want in a wife. But I’m not a Nationals fan just because I wore your hat that night. I won’t be a WASP, even if I convert. I’ll never stop being an editor, even if I change jobs. I don’t want five kids just because you do. And I hate wedding planning without my mother, not because I need her to pick out my dress, or even to see me wear it that day. I hate it because I know that if I go through with it, I might be getting her last words to me wrong.”
“If you go through with it,” Ryan says, putting his hands on his head. He starts pacing. “Oh my god. You’re breaking up with me.”
“Yeah,” I say softly. Though I didn’t know it until now. “Yeah.”
I close my eyes. This hurts. I don’t want to break up with Ryan. I really don’t want to break up with Ryan. But I have to. I have to do it now, even as the rest of my life is already imploding. Because while Ryan is still all of the ninety-nine things I thought I wanted, it turns out that isn’t enough.
And though he’d never admit to having a list of his own, I’m not the woman he wants to spend his life with, either. More important, I don’t want to become her.
“You deserve—” I start to say.
“Don’t tell me what I deserve,” he snaps. “I know what I deserve. I also know you’re going to regret this. Because you’re never going to find someone who will take care of you the way I can take care of you, who will give you the life I would have. And by the time you realize that, it’s going to be too late.”
“I realize it already, Ryan. It’s already too late.”
He stares at me as if we’ve never met before, which is what it feels like to break up with the person you thought you’d love forever.
“Well,” he says. “I guess this is goodbye.”
He turns and starts down the block. Steam from a subway grate rises up and obscures him from me even further.
I did this, and I can’t believe it’s happening. I can’t believe how fast Ryan is walking away. For much of my life, I’ve wanted to be a Noa Callaway heroine; I’ve wanted to fall in love with a Noa Callaway hero. I thought I had found him in Ryan. And now, the only thing I know for sure is I was wrong.
I think of my engagement ring, finally resized and ready for me to pick up at the jewelers. What do I do with it now?
“Wait,” I call out, chasing after him. “What about—”
He waves me off, still walking away. “You’ll figure it out, Lanie,” he calls over his shoulder. “Or you won’t. It’s not my problem anymore.” He turns and gives me a crushing look. “That’s the beauty of breaking up. One less problem.”
Chapter Ten
The diamond ring sits in its open clamshell box in the center of the outdoor table, looking radioactive.
Late last night, when it became clear that my breakup with Ryan was not an oyster-induced hallucination, I’d texted Meg and Rufus:
Maison Pickle. 11 a.m. Emergency Brunch.
The term is a holdover from Meg’s and my days as assistants. It basically means there will be an excess of cocktails, complaints, and, in this case, crying. The host of Emergency Brunch need give no advance explanation, but these days, now that Meg has kids, and all of our lives have more responsibilities than they did seven years ago, it is only invoked in dire situations.
I wait for them under a heat lamp on the patio at Maison Pickle on the Upper West Side, a box of tissues in my lap. It’s unseasonably warm, the sky blue and flecked with fluffy clouds, but all I see is gray.