Chapter 12

Chapter 12

One week ago

No dimensional plane exists in which apartment hunting (more precisely: apartment hunting while heartbroken) could ever be pleasant. I have to admit, however, that browsing Craigslist on the phone with my friends while I sip on the overpriced red wine Liam got from an FGP Corp retreat does dull the pain of the ordeal.

Sadie just spent an hour recounting in wrathful detail how she recently went on a date with some engineer who later turned out to be a total dick—a problem, given that she actually liked the guy (as in really, really liked the guy). Even though she’s being uncharacteristically dodgy about it, I am 97 percent sure that sex happened, 98 percent sure that the sex was excellent, 99 percent sure that the sex was the best of her life. It appears to be fueling her plans to lace the guy’s coffee with toad venom, which, if you know Sadie, is pretty on-brand.

Hannah is back in Houston, which is good for her Internet connection, but bad for her peace of mind. She has been butting heads with some NASA big-shot guy who has been vetoing her pet research project for no reason whatsoever. Hannah is, of course, ready for murder. I can’t see her hands through FaceTime, but I’m almost positive she’s sharpening a shiv.

There is something reassuring in hearing about their lives. It reminds me of grad school, when we couldn’t afford therapy and we’d engage in some healthy communal bitching every other night, just to survive the madness. There were some bad moments—it was grad school: there were a lot of bad moments—but in the end, we were together. In the end, everything turned out to be all right.

So maybe that’s what will happen this time, too. I’m on the verge of homelessness, my heart feels like a stone, and I want to be with someone way more than that someone wants to be with me. But Sadie and Hannah are (more or less) here, and therefore things will turn out to be (more or less) all right.

“Men were a mistake,” Sadie says.

“Big mistake,” Hannah adds.

“Huge.” I sink deeper into the living room couch, wondering if Liam, my personal mistake, will come home tonight. It’s already past nine. Maybe he’s out for dinner. Maybe, if he has something to celebrate, he’ll sleep elsewhere. At Emma’s, perhaps.

“Sometimes they’re useful,” Sadie points out. “Like that guy with a Korn T-shirt who helped me open a jar of pickled radishes in 2018.”

“Oh yeah.” I nod. “I remember that.”

“Hands down my most profound experience with a man.”

“In hindsight, you should have asked him to marry you.”

“A missed opportunity.”

“Could it be that we’ve just been exceptionally unlucky?” There is some noise on Hannah’s side of the line. Maybe she is sharpening a shiv. “Could it be that the tides will turn and we’ll finally meet dudes who don’t deserve to be fed a bowl of thumbtacks?”

“It could be,” I say. Be positive, Helena used to tell me. Negativity is for old farts like me. “Really, everything could be. It could be that we’ll be randomly selected for a lifetime supply of Nutella.”

Sadie snorts. “It could be that the surrealist slam poem I wrote in third grade will win me the Nobel Prize for literature.”

“That my cactus will actually bloom this year.”

“That they’ll start producing Twizzlers ice cream.”

“That Firefly will get the final season it deserves.”

No one talks for a few seconds. Until Hannah says: “Mara, you broke the flow. Come up with something delightful and yet unobtainable.”

“Oh, right. Uhm, it could be that Liam will come home, and ask me not to move out, and then he’ll bend me over the nearest piece of furniture and fuck me hard and fast.” By the time I’ve finished the sentence, Sadie is laughing and Hannah is whistling.

“Hard and fast, huh?”

“Yup.” I shake my head. “Absolutely preposterous, though.”

“Nah. Well, no more than my slam poem,” Sadie concedes. “So, how goes the unrequited crush?”

“It’s not really a crush.” Plenty unrequited, though.

“I thought we had agreed that fantasizing about being bent over the kitchen sink does, in fact, constitute a crush?”

I huff. “Fine. It’s?.?.?. good. Barely there, really. I don’t really daydream about having sex with him that often.” Liar. What a liar. “Still in the larval stage.” It’s hitting its teenage years and is strong as an ox. “I think that some distance will be good. I have a lead on a cheap-ish apartment downtown.” I’ll miss this place. I’ll miss feeling close to Helena. I’ll miss the way Liam makes fun of me for being unable to learn the buttons of the stupid PlayStation controllers. So, so much.

“And you’re sure Liam’s okay with you leaving?”

“It’s what he wants.” Things have been a little weird in the past week. Awkward. A bit of a step back for us, but?.?.?. I’ll be fine. It’ll be fine. “I think it’ll go away. The crush.”

“Right,” Sadie agrees, without looking much like she does agree.

“Very soon,” I add.

“I’m sure.”

“I just need him to?.?.?. never find out about the furniture fantasies,” I explain.

“Hm.”

“Because it would make things weird for us,” I explain. “For him.”

“Yeah.”

“And he doesn’t deserve it.”

“No.”

“He’s a good friend. Also, he’s in the middle of making lots of life changes. I want to be supportive. And I like hanging out with him.”

“Yup.”

“Basically, I don’t want him to feel uncomfortable around me.”

“Nope.”

“Anyway.” My cheeks feel warm. It must be all the wine. “We should talk about something else.”

“Okay.”

“Like. Literally anything else.”

“Fine.”

“One of you should propose a topic.”

If they were here in person, Sadie and Hannah would exchange a long, loaded look. As it is, they are silent for a few moments. Then Hannah says, “Can I tell you a story?”

“Sure.”

“It’s about a friend of mine.”

I frown. “Which friend?”

“Ah?.?.?. Sarah.”

“Sarah?”

“Sarah.”

“I don’t think I know her. Since when do you have friends I don’t know about?”

“Not important. So, a couple of years ago my friend Sarah moved in with this guy, um?.?.?. Will. And initially they really hated each other, but then they figured out that they were more similar than they thought, and she started talking about him more and more, in increasingly positive terms. So Sadie and I—Sadie knows her, too—well, we were like, Jeez, is she falling for this dude? And then one night my friend confessed to me that she had very filthy, very elaborate-sounding fantasies about Will bending her over the kitchen table and—”

“Bye, Hannah.”

“Wait,” Sadie says, “we haven’t heard the ending!”

“You guys are shit friends and I’m not sure why I love you so much.” I hang up on them, laughing despite myself. I toss my phone away and get up to refill my glass of wine, thinking that when Hannah and Sadie fall for someone I’ll tease them mercilessly and make up fake stories about fake people, and then they’ll know how it feels, to be—

“Mara.”

Liam is standing in the entrance of the living room, necktie in one hand, looking tired and handsome and tall and—

Oh shit.“Liam?”

“Hi.”

“W-when did you get here?”

“Just now.”

“Oh.” Thank fuck. “How was your?.?.?. The interview, how did it go?”

“Good, I think.”

“Oh. Good.”

He just got here, he said. He can’t have possibly overheard me. I haven’t said anything compromising in the past few seconds. And Hannah’s knockoff fairy tale used different names.

Why is he staring at me like that, then?

“When will you know if you got the job?”

He shrugs. “A few days, I assume.” He cut his hair last week. Not too short, but shorter than it ever was. Sometimes—often—I’ll see him in a certain light, or I’ll catch him making one of those faces that I’m sure he doesn’t let anyone else see, and my breath will hitch from the wonder of it.

“Are you hungry? I made a stir-fry. There’s leftovers.”

He studies me and says nothing.

“No carrots. I promise.” What will I do with all this knowledge I have of his likes and dislikes? This knowledge of him? Where will it go once he’s not in my life anymore?

“I’m not hungry, but thanks.”

“Okay.” I walk around the couch, looking for something to do with myself, and lean against the doorjamb. Just a few feet away from him. “I think I’ve found a place. To move, I mean.”

“You have?” Unreadable, his expression.

“Yeah. But I won’t know till a few days from now.”

Silence. And a long, thoughtful stare.

“I still won’t sell my half. Sorry, I know you want to buy me out, but—”

“I don’t.”

I frown. “What do you mean, you don’t?”

“I don’t.”

I laugh. “Liam, you’ve been offering to buy me out for a million years.”

His mouth quirks. “A million years ago the house didn’t exist and this place was a swamp, but it’s not as if you’re an environmental scientist and could possibly know—”

“Oh, shut up. All I’m saying is, for a long time?.?.?.” Though, now that I think about it, his lawyer hasn’t emailed me in?.?.?. weeks. Months, maybe? “Oh my God. Liam, are you broke?” I lean forward. “Is it the stock market? Have you gambled away all your money? Have you bet the entirety of your savings on the U.S. male soccer team winning the World Cup and only belatedly realized that they didn’t even qualify? Have you become involved in a LuLaRoe pyramid scheme and can’t stop buying new leggings—”

“Are you drunk?”

“No. Well, I had some of your wine. A lot. Why?”

“You get annoying when you’re drunk.” There’s a hint of a smile in his eyes. “But cute.”

I stick my tongue out. “You’re annoying all the time.” And cute, too.

Liam’s smile widens a little, and he looks down at his feet. Then: “Good night, Mara.” He turns around and heads for his room. The yellow light of the lamp casts a warm, golden glow over the breadth of his shoulders.

“By the way,” I call after him, “I bought a new creamer. It’s cinnamon. You’ll hate it!”

Liam doesn’t answer and doesn’t pause on his way out. I don’t see him until the following night, and that?.?.?.

That’s when it happens.