“Ah, a very important season.”
“In my house, absolutely,” I laugh.
“Well, if you’re avoiding your mum, why don’t you stay in and watch a movie with me?” he asks, standing up and clearing his plate. “Maybe then I can scam some more of that absurdly good cornbread out of you.” I pull more out of my bag, and I love seeing the Pavlovian way his eyes light up. “You had that in there the whole time!”
“I didn’t know you’d like it that much!” I explain. “Dane loves it, too, so I packed some for her. But I can make more; I always do.”
He comes over and slowly picks up the extra cornbread, like he’s carrying an especially fragile important object.
“Okay, since I’m stealing your friend’s cornbread, youhaveto let me at least give you an out for your mother. I can’t take all this debt I owe you now.”
I stand up. “I told you—I got you locked on a roof, so now we’re even.”
He shakes his head solemnly as he walks over to the couch and flops onto it, grabbing the remote as he goes. “That was yesterday. Now on top of saving my life, you’ve given me the American marvel that is cornbread.”
“Stop saying I saved your life,” I reiterate, and sit down with slightly less gusto than he’s showing in his movements.
He hands me the remote. “I propose you pick the film—any film you want—since you saved my life.” He smirks at that, clearly pleased to be continually riling me up.
“So I keep you company instead of watching a movie in the comfort of my own home, and this is supposedly a favor to me?”
He tosses a blanket my way and snuggles under one that he’s laid on top of himself.
“Exactly. Doesn’t this friendship work great?”
Chapter 18
And so somehow, with that, we’ve actually become neighbor friends. After one movie turned into two, he asked what time I walk George usually. He liked the idea of getting a walk in every morning before work—he says he spends too much time sitting at home in front of a screen—so now for the last two weeks, he’s been waiting outside when I leave the building. No fanfare, just a morning walk and talk to get the day started. Sometimes Gladys joins us, too, although she usually prefers weekends, when we can walk a bit later, since she says her “bones are creaky if it’s too early.”
The first day, he said his only rule was that we had to talk about anything but work, since it was the sole time for the next eight hours he’d get to think about anything else. I wholeheartedly agreed—as someone who only writes one thing a week and findsthatdaunting, I can only imagine how important it must be for full-time writers to clear their heads before the day starts. And since I really shouldn’t talk about patients, the idea of ignoring the day ahead for a little bit is actually freeing. We talk about articles or books we’ve read; we discuss the latest happenings with George, Paws, and Whiskers; we share what things we’ve noticed changing in the neighborhood; we debate the best versions of every baked good you can find in New York. The morning-walk chats are everything and nothing, like a staple steamy cup of morning coffee to get the day started.
Even after just a couple weeks, it seems like those mornings are inevitable.
I wonder now if maybe we’ve been slowly shifting toward each other from the start. First circling as combatants in a petty building war, then as comrades in the battle against a sleepless night on a roof, until finally the vulnerability of seeing someone at their sickest shed the last pretenses.
When I bring this up to Ari, she asks me how it relates to J, and I balk.
“It doesn’t in any way relate to J.”
“I don’t know,” Ari says, leaning forward and eyeing me in that way she does when she’s clearly not sure I have a grasp on my own life. “You haven’t felt particularly strongly about any men—even the ones you were dating, frankly—for so many years. And now you have two that you’re opening up to more. I think it’s absolutely wonderful, because you so often close yourself off so as not to be a burden to others. But I just find it interesting that it’s happening simultaneously.”
I squirm at the thought. I know there’ve been small moments with Eli that have felt charged. But J is who I’m interested in. And conflating them in any way is just confusing. They’re like two separate earbuds; if they were attached somehow—wired headphones at the bottom of my bag—I’m afraid they’d become tangled. I don’t need tangled.
“J and Eli are in no way even in the same ballpark.”
“How so?” she asks, clearly ready to dismiss me out of hand, even if she’s pretending like she’s asking an innocuous question.
“Eli would never even factor into aromanticdiscussion.”
“Why not?” She’s really not going to let me off the hook.
“Okay, it’s an objective fact that Eli is attractive; I’m not disputing that,” I admit, and Ari snorts as though I’ve stated the most obvious thing. I’m ignoring it and barreling on. “But he is fully, completely in the friend column.” I try to say this definitively to end the conversation, but Ari’s not biting.
“Why?” Ari lobs back, like we’re in a tennis match and I keep thinking I’m ending the point while she easily gets it back over the net.
“Well, let’s start with eventhinkingabout him in a sexual way is unethical,” I point out. I’m a little stunned when Ari dramatically rolls her eyes at me. She looks like an exasperated teenager instead of the elderly put-together doyenne she normally presents as. “What?” I huff.
“First of all, no one can help thinking anything sexual about anyone,” she says, and I’m going to have to table the immediate curiosity about Ari’s sex life thatthatcomment sets off. “But come on, he was barely a patient to begin with. You had a few calls with his girlfriend and then maybe two or three with him, where he never really said anything, and then she promptly broke up with him after also being the person who initiated and paid for the sessions. Ethical rules are about patients you have deep knowledge of so it can’t be used against them in a relationship setting. This isn’t that.”
