Thirty-Nine Years Ago

Thirty-Nine Years Ago

"I very much like her," Cory said. "Rachel."

They were sitting in a sandwich shop near Liam's office in Midtown, sharing a slice of coconut cream pie, Cory's finger circling her coffee mug.

She was home, again. She had moved back to New York, back to Brooklyn. One year had turned into three and a half, just like he'd known it would. She wasn't even back now because she wanted to be here, but because her mother was sick and her father was useless and someone had to take care of them.

She was, apparently, the someone.

She loved graduate school. She loved the writing program and loved spending the day with people who wanted to talk about books and plays and poetry. She loved the apartment that she shared with two other graduate students. It was an old firehouse that had been converted into open-air lofts with enormous, pitched ceilings and a large bookshelf that ran the length of the living room. This was the first photograph she showed him: the photograph of that beautiful, endless white bookshelf that housed all her books, all her textbooks, all the used books she thrifted every weekend.

She was wearing it on her face—how miserable she felt to be back in her parents' house. What choice did she have? Her mother's pension wasn't enough. Her father was unemployed. Cory was three semesters shy of finishing her PhD and nowhere close to finishing a book. Teaching jobs would be fairly impossible to secure. As would any kind of jobs at New York publishers. They were impossible to acquire and low paying, at least when you were starting out.

She didn't have time to get into all that. She was interviewing for a job at the marketing company her friend Sally worked for. She was going to be a copywriter. They liked that they could tell clients she had a master's. And they would probably inflate it to tell clients that she had a PhD too. They were in marketing, after all. The bottom line was she'd make plenty of money to properly care for her parents. She would figure out the rest later.

Liam reached across the table, toward her. It was killing him to see her unhappy. But he didn't know how to fix it for her. She didn't want his fixes anyway. He wasn't an artist. He didn't have that compulsion. He knew that she had, in a way, been more comfortable discussing the situation with Rachel, even though Cory and Rachel had only just met. Rachel knew what it meant to move away from your art (or at least to move away from the idea that your art could also operate as your livelihood) and to try and build a different kind of life. That understanding was one of many reasons they had gotten along. That they'd genuinely gotten along. Somehow, for Liam, that made it harder.

Now Rachel had gone to catch the train back to Croton, and it was just the two of them. Just Cory and Liam. Cory kept looking away from him, her eyes focused on that damn mug, refusing to let him deeper in.

"I can call off the wedding," he said.

"Don't be ridiculous. She is lovely. I like her. And more importantly you like her. There's a reason you want to marry her."

"I didn't think you were coming back."

"Yet here I am."

"Cory…"

"Don't call me Cory," she said. "It makes me think of my father."

"What can I tell you? Old habits die hard."

She smiled in spite of herself.

"Let me help," he said. "With your parents."

"Already offered. Already rejected."

"You're very stubborn," he said.

"Maybe," she said. "Maybe that's true."

She shrugged and tried to play it off, but that wasn't possible between them. He knew, even if she wasn't going to say it, that it wasn't just the turn that things had taken for her. Maybe it was also something she couldn't exactly access. She was so used to him asking her to marry him that she never thought the day would come when he stopped asking. He didn't want to stop asking. How had they gotten here?

"I hate the reason you're back, I do, but—"

"But what?"

"I'm also glad you're back," he said. "I know that's selfish. I know that's the most selfish thing I can say."

"Just honest. Besides, I get it."

"You do?"

She met his eyes, finally. "We can't be apart this long again."

"No," he said. "No, we'll never do that again."

"But what will we do?"

He started to speak, but she shook her head and stopped him.

"Not for you to answer. Not what I'm looking for."

"So what are you looking for?"

He took her hand, her soft palm, wrapped it between both of his.

"Right now?" she said. "Some more pie."