Twenty-Six
I LEFT THAT night, but I didn’t go home.
Home was my old apartment, a sweet little old-timey pad in a 1920’s fourplex in the funky part of town. Home had an archway into the living room and a little built-in telephone shelf in the hall. Home was where I’d lived for three years before fleeing in a desperate attempt to never have to see Taylor next door again.
The apartment I went back to now was one I’d rented sight unseen on the eighth floor of a brand-new, ultramodern, totally generic complex—also in the funky part of town.
And can I just note the irony of this? When I found my way to the front door for the first time, who was standing guard at it?
Taylor.
Because of course she was.
“It had to be you, huh?” I said, as I worked the keypad. Then I said, “Glenn must be an actual sadist.”
She didn’t turn her head. “I asked for this duty.”
Was I supposed to respond to that? Was I supposed to thank her or something? No. No way. She could do a lot of things to me, but she couldn’t force me to make chitchat. I stepped inside and closed the door behind me, and that was the only response she got: a loud, hollow clonk.
And then I was alone.
Really alone. For the first time in weeks.
The place was stacked high with boxes, and the movers had taken a just-drop-it-anywhere approach to the furniture. The bed, for example, was in the middle of the bedroom, like an island.
But it was fine.
I walked over to the balcony and stepped out to take in the view.
This was good, I told myself. This was personal time. Time to recharge and reflect. Maybe I’d start a gratitude journal. Maybe I’d take up calligraphy. I had some time before I left for Korea. There had to be a way to make the most of it. Maybe it’s not a punishment. Maybe it’s a chance.
But a chance for what?
I ordered Korean takeout for dinner, and when the delivery guy showed up, I said, “Kamsahamnida” to him with a little nod in my warmest possible voice—to make utterly clear to Taylor, standing right next to us, that he was someone I warmly respected … and she was most definitely not.
Then I went inside and sat on some boxes with disposable chopsticks and ate by myself.
By the time I was done, I had eaten too much, dripped on the box, and had so much leftover bulgogi and bibimbap that I couldn’t stop the thought from entering my mind that I should take some out to Taylor.
But then that felt like letting her win.
Instead, I put the leftovers in the fridge for breakfast, sat cross-legged on the floor, and stared out my curtainless windows.
My mind was a blank. This apartment was a blank. My life was a blank.
I should have felt happy. I should have felt relieved. If I hadn’t wanted to go to the ranch in the first place, and if escape was my favorite thing, then I should have driven back to the city in triumph.
But it felt like the opposite of triumph.
I’d gotten what I wanted—it just wasn’t what I wanted anymore.
I’d fallen for our fake relationship, like the dumbest of dumb dummies, and I’d done a complete one-eighty. Now all I wanted to do was stay.
But of course, I couldn’t stay.
I had played my role and done my job. I’d done what Glenn wanted. I’d kept myself in the running for London.
It was time to get back to my real life. And my real life—the way I’d set it up, the way I’d always preferred it—was always about going, not staying. I was good at it. I reveled in it. In less than two weeks, I’d leave for Korea and start fresh in Seoul—a new job, new clients, and nothing at all to remind me of Jack Stapleton.
Except he’d probably show up on Korean billboards somehow. Knowing him.
The point is: No, I wasn’t going to unpack these boxes. I wasn’t going to go to Ikea and buy throw pillows and arrange house plants in colorful Scandinavian pots. I wasn’t going to nest. I was going to let my life in Houston feel as sad and sterile and unwelcoming as possible, for as long as possible, so I would have nothing at all to make me yearn to stay here.
Nothing else, anyway. Besides the obvious.
That became the plan. I would max out my misery levels so anything at all seemed like an improvement.
It wasn’t a great plan, or even a good one. But it was all I had.
And it turned out, I wouldn’t have to work that hard to make myself miserable.
The world was going to do it for me.
Because three nights after leaving the ranch, when I was sitting on a packing box, eating takeout Tex-Mex out of the container and scrolling mindlessly through my phone, I happened to come upon a promoted video by none other than Kennedy Monroe.
“Holy shit,” I said out loud, dropping my taco.
She was in Texas, apparently—filming some kind of superhero movie located in a desiccated hellscape out near Amarillo.
And she’d just decided to pop down and surprise her boyfriend. Jack Stapleton. In Houston. On camera.
“What prompted the trip to Houston?” the camera guy asked.
“Oh, you know,” Kennedy Monroe said. “I was in the neighborhood.”
“What neighborhood is that?”
She smiled. “Texas.”
In the neighborhood? Please. Amarillo was nine hours from Houston. If you didn’t get caught in a dust storm.
But I was mesmerized by her. The perfection. The otherworldly beauty. She didn’t have a bump, or a lump, or a nonsymmetrical place on her body. She could have been built in a factory—and, okay, she probably was. I mean, sure, she was a poster child for cosmetic surgery … but it was good cosmetic surgery. I had to hand it to her. She was a work of art.
I was just admiring my own ability to be so complimentary and emotionally generous with her, rather than, say, rotting inwardly with jealousy, when the camera pulled back a bit and I realized that she was standing in front of a very stylish blue front door.
Next to an unmistakable full-height fiddle-leaf fig plant.
Oh, shit. She was at Jack’s house.
All generosity of spirit disintegrated.
Apparently, this was some kind of sneaker-upper Web series where she was surprising Jack with her visit. She walked up to the door at the sleek entryway and knocked. Then she turned back to the camera guy, pouted her pouty lips, and made a Shh gesture.
I paused the video to text Glenn.
Do you know that Kennedy Monroe took a camera crew to Stapleton’s house???
Yes. This is old news. It’s being handled.
I sent a few more texts—What the hell? Who let this happen?—but when Glenn didn’t reply, I switched back over to finish watching:
Jack’s door swung open, and out stepped the man himself.
Barefoot. In his Levi’s. And his favorite flannel jacket over a T-shirt I’d last seen wadded up on the bathroom floor.
Just the sight of him—even phone-sized and made of light pixels—sent a buzzy pleasure cascading through my body.
“Whoa! Hey!” Jack said, as Kennedy Monroe arched herself into a hug that somehow made her seem like a Siamese cat. Was it the way she stuck out her ass and pressed her underboobs against his torso? Or the way she rubbed against him like she was marking her territory? Or the way she purred?
Whatever. It would be something I could never unsee.
“I just wanted to say hi,” Kennedy Monroe said then, turning back to the camera, “and I brought some friends along.”
And then she launched into the most vapid, pointless celebrity interview I’d ever seen in my life—comprised mostly of hair flips, giggles, accidental cleavage shots, and hard-hitting questions for Jack like, “Are you getting hotter?”
I will spare you the insulting details. I watched it so you don’t have to.
Actually, I rubbernecked it.
I couldn’t force myself to look away.
It was mostly Jack, of course—the sight of him was like a feast for my salivating eyes. But it was also Kennedy Monroe. Seeing her there, with him. Trying to imagine the two of them as a couple. Looking for any kind of spark or chemistry between them at all. Anything.
I’d kind of forgotten about her.
Jack was gracious and charming and relentlessly handsome.
But I realized something else as I watched him. He wasn’t attracted to her.
After all these weeks of feeling like my radar was off—like all the acting had scrambled all my signals—I suddenly realized I’d been underestimating myself.
I could read Jack just fine.
Kennedy Monroe was posing for the camera, and tossing her hair, and preening—and he was watching her and playing along. But the tilt of his head, the crook of his eyebrow, the squint of his eyes, the angle of his smile, the tension in his spine … they all said, Nope.
I’m paraphrasing, but still.
The point was, I could read him. What’s more, I could see the acting. All this time, I’d thought I couldn’t discern the truth about him. But it turned out I could read him as well as anybody else. Maybe better.
And one thing was clear as day. He was more attracted to that fiddle-leaf fig than he was to Kennedy Monroe.
Could this be a fake relationship, too?
When she flipped her hair, he barely noticed. When he smiled, it was mechanical. When she pulled his shirt to try to bring him in for a kiss, he twisted away like he thought he’d heard someone call his name.
“Jack,” Kennedy said then, turning back to the camera and looking straight into it. “I’m going to need your full attention.”
Jack turned back around. “Okay,” he said. “You’ve got it.”
“Because I’ve got a big question for you, and you don’t want to miss it.”
“Okay,” Jack said, putting his hands in his pockets. “Shoot.”
At last she turned away from the camera to meet Jack’s eyes. “My question,” she said, now leaning in closer, “is this.” She turned back to give the camera one more wink. Then she turned back to Jack and said, “Will you marry me?”
AT THOSE WORDS, I dropped my phone.
And by the time I picked it back up, the video was over.
Did I just see that? Did Kennedy Monroe just propose to Jack?
Suddenly, I felt a lot less sure of myself.
Had I been able to read him? Or had that all just been my own wishful thinking?
I rewound the ending, wanting to see Jack’s answer to the proposal. But my second watch was no more useful than the first. Apparently, they’d ended it on a cliff-hanger. Kennedy pops the question, then the camera zooms in on Jack staring at her, and then we’re done for the day.
I rewound it one more time. Just in case.
No answer that time, either. But on this third—and, honestly, not even final—viewing, I noticed something more interesting than the shock on Jack’s face.
At minute 8:03, just in the wake of her kiss attempt when she’d pulled on his T-shirt, as Jack turned back to the camera, his shirt was askew. Kennedy Monroe had pulled it forward and shifted the collar down.
Which revealed his leather necklace for the first time.
I zoomed in a little on his face, letting my eyes savor him for minute. Why not? A victimless crime.
And that’s when I noticed more than just Drew’s necklace.
Hanging from Jack’s neck, right there—colorful and defiant and unmistakable—was my beaded safety pin.
I DIDN’T EVEN have time to react to the sight of it before there was a knock at my apartment door.
I looked through the peephole, and it was Robby, still wearing his sunglasses inside, like a douchebag.
“Go away, Robby!” I shouted through the door.
“I can’t hear you!” Robby shouted. “Soundproofing!”
I cracked the door to shout Go away! again, but, as I did, Robby wedged his toe into the crack.
“I need to talk to you,” Robby said. “Let me in.”
“I’m not letting you in,” I said. I looked down at his shoe holding my door open.
Robby stepped back. “I really need to talk to you,” he said, taking the sunglasses off and glancing over at Taylor, stoic as hell.
“Talk, then.”
“Inside.”
“You’re not coming inside.”
“Look,” Robby said, glancing sideways at Taylor again. “I know that when you were out on the ranch you were in Jack Stapleton’s clutches, but I’m hoping now that you’re free, you can think a little more rationally.”
I kept my eyes level. “I was never in anyone’s clutches, Robby. Not even yours.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I’m in the middle of something, so—”
“I knew dumping you was a mistake as soon as the plane landed in Madrid.”
I paused. “So you went after Taylor.”
“I was sad! I was lonely! I was rejected!”
“You dumped me!”
Robby glanced over at Taylor, and then decided to keep talking, anyway. “I didn’t even like her, okay? She was just … there.”
I felt a glimmer of empathy for Taylor’s ears, hearing that. “You realize that makes it so much worse.”
“At a hard time in my life, she was better than nothing, okay? That’s all she was.”
Did it feel good to win like that in front of Taylor?
Undecided.
I mean, was anybody really winning in this situation? “You realize she’s standing right there, right?” I said.
“That’s your fault!” Robby said. And then he said something that hit me in just the right way at the right time: “You wouldn’t let me in!”
At those words, I paused. Every now and then, something really, genuinely true cuts through all the chaos of life and just gets your full attention. “I wouldn’t let you in?” I echoed, more to myself than to him. It was like somebody had flipped the lights on in a shadowy room. “Oh my God, Bobby. You’re right.”
“Stop calling me Bobby,” Robby said.
“You’re right, though. You really are.”
Robby frowned. “I am?”
It was like I was seeing him for the first time. “I wouldn’t let you in. When I was working and missed your birthday party? And when I had to drop out of our getaway weekend at the last minute? And when I lost the bracelet you gave me? When I ‘worked all the time’? When I was ‘no fun’? That was me not letting you in.”
Possibly also when I was a “bad kisser.” But I wasn’t going to dignify those words by speaking them out loud.
Robby glanced at Taylor, like What’s going on?
She ignored him.
I went on. “I thought you were blaming me, but you were just telling the truth. I thought if we were sleeping together, that was love. But you were so right. I didn’t know what love was.”
I thought about Jack. I thought about the piggyback ride he gave me back from the river. I thought about what it felt like to make him laugh. I thought about how I rooted for him every time he tried to shoot something into the kitchen trash and missed. I thought about the buzz of fear that went through my body when he somersaulted off Clipper, as if Jack breaking his neck might break mine, too. I thought about the full-body bliss of waking up in his bed, tangled under his weight. I thought of the crackling agony in my body as I’d looked for him in vain that last night to say goodbye. I thought of the roiling, dark-green jealousy just now at watching Kennedy Monroe slathering her undeserving self all over him.
Now I knew.
I nodded at Robby. “You were right. I didn’t let you in.”
Robby just stared. How often in life do you accuse an ex-girlfriend of something and just … watch her agree with you?
“I mean,” I said, looking him up and down, “you didn’t deserve to be let in. So it’s a good thing in the end. But thank you.”
Robby was so befuddled, his mouth hung open. “For what?”
“For showing me what love isn’t,” I said.
And I shoved my door closed and flipped the dead bolt.