When was the last time someone paid in cash here? Could we pass for the mob? I look at Leo. Probably not with the TOMS.
“Besides,” Leo says. “Tonight isn’t aboutcan’t. We’re here. We’re happy.”
“We’re more than that,” I say. I lean over and reach for him, thread my arms around his neck and kiss his mouth.
Our champagne arrives. Leo lifts his glass. “To the next chapter,” he says. He gets serious. He puts his hand on top of mine. “I don’t think I can remember ever loving you more. Thank you.”
For our first wedding anniversary Leo and I went to Maui. We rented a little place in a town called Paia—an Airbnb that had noAC and a half-functional mosquito net—but we loved it. We’d walk Baldwin Beach in the morning and go to the Fish Market for tacos and tuna burgers at night.
We rented a car, and one day we drove over to Wailea—a more touristy area, where the big, fancy hotels are. Everyone said we had to go to the Four Seasons for drinks, so we did. We sat in their sprawling, airy lobby with picture-perfect ocean views and a stream of light Hawaiian music. We ordered twenty-seven-dollar cocktails and eighteen-dollar edamame and picked at it until sundown.
Leo wore khaki shorts and a loud Hawaiian-print shirt. Something purple and orange we had picked up at ABC Stores, mostly as a joke. I remember looking at my hulking, sweating, out-of-place husband—who was only in that hotel and on that island to make me happy—and thinking that if there were ever anything I could do to put his happiness first, I’d do it.
Leo runs his thumb over the back of my hand. I feel bathed in his warmth, the warmth of us, of our marriage, and I think how happiness is determined not by getting what you want but by determining which things to hold on to and which things to let go. That there is joy in relinquishing. How extraordinary it is to be given the second chance to see the path we were always meant to travel down.
In the early days of our marriage, I’d look at Leo and feel terrified of how much I loved him. Because to love him meant to be decimated at losing him. To love him that deeply meant that my happiness was now in someone else’s hands. And it wasn’t just the love, it was the reliance. As time went on we became like an ecosystem. We needed each other for sunlight and shelter and food and water. We needed each other to grow.
But sitting with Leo now I don’t feel the weight of us, of everything that might come our way—of even our dependence. I feel the ease of the now, the way the universe seems to be rewarding our pivot with nothing but open road. A true new beginning.
“Thank you,” I say.Thank you, thank you, thank you.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The call doesn’t come super late at night or super early in the morning, either. It does not wake me out of sleep. Instead, it’s eleven on a Wednesday morning, six weeks into my New York trip. Leo and I are planning on staying even longer—the director wants Leo’s help with postproduction and editing here, when they’re done shooting. They’ll be cutting the show in New York, taking advantage of a brand-new tax break, and I’m going to stay with him.
“Christmas in Brooklyn,” Leo said to me this weekend. Sunday, drinking lattes at East One Coffee Roasters, the place we’re now regulars, and sharing avocado toast and chorizo hash. A walk down Flatbush to pick up bagels. Takeout from SHAN on Smith Street.
“Sounds perfect,” I said.
The longer we spend in New York the better it feels. To start something new, away from the beach. To begin again. Holiday windows, hot chocolate, and ice-skating in Central Park. I feel New York like a romance novel. I just keep turning the pages.
We have even started talking about maybe moving here, maybe giving up West Hollywood entirely and renting something—temporary, to start. Work is paying for Leo through the New Year,and after that, if the show gets picked up for a second season… it might all make sense.
I pick up on the third ring. I don’t think anything of it. It’s 8:00 a.m. in Los Angeles. It’s a Wednesday. It’s a perfectly reasonable time to call your only daughter for no reason at all.
“Mom,” I say. “Hey, what’s up?”
I’m already thinking that I’ll stop by Sweetgreen for lunch, and pick up some stuff for dinner at Union Market—maybe a few pieces of salmon to grill and some of their marinated cauliflower. It’s overpriced, but worth it. On the nights Leo has late shoots I’ve been taking myself to a wine bar around the corner and posting up at a table with my laptop, but tonight I’m craving some time inside. A good book, maybe aHousewivesseason, and a fresh summer salad to go along with it.
“Where are you?” she asks me, and I know immediately that something is wrong.
“What happened?”
“It’s Dad,” she says. “He’s in the hospital.”
Immediately I think accident, but I can tell from her tone that’s not it. She doesn’t have the harried voice of someone pacing outside the ER, waiting for a blood transfusion to work, in triage. Rather, she sounds like someone who is staving off a very heavy reality from setting in.
“Why?” I ask.
I hear her inhale. “I’d rather you come home,” she says.
I imagine all the steps I need to take to get back there. Calling the airlines, packing, Uber, flight. I’m at least fifteen hours away from an answer.
“I need to know what’s going on,” I say. “Mom, tell me. What’s happening with Dad?”
“It’s his heart,” she says, and her voice cracks.
I feel panic mixed with anger. The hot-blooded annoyance at mymom, her hand-wringing, her singular focus on my father’s health, life, person. Of course it’s his heart. It’s always been his heart.
