“Thanks.” We both root to the spot for a few seconds.
He cracks first, heading for the back door.
Upstairs, I rifle through my luggage for something comfy and warm enough to sit out on a cool night like this, and then head toward the bathroom portion of the suite. My phone lights up on the side table, and I stop to pick it up.
Mom’s texted me, and I have no idea what she’s talking about.
I know you’re scared, but you can’t keep putting this off. The longer you wait, the worse it will be. You have to tell her, Wynnie—
I drop the phone like it’s a live snake.
His phone, not mine. Mine’s on the other side of the bed.
I step back, heart beating furiously. I’m unsure if I’m more afraid of being caught with Wyn’s phone or of what else I might see on it. Scratch that, it’s the second one.
For a minute I don’t know what to do. My mind is cycling through all the worst possibilities, the things Gloria might want Wyn to tell me.
Something about her health. Something about his.
Or maybe he’s started introducing the idea of the breakup to her, slowly guiding her toward the expectation that we don’t belong together and that it has nothing to do with the physical distance caring for her requires.
It doesn’t. Not anymore. The thought pings through me, a drunken, angry pinball rebounding back and forth between my ribs. He’s happy. He might’ve gone to Montana for his mom, but he’s there for himself now.
She must see how happy he is. She must know he’s ready to let go of me.
I sink onto the edge of the bed, tears pouring down my cheeks out of nowhere. I don’t know why, but it feels like a whole separate breakup. Accepting, now, the truth: That he’s moved on. That all these moments I cling to, like little mental life rafts, are just memories for him.
The truth is, I don’t know what this text means.
I can talk myself in and out of worrying about it all day, but it’s not my business. Just like I told him my life wasn’t his business.
I won’t ask. I can’t. If he wants to tell me, he will, but it’s been a long time since Wyn has given me any answers. Much longer than five months.
I take a shuddering breath, square my shoulders, and get into the shower.
Where I cry some more.
Stupid, stupid, stupid heart. Don’t you know he hasn’t been yours to cry over for a long time?
26
DARK PLACE
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
A GRAYING ONE-BEDROOM apartment we talk about painting robin’s-egg blue. The one we found online and, despite its cramped kitchen and small windows, believed we could turn into a home. The one where we will finally plan our wedding, after years of putting it off.
He’d hardly batted an eye when, after that first trip to my parents’ house, I’d broached the possibility of waiting to get married until I finished school. It wasn’t about what my mom said in the kitchen the night she met him, except inasmuch as I wanted her to see she was wrong.
I wanted her to see how well Wyn loved me, how patient and kind and good he was.
We can take our time, he promised, and when things didn’t come together, wedding-wise, during my final year at Columbia, it was obvious we’d have to plan it after we moved out to my residency.
It takes a few months to find my footing at the hospital. Or hospitals, rather. They have us bounce around, get experience in a lot of different environments. I’d thrived in medical school, like I’d always thrived in college and high school, but this is different. Things move too quickly, and I’m always trying to catch up. My feet and knees hurt from standing all day, and my brain can’t seem to store a map of any one hospital floor without blending it into another, so I’m always the tiniest bit late. Four weeks in, a fourth-year named Taye, with big dark curls and a model-esque stature, catches me by the shoulders as I’m hurrying past. “Breathe for a second,” she says. “Rushing makes you clumsy, and we can’t afford to be clumsy.”
I nod my understanding, but the conviction is somewhat dampened when I immediately knock a jar of pens off the reception desk as we’re parting ways.
Wyn’s the one who finds the wedding venue: a renovated warehouse overlooking the bay, with an opening this coming winter. “If you like it,” I say, “I like it.”
We put down the deposit. In the month that follows, though, we make little progress on the rest of the plan. There are too many decisions to be made, and everything costs too much, and despite his business degree, Wyn’s struggling to find work that pays above minimum wage.
“I’m terrible at interviews,” he says late one night, rubbing the stress from his face after yet another we’ve-decided-to-go-in-a-different-direction email.
“Only because you talk yourself down,” I promise, climbing into his lap, wreathing my arms around his neck. “Next time you’re in one, just answer every question like you’re answering for me.”
He nods somberly. “So when they ask for my best qualities, I tell them I’m amazing in bed.”
I snort into his neck, inhale his scent. “I mean, it worked for me getting my residency.”
He smooths my hair back, kisses the corner of my mouth.
“Answer how the people who love you would answer for you, Wyn,” I say.
He keeps trying. We keep trying.
He finds another bookstore job, but it’s barely over minimum wage, not enough to cover the rest of the rent, so after a couple more weeks, he takes another part-time gig, doing upholstery repair.
Then one morning, I come home from a graveyard shift and find him sitting at the table, still in his clothes from the day before, his phone on the ground with a crack through its screen.
“Wyn?” I say, heart in my throat.
He looks at me and breaks, descends into sobs. I go to him, kneel on the floor, take his weight as he slumps into me, his forehead against my shoulder, his hands wringing my scrubs so hard I think they might tear.
It takes him a long time to get out the words.
To tell me that Hank is gone.
27
REAL LIFE
Friday
“I THINK WE should give you a proper wedding tomorrow,” I announce over breakfast.
“Oh, thank god, someone said it,” Kimmy says, dropping her spoon into her acai bowl.
Parth casts a quick glance over at Sabrina, who dusts her hands off on her cloth napkin.
We’re sitting at a white wrought iron table in the Bluebell Inn’s overgrown garden, tucked up in one of the hills that overlook the harbor. Our server stops by to drop off fresh cappuccinos, then moves off to another table.
“We don’t need anything fancy,” Sabrina says. “This, the six of us, is all that matters.”
“I’m not saying fancy,” I reply. Lying awake, late into the night, it became apparent that the only way to make it through these last two days without crumbling was to give my brain something else to focus on. “I’m just saying, like, a cake. A photographer. Maybe something old, new, and blue, or whatever the saying is?”
Wyn softly snorts beside me.
“Could be nice,” Parth says, eyeing Sabrina again.
“It’s tomorrow,” she reminds me.
“It would only take a few hours,” Cleo says.
“We can split up tasks and knock it all out,” I add. A completable chore and alone time: the perfect combo.