Nico had been married for only two years when he and Saskia got divorced, and although their divorce wasn’t as gasp-scandalous and drama-filled as Tallie and Joel’s, Tallie and Nico found the same comfort in their similar broken afters. He called and texted Tallie often, checking in on her, and it was supportive and encouraging, not smothering. They’d slept together three times since her divorce, all three times at his spacious, glassy loft downtown. Him, breathless and naked on his back, reminding her before she left the second time that he was down for hooking up whenever she needed to remember that Joel didn’t have the only cock in the world.
It’d been a month since she’d seen him. He’d texted a few days before, telling her he might swing by Lionel’s costume party. Before meeting Emmett, she would’ve almost certainly gone home with Nico afterward, but Emmett was her “date” to the party now. Nico wasn’t nosy and wouldn’t ask too many questions. Their relationship had always been casually intense. Intensely casual. And if Nico wanted, Tallie was sure he could easily find a fun woman dressed like a taco or a clever woman wearing a white slip with the word Freudian written on it and disappear with her down Lionel’s long driveway at the end of the night. Thinking of Nico leaving the costume party with someone who wasn’t her didn’t exactly flick Tallie’s jealousy switch, but somewhere inside—somewhere she couldn’t specifically give voice to—she prickled.
Nico could be exceedingly stubborn and obsessive, fixating on an argument until he felt his point had been made one hundred times, but he was also self-aware and quick to apologize. He was handsome and desirable, like the men from her beloved Jane Austens. She imagined Miss Austen anachronistically describing him as tall, with cowlike Sinatra-blue eyes and long lashes—and an amiable countenance to match them. Nico’s energy was as blue as his eyes. Tallie sometimes found herself wondering why she didn’t go ahead and marry Nico when he asked, but they were in college. Couldn’t get the timing right. And now, any sort of serious relationship with anyone, even Nico, would be too soon after Joel.
She hadn’t acted out after her divorce besides unabashedly leaning into her natural tendency for woolgathering, crying while eating too much ice cream, indulging in a glass or two of wine in the middle of her off days, and spending too much money on yarn, pajamas, and French and Korean skin care. She was secretly jealous of her divorced girlfriends who’d gotten plastic surgery, splurged on tropical vacations and luxury cars, had mindless sex with men they’d met on hookup apps. One girlfriend of hers disappeared to Paris with a dashing Frenchman for more than a month. Aisha cut her hair after her breakups and repainted the walls of her bedroom, burned sage and smoked away even the faintest memories of her lovers. Tallie hadn’t gotten a prescription for sleeping pills when she’d been struggling; she hadn’t even gotten a post-divorce haircut. She hadn’t gone wild yet, but she’d been feeling the pinball lever of it pulled out tight, ready for release after years of ignoring her own feelings and listening to everyone else’s instead. She could be wild! She could do something! Anything could happen!
*
Emmett French-inhaled again, and it was sexy. Why was he doing that? So sexy. Oh, the rebellious paradox of her not wanting him to harm himself but also loving to watch him smoke. Tallie turned away with blushes. Was he doing this on purpose? Was he seriously this sexy and didn’t know it? Knew but didn’t care? He had plenty on his mind. He could lean there, smoke sexily, and it wouldn’t matter to anyone in the world. He was depressed, and depression wasn’t sexy. She saw so much of it every day that she didn’t have a romanticized idea of it. People died, people were miserable, people gave up. Forgot how important and loved they were. Depression was a vacuum that sucked out everything—leaving nothing behind except the burdening weight of nothingness.
They’d been quiet, smoking by the window of the restaurant. She was afraid Emmett would be able to read her mind because of the look on her face, so she relaxed it. A technique she used often with her clients: projecting placidity. And when he smiled at her it wasn’t the creepy one. It was toothsome and tricky. Like he was saying, I told you so. Tallie smiled in accord. Absolutely. You told me so.
*
“Thanks again for this. The food and spirits, figuring out the costumes,” he said as they wandered around the outlet mall after lunch, the air like cool water.
“Don’t mention it,” she said, pausing only for a moment before blurting out, “Yesterday I told you I feel better, but sometimes I still have a hard time with my divorce.”