“I’m not going to take your bowl, Ari.”
“She paid thirty thousand dollars in lawyers’ fees to get rid of me. Do you get that?”
“That’s not you and me.”
She shakes her head. “But I know how this ends, too. Four years from now, I’ll run into you in the Whole Foods in Park Slope. You’ll be pushing your two-year-old around in one of those expensive strollers, looking for a perfect bunch of organic grapes, while your yoga instructor wife picks out kombucha. And I’ll be the girl wearing some random man’s Islanders jersey—”
“Islanders?”
“—double fisting bottles of cheap wine. I’ll be peeking around the corner, hoping you don’t see me and ask me how I’ve been. Because I’d have to tell you that I’m still pouring daiquiris at bar mitzvahs and writing speeches for strangers who actually have lives worth celebrating. That I still get drunk and go home with strangers I never see again. That I haven’t fixed any aspect of my life. I don’t want to go through that with you. I don’t want…” Her face scrunches up suddenly. “I don’t want to see you with a fucking wife and kid someday.”
Her chest heaves a little bit and tears start to stream down her cheeks. Josh looks away, moving his jaw, tensing against the impulse to allow his own eyes to well up.
“I’m so tired of crying in front of you!” she shouts. “I don’t do this. I’m not like this.”
It feels like some third person has pressed pause on the scene and Josh sees the whole thing like it’s playing out with two actors and he’s just some voyeuristic creep, watching an irate asshole yell at a woman who seems to close in on herself a little bit more with each volley. He waits until her crying jag subsides and she sniffles.
“How do you know we wouldn’t be buying organic grapes together in four years?” Ari’s expression changes, but not in a way that helps him decipher any kind of meaning. “I will buy you whatever fucking grapes you want. The kombucha.” He pauses. “The stroller. All of it.”
She looks exhausted. “I don’t want to get lost in someone else. I need to do something with my own life.”
It feels like a half-hearted tug-of-war; the harder he pulls on the rope, the more it frays.
“What the hell do you think my life is like?” He stands up again, needing the higher ground, pacing in a tight circle. “I’m a complete fucking failure. My dad worked himself to death for forty years keeping his business afloat for my sister and me. And I killed it in a matter of months. Every morning I wake up and remember that I failed him in every possible way and it’s too late to repair it. I have no job, no friends, and I make up a bunch of stupid bullshit to do until it’s time to go to sleep and do it all over again.” He stops pacing. “Do you realize the only thing I look forward to every fucking day is talking to you?”
“That’s exactly why this won’t work. You failed one time and you act like this pathetic victim of circumstance. Nothing’s stopping you from trying again except your own ego. No one exiled you. And I don’t want to be the only person you can talk to. I don’t want you to take care of me. I’m an adult.”
“Since when?” He should probably back the fuck off but everything’s gone a step too far to walk it back. “Seems to me that you’d rather be nipple piercings and bong vapor.”
Ari stares at him, eyes wide with a combination of anger and shock—like he’d just stabbed her in the stomach with a bayonet. He feels a momentary flair of regret but he can’t back down.
“I’m not waiting for more time to pass. I’ve wasted enough of my fucking life. I’m not going backward. You’re not going to insult me and pretend like we can just be friends again.”
He looks into her eyes until he sees the tears well up again, and she yanks the rope back.
“I don’t owe you a relationship just because we had sex.”
Josh stumbles back a couple steps toward the door. He’s supposed to be looking at his fucking girlfriend. He’s supposed to be soaking in the new relationship energy, letting himself replay the “I love you” over and over in his head, finally allowing himself to believe it. He’s supposed to have his face buried in her pussy, with her thighs pressing against his ears, so he can just barely hear her moaning.
But instead he’s looking at yet another person who just wants him to fucking disappear.