From: [email protected]
Date: February 14, 2024
Subject: Re: Happy Valentine’s Day!
Oh, wow, I’m sorry about the bf. I hope you’re okay.
From: [email protected]
Date: February 14, 2024
Subject: Re: Happy Valentine’s Day!
Oh, no, I am totally okay. I ended things. He’d gotten clingy and weird, and you know how grad school is. There isn’t time for clingy and weird. How are you?
From: [email protected]
Date: February 14, 2024
Subject: Re: Happy Valentine’s Day!
OK cool, so then is it too soon to ask you out next time we’re both back in Irvine?
And I’m good. Busy. Hoping to wrap up things and do the dissertation defense in the fall. I’ll be in Irvine for a week in June but can also come back when you’re in town.
From: [email protected]
Date: February 14, 2024
Subject: Re: Happy Valentine’s Day!
It’s not too soon . . .
You’d come back just to see me?
From: [email protected]
Date: February 14, 2024
Subject: Re: Happy Valentine’s Day!
Without question.
Chapter Twelve
FEBRUARY 14, 2024
Terra
Irun my fingers decadently over the plushest sofa I’ve ever sat upon and sip the best wine I’ve ever tasted, unfortunately feeling more bored than I have in my entire life. My friends insisted that what I needed postbreakup was a non-Valentine’s-Day-themed Valentine’s Day party, but I can assure you that no newly single woman ever wants to do anything remotely celebratory on Valentine’s Day.
Yet, here I am. The wine is good; the cheese is, too. And plentiful: there’s a huge spread of it on the gleaming glass coffee table in front of me, and not a pink-wrapped Hershey’s kiss or chalky heart candy to be found. Chef’s kiss. But the cheese seems mostly to be for show. No one appears tempted. I’ve only seen one woman eat a single green olive, and it was about ten minutes ago. I watched as she delicately retrieved the pit from between her lips with her thumb and forefinger, fretting visibly for a handful of seconds about where to discard it before seeming to decide to fold it into her palm. I think it might still be in there.
Relatedly, this isn’t my kind of party. I’m more a jeans-and-board-games kind of gal. An outdoor-bonfire kind of vibe. This is a wine-and-cheese-and-New-Yorker-articles-discussion party. A what’s-your-favorite-podcast party. I don’t even know whose house we’re in; I think my roommate, Elise, said the guy who owns it is a friend of her friend Nathan’s, which is a circuitous way of saying that the owner could be any one of the fancily dressed people sipping malbec and discussing which hedge fund is their favorite.
But whoever lives here is clearly very rich because this place is enormous. It’s the kind of Philadelphia house that makes a penniless, first-year graduate student like me feel vaguely pre-defeated, because I’ve set the success bar firmly at Paying Off My Student Loans Before I Retire. I can’t imagine affording something like this in any version of my future. I can’t even afford the cab ride home, which is why I’m stuck here until Elise and our friend Jamie are ready to bail.
I appreciate that my friends wanted me to get out of the apartment; I appreciate that they have a hard time believing that I really am okay after ending the relationship with Nick that lasted nearly two years. But given that they vanished to schmooze almost as soon as we got here, I’m going to ask a few more questions next time before agreeing to a “girls’ night out.”
What I want to be doing is chilling back in my bedroom, eating delivery soup dumplings, and continually rereading C’s inexplicably sexy “Without question” email. But instead I’m here, wearing a dress, slowly sipping great wine, resisting cheese, and speaking to no one.
I look down at my phone and open C’s email again.
Without question.
My pulse quickens, my neck flushes, and, impulsively, I hit Reply.
From: [email protected] To: [email protected]
Date: February 14, 2024
Subject: Re: Happy Valentine’s Day!
And I will, also without question, come home when you’re there. Let me know the dates you’ll be in Irvine, and I’ll be there, too.
My email sends with a little whoosh. We’re going to meet.
We are finally going to meet.
I stand, needing to walk off this nervous energy. I grab the bottle of wine on the table near me and slip through the clusters of people to the back of the room, where a wide staircase leads upstairs. Why not? I have nothing else to do.