Right, good. She replies again quickly:
Anxious to talk to you
That could mean a lot of things. It’s deliberately vague.
Everything ok?
She responds:
Thinking a lot about us. Better to talk in person
I respond quickly:
Good or bad?
Should I be worried?
30
Tuesday, September 13, 2022
So what the hell was that text message tonight? You’ve been thinking a lot about us, and better we talk in person? Are you going to break up with me, Lauren? Are we done?
I don’t know what I’ll do. The times we see each other each week, the twice a day we text, are the only things that matter in my life now.
Was it because of what I said last night about my father cheating on my mother? How I’d grown up hating infidelity more than just about anything in the world, and now I was doing it, too?
Oh, why did I have to open my mouth? This isn’t the same thing, Lauren. Vicky doesn’t love me anymore. I’m not proud of cheating, but this is different than what my father did to my mother! And your marriage isn’t real, either.
We aren’t cheating, not in that way. We aren’t!
This, this, THIS is what I hate, this weakness, this feeling of vulnerability. I swore I’d never let this happen again, but I did. I kept my guard up for nearly two decades after you laid waste to me, but the moment I saw you on Michigan Avenue, I tore down that wall and exposed myself all over again.
Maybe I’m making too much of this. Maybe all the other crap going on—my job prospects suddenly in the dumpster and my marriage just a friendship—is clouding my brain. Maybe I’m not thinking clearly and everything is fine.
Don’t you realize getting texts like those—we have to talk, better in person—is pure torture? Now I have to wait until tomorrow morning before you even turn on your damn cell phone again. And it’s not like I can just run over there, is it? Thanks, Lauren. Thanks so much for turning me inside out yet again.
I knew this would happen. I knew it.
31
Simon
I met Lauren Lemoyne on my first day working at my father’s law firm.
I’d graduated high school and was getting ready for college. High school had been easy for me academically but difficult socially. I’d had a late growth spurt, shooting up to five feet eleven my senior year, which I realize is not much more than average male height, but when you start as a freshman at five feet two, and people call you “Mini-Me” and things like that, five feet eleven feels like Paul Bunyan.
I spent most of high school a bookish, small, not very confident boy. I ended a bookish, taller, but only slightly confident boy.
I needed some money before college, so Dad said I could be a gofer at his law firm. Times were good financially because Dad had just rung the bell (as he liked to say) with that enormous verdict in the electrical-injury case. The Law Offices of Theodore Dobias had three partners, five associates, ten assistants, and four paralegals.
One of those paralegals was Lauren Lemoyne. I was introduced to everyone by one of the partners (my father didn’t want to do it himself, wanted me to learn my own way), and I first saw Lauren bent over a banker’s box of files, wearing a tight miniskirt and showing a lot of leg. It felt like my own personal porn movie, though she quickly righted herself and pulled down her skirt and greeted me in a friendly but perfunctory fashion.
It wasn’t perfunctory to me, though. I was immediately taken but intimidated. She would be my pinup girl, gorgeous and exotic, whom I could admire from afar, but well beyond my reach, way out of my league. I stammered a return hello, trying to sound easy and cool and pretty sure I had failed miserably.
It wasn’t until the second week of work that our paths crossed again. I was in the firm’s kitchen, or at least that’s what we called it, where there was a sink and fridge and coffee maker. I was washing my hands because I’d just brought back some filings from the courthouse and the box was dirty.
“So you’re Ted’s boy.”
I saw her and tried to act nonchalant but, again, failed miserably. I turned away from the sink, my hands dripping, and straightened my posture.
“I’m Lauren,” she said. “You’ve probably learned a lot of names all at once.”
She was right, I’d had to learn a lot of names right away, which wasn’t my strong suit. But Lauren’s, I hadn’t forgotten.
“Nice to meet you,” I said, even though we’d already met. I’d even managed to steal a few nuggets of information from the office manager—Lauren was from the north side of Chicago, age twenty, still lived at home, saving up money for college, huge Cubs fan. I didn’t want to ask the office manager too many questions and be too obvious, as if he didn’t already know why I was asking. It didn’t need to be spoken. Lauren was that kind of untouchable gorgeous.
“So I hear you’re starting at U of C this fall,” she said. “I also heard you were valedictorian of your high school class. And an all-state cross-country runner.” Her smile lit up my soul. “Your dad likes to brag about you.”
“It was all luck, I swear.”
She laughed, and I felt like I’d won the lottery or something. I’d heard my mother use that line years ago, after she won her land-use case before the United States Supreme Court. It sounded like a deft way to handle a compliment, and I stored it away for future use. And thank God. I’d just made this beautiful creature laugh!
She narrowed her eyes in playful skepticism. “Mmm, smart, handsome, and modest on top of all that,” she said. “Simon Dobias, you are going to break some hearts.”
32
Wednesday, September 14, 2022
I couldn’t wait any longer. I had to see you. I went to your house, instead of texting you, at ten this morning. You were surprised, alarmed even, to see me at your front door. But you had to know, Lauren, you HAD to know that the text you sent me, that we had to talk, but only in person, would keep me in suspense, would be worse than torture banned by the Geneva Convention.
I didn’t sleep one wink last night. I must have looked awful this morning. I didn’t care. Whatever it was, and I’d braced myself for anything, I had to hear it, and I had to hear it now.
“I thought a lot about what you said,” you told me. “How your father cheated on your mother, and you didn’t want to become your father. I don’t want that, either. I don’t want you to be a cheater. I don’t want to be a cheater, either.”
I braced myself, having prepared for this. I knew it might end this morning, and I told myself, Simon, you’re an adult, just handle it, handle it right, no matter how painful. Be proud of how you react.
But I wasn’t prepared, it turns out. I wasn’t prepared for this at all.
“I want us to get married,” you said.