“And we’ll have to tell them that some people simply have bad taste,” I agree solemnly.
“Or that sometimes, there are not one but two hot men vying for your heart, and you have to spin in a circle and choose one at random, then marry the other off to his coworker.”
“Babe?” Brendan calls from the truck, grimacing apologetically.
Libby nods in understanding and we draw apart, still gripping each other’s forearms like we’re preparing to spin in circles at full speed and don’t want inertia to pull us apart. Pretty accurate, actually.
“This isn’t goodbye,” she says.
“Of course not,” I say. “Nadine Winters never remembers to say hello or goodbye.”
“Also we’re sisters,” she says. “We’re stuck together.”
“That too.”
She lets go of me and climbs up into the truck.
As they pull away, my eyes fill up. At least the tears held off this long. At least I earned them.
The white and orange of the U-Haul melt together until it’s like I’m looking at a watercolor painting that’s been left out in the rain, my family disintegrating into colorful streaks. I watch the blur of them shrink away. One block. Then two. Then three. Then they turn, and they’re gone, and it feels like I’m a concrete slab that’s just been cracked in half, only to realize my insides never quite set.
I’m mush.
I’m crying hard now. Not cute little sniffs. Ugly gasping breaths. People walk by on the sidewalk. Some give me a wide berth. Others shoot me sympathetic looks. As one woman around my age passes, she holds out a tissue to me without so much as slowing her pace and I clutch it like a baby blanket, unable to do anything but cry harder and laugh, my abdomen ricocheting between the two.
It’s like Mom used to say: You’re not a true New Yorker until you’re willing to feel your emotions out in the open, and only now, having made a firm decision to stay, have I crossed that last threshold.
I drop onto Libby’s stoop — her former stoop — laughing and crying so hysterically I can no longer discern one from the other. Only once my phone starts to ring do I manage to get any kind of hold on myself.
I sniff, clearing out some of my tears, as I free my phone from my pocket and read the screen. “Libby?” I answer. “Is everything okay?”
“What’s up?” she says.
“Nothing?” I smear the backs of my hands across my eyes. “You?”
“Not a lot,” she sighs. “I just missed you. Thought I’d call and say hi.”
Warmth fills my chest. It creeps into my fingers and toes, until there is so much of it, it hurts. I’m overfilled. No one person should ever have quite so much love in their body at one time.
“What’s New York look like right now?” she asks.
They’ve been gone eight minutes. “Did Brendan’s foot fall off onto the gas pedal or something?”
“Just tell me,” she says. “I want to hear you describe it.”
I look around at the hustle and bustle, the trees pushing out their first spurts of reds and yellows across their leaves. A man unloading crates of fruit at the bodega across the street. An old lady with jet-black hair under a white rhinestoned cowboy hat picking through the DVDs for sale on some guy’s folding table. (Libby and I took a glance before we parted ways and realized eighty-five percent of the collection featured Keanu Reeves, which begs the question: did this man and Keanu Reeves have some great falling-out?)
I smell kebab cooking down the street, and in the distance car horns blare, and a woman who may or may not be an actress I’ve seen on SVU hurries past in huge sunglasses, walking a tiny, prancing Boston terrier.
“Well?” Libby says.
It looks like home. “Same old, same old.”
“I knew it.” I can hear her smiling.
She wanted me to go with her, but she’s happy that I’m getting what I want.
I wanted her to stay, but I hope she finds everything she’s looking for and more.
Maybe love shouldn’t be built on a foundation of compromises, but maybe it can’t exist without them either.
Not the kind that forces two people into shapes they don’t fit in, but the kind that loosens their grips, always leaves room to grow. Compromises that say, there will be a you-shaped space in my heart, and if your shape changes, I will adapt.
No matter where we go, our love will stretch out to hold us, and that makes me feel like . . . like everything will be okay.
37
ON DECEMBER TWELFTH at eleven twenty, I make my way over to Freeman Books.
It’s the one day a year I’ve always taken off at the agency, and as soon as I started at Loggia Publishing, I requested the twelfth off there too.
The learning curve is brutal, but after so many years of knowing exactly how to do my job, the challenge is exhilarating. I comb through each of my newly inherited authors’ manuscripts like an archaeologist at a newly discovered dig site.
Is it possible to be a zealot for editing books?
If so, that’s what I am.
I almost hated to miss work today, but if I’m going to be out of the office, at least I’ll still be surrounded by words.
I take my time walking, enjoying a surprise bout of sunshine that melts the snow into slushy lumps on the sidewalk, the feeble warmth seeping into my favorite herringbone coat.
At the diner where Mom used to work, I buy a cup of coffee and a danish. It’s been a long time since anyone recognized me here, but I’m pretty sure the same cashier rang up Libby and me last December twelfth, and that’s enough to fill me with a pleasant sense of belonging.
And then the sharp ache, like I’ve brushed up against the blistered part of my heart: Charlie should be here. I don’t avoid thinking about him, like I used to do with Jakob. Even if it hurts, when he shimmers across my mind, it’s like remembering a favorite book. One that left you gutted, sure, but also one that changed you forever.
I pass a flower shop with a heated plastic tent propped up around its storefront and duck in to buy a bouquet of deep red petals sprinkled with silvery green leaves and tiny white blossoms. I don’t know flower types, but for these to be blooming in winter, they must be hardy, and I respect them for that.
At eleven forty-five, I’m still two blocks away, and my phone vibrates in my coat pocket. Shifting the bouquet into the crook of my arm, I fish around in my pocket, then tug my glove off with my teeth to swipe the phone unlocked and read Libby’s message.
Happy birthday! she writes, like she’s sending the text straight to Mom.
Happy birthday, I write back, my chest stinging. It’s hard to be apart today. It’s the first time I’ve had to do this without her.
FaceTime later? she writes.
Of course, I say.
She types for a minute as I hurry across the last block. Did you get my present yet?
Since when do we do presents for Mom’s birthday? I write.
Since we have to be apart for it, she says.
Well, I didn’t get you anything.
That’s fine, she says. You can owe me. But you haven’t gotten yours yet?
No, I write. I’m out.
Ah, she says. At Freeman’s already?
In about three seconds. I shoulder the door open and step into the familiar dusty warmth.
I’ll let you go, she says. But send a pic when the present gets there, okay?
I reply with a thumbs-up and a heart, then drop my phone and gloves into my pockets, freeing my hands to browse.
I head straight for the romance shelves. This year, I’ll buy two copies of whatever I choose and mail one to Libby. Or, better yet, take it with me when I visit her for the holidays and Number Three’s birth.