Below our chins, there were groups of people drinking out of red plastic cups, cackling, chatting, singing off-key. We stared at each other like two empty bookends standing above the crowd—no one and nothing else needed to exist between our bodies.
The chords of “Crash Into Me” plucked though the air as tall bodies filled in the gap between Garrett and me. The park was thick with nostalgic romance. Maybe that’s what pulled my bare shoulders through the crowd and outside the lawn’s fence so effortlessly. Maybe that’s what landed me right in front of his strong body.
We stood inches from each other. We’d been here a couple times before. And this time didn’t feel any different—like if our lips didn’t touch, the world might end.
My chest pounded as the verse moved into the chorus. “I’m bare-boned and crazy for you.” Garrett’s eyes searched around my face, and I waited for his usual grin to cut through my intensity. My heart beat faster with the realization that there wasn’t a joke in sight.
“Happy birthday,” he said.
Garrett managed a quick smile, but his expression hardened into something else. His eyes washed over me like a tidal wave engulfing the shore, rendering me powerless. But I wasn’t. I was a grown woman. Suddenly, I felt my age: all of thirty-five. I felt every painful moment under my skin: from my dream getting callously torn from me, to time refusing to be on my side, to watching the men I love slip away. I felt what it was like to come so close, and I didn’t want to feel it anymore.
Happy birthday felt like a dare.
A yellow spotlight warmed the entire park, and I took a step forward.
“Kiss me,” I said.
7
TWENTY-FOUR
I SAT ON THE TOILET seat in the dingy bathroom of Arlene’s Grocery as Summer applied bronzer to my pale cheek.
“So, I finally get to meet Grocery Garrett.”
“You were there when I met Garrett,” I reminded her, through my sucked-in cheeks.
“Doesn’t matter. He didn’t get to meet me.”
Summer was bitter. For a year, she’d listened to me wax poetic about a gorgeous guy who existed only on Mondays inside a Trader Joe’s. “If you don’t ask him to your birthday, I’m going to march to TJ’s and do it myself,” Summer had threatened two weeks prior. It was the nudge I needed to ask Garrett to see me outside of the frozen food aisle—to ask him to come to my birthday party at our original meeting place, Arlene’s Grocery. He said “I’ll be there” faster than I’d ever seen a word fly out of his mouth.
“I can’t believe it’s taken you this long to invite him out,” Summer said. She applied magenta matte lipstick to my mouth and handed me a piece of toilet paper to blot.
Summer knew exactly why it took me a year to suggest that Garrett and I see each other outside a grocery store: I was terrified to mess with something so flawless. I was a perfectionist when it came to things I loved, and I didn’t want to shatter our glittery snow globe—a foul-mouthed Hallmark movie inside a Trader Joe’s.
There was the household goods section, where he insisted that Duran Duran’s “Lay Lady Lay” was better than Dylan’s. I laughed straight into his earnest blue eyes, and like a lady, I told him to “fuck right off.” He shook his head at me with a grin—it was an expression that looked a lot like love, and then his eyes darted away from mine.
The dairy aisle, where we rapid-fire listed nineties one-hit wonders. Where he tried to convince me that Blues Traveler was “so much more than a one-hit wonder,” and before I could give him my trademark Maggie Vine smirk, his hand brushed my cheek, one earbud went into my ear, and right there in front of the 2 percent milk, I fell in love with “Hook” because it was the song playing when Garrett Scholl’s hand lingered on my face for a moment too long as his eyes stared at mine, unflinching.
The pots of mismatched wildflowers, where I forced one of my favorite unrequited love songs, Fiona Apple’s “Paper Bag,” onto him, hoping he would catch the non-subtle hint: Not being with you keeps me up at night. Truthfully, “Silver Springs” stood tallest on my podium of musical heartache, but Garrett wasn’t Lindsey Buckingham—we were in our early years, he hadn’t broken my heart, yet. Part of what kept me up at night was knowing Garrett had the potential to turn me into That Girl sitting on the subway, the one rage-sobbing “was I just a fool?” to complete strangers. He had the potential to break my heart and fill the cracks with fury. He had the potential to make me go Full Stevie Nicks—to turn me into a woman hell-bent on haunting his existence with my voice. So I went with the more optimistic approach, the second-most brutal song in the back of my mind, “Paper Bag.” I watched Garrett’s jaw clench as Fiona Apple’s “hunger hurts and I want him so bad” met his rock and roll eardrums. We were inches apart, the headphone cord dangling between our chins, and the line buzzed on my gums like a drunk cigarette. He stood motionless after the song ended, slowly handed me back my earbud, and, eyes locked on mine, without a hint of his usual smile, said, “I’ve been there.” I wanted to ask, “Are you there, right now, with ME?” I longed to step forward and close the gap between us with a simple, “We don’t have to be there,” against his lips. But all that followed was a head nod, because I wasn’t sure I could recover if I received confirmation that he didn’t feel the same way.
The mixed nuts section, where, holding a package of salted pistachios, Garrett opened up about his late grandfather, a man who would leave tiny pistachio shells strewn throughout his Connecticut Tudor home. His grandfather was hard on his father, so his father was hard on Garrett. I watched Garrett’s jaw clench with emotion as he finished telling stories of emotionless men who shared his last name. He painted on a smile, burying his hurt inside, but I saw it just the same: there was pain inside the man who radiated sunshine.
The vitamins section, where I broke down after a typical fight with my mother—an argument spurred by my refusal to take the real estate license exam and follow in the footsteps of the thirty-year plan she had set out for me. He stepped forward, wrapped his huge arms around me, leaned down, and held me tightly. I loved how my head fit under his chin. “I envy that you’re brave enough to put your dreams first. I’m not,” he whispered. He pulled back and smirked at me, using his hand as a ruler as he measured the top of my head, coming just to his neckline. “Seriously, how short are you?” I elbowed him, laughing as I wiped away tears.
Garrett wasn’t fearless enough to put his dreams first, but I didn’t blame him. We were both only children, and we concluded that our parents should have made more options for success instead of setting their legacies on top of our shoulders. My mother was waiting on the moment I would come to my senses and follow in her real estate broker heels. Meanwhile, Garrett was acing the role of the golden child, a child who by definition doesn’t deviate from the path laid ahead. He was going to follow in his father’s venture capitalist shoes, even if he spent a couple nights a month moonlighting as the lead singer of a band. The Finance Guys, true to their name, was a bunch of finance guys in their midtwenties who refused to give up their nights to a job they would soon have to give up their nights to. Music was what he wanted to do for the rest of his life, but he was smart enough to know that music wasn’t what he would do for the rest of his life. In some ways, I envied Garrett, but I also felt a sense of pretentious bitterness. What gave him the right to take up space on a stage if he wasn’t prepared to wake up on it? He could afford nice wine and healthy food, and he got to enjoy the spotlight once in a blue moon. But gun to my head, I would rather bleed for every penny and go to sleep in a shitty apartment with a smile on my face than the alternative. Garrett’s glory days were about to be behind him. I got the sense mine were approaching.