A few years ago—a fewmonthsago, really—she would have felt that tug of loyalty to him, would have genuinely considered it: a move to a city she wasn’t overly fond of, an uprooting of her life for someone who’d always been firmly in her corner.
But now, Nora was different. She knew, deep down: she didn’t want to leave Chicago.
Not now.
Maybe not ever.
And it wasn’t just on account of her loyalty this time. When she’d chosen Chicago last fall, she’d done it because Nonna had needed her, because Nonna had wanted her to stay. She’d known she was going back to a place and to people she loved— the building, Nonna’s apartment, her neighbors. But now, something else drew her there; now, she was choosing for herself. She wanted to go back to the building and her apartment and her neighbors, but also to the neighborhood and the city around it; she wanted to go back for the weirdly Midwestern beaches and the sights she hadn’t seen, to the big, brutal seasons and the collective attitude of a city that didn’t get nearly enough respect.
And she wanted—maybe foolishly—to go back to Will.
“Honestly I can’t believe he hasn’t called like a million times already,” Dee said, and without thinking, Nora answered.
“Ididbasically tell him not to.”
Dee furrowed her brow. “Wait, you did? I thought at the meeting you told him—” She broke off and nudged Nora with her foot, obviously clocking the flush Nora could feel heating her cheeks. “Haaaaaaaaa,” she said, happy teasing in her voice. “You’re thinking abouthimagain!”
Nora took another sip of her wine, skipped the shrug this time. No point trying to fake it, since in between the many work rants and resolutions she and Deepa had both participated in over the course of the week, they’d also spent a fair bit of time talking through what had happened between Nora and Will.
“Ice-cold, Eleanora,” said Dee, laughing. “About to tell a whole man you’re going to leave him, and you’re already on to the next one.”
“It’s not thesame,” said Nora. “Austin is my colleague. And also, I think we have well established by this point that I am not, in fact,onwith Will.”
She shifted, uncrossing her legs and adjusting so that she and Dee faced each other, both of them now with backs against either arm of the couch, legs stretched alongside each other. Dee wiggled her feet against Nora’s ribs, a gentle, teasing comfort that made Nora smile.
“You’re going to be okay?” Dee asked. “If he doesn’t come around?”
Nora dropped her head back, closing her eyes. Behind her lids the wordsGood luckflashed irritatingly, so she opened them again, staring up at Dee’s ceiling and sighing out a disappointed breath. It wasn’t fair, maybe, to be upset that Will hadn’t reached out, especially not after all the times she’d said it was better to wait until she was back. At first, she’d set that boundary out of fear—fear that she’d cry, fear that she’d blurt everything she felt out into the open air and freak him out forever. Even as she’d listened to the message he’d left her the morning of her flight—Nora,he’d begun, in that perfect way,I wanted to hear your voice before you left—she’d still forced herself to finish packing, to get all the way to the airport before she let herself text back. Some of it had been that same fear, but some of it had been her belief that Will really did need the time. That what he needed to work out—about his parents, about beingserious—he needed to work out without her.
Now, though—a day away from heading back—she worried she’d made a mistake, insisting on the wait. Banishing him to silence when he’d at least tried to reach out, and all because she hadn’t wanted to take the risk: to tell him she loved him, and to have him not say it back.
To have him notfeelit back.
“I will,” she said finally, trying to convince herself, trying to ignore the vise grip she felt around her heart when she thought about it. “I’m going to tell him how I feel, and if he doesn’t feel it, too, I’ll move on.”
She paused, lifting her head to look across the way at her friend. “Not that I have a great track record of moving on from things in an expedient manner.”
Dee smiled sympathetically, patting Nora’s shin. “Now, now,” she said. “Give yourself some credit. You forget the pictures you showed me of that bathroom you redid.”
“True,” Nora thought, trying not to focus on the fact that she’d done nearly all of that moving on with Will right at her side. “And I have plans now.”
All week, she’d been thinking about them: changes she would make once she got back home. Away from the apartment, not so immediately surrounded by Nonna’s things, it had been easier to consider. When she pictured it now—that jammed-up bedroom she used as an office, that floral couch she really couldn’t stand—she could see how silly she had been to keepso muchof it exactly the same. And as she stayed here with Deepa, helping her friend with the preliminary packing for her move next month, it’d been easy to see how well Dee’s things—her bold, comfortable furniture, her gilt-framed decorative mirrors hung in clever arrangements on the walls, her many,manycandles—reflected Dee herself.
Nora wanted a chance to have that again in the place she called home.
So. More changes to the apartment. Looking for a new job. That was the plan.
With or without Will.
“Why don’t we FaceTime him now?” said Dee, always impatient. “I’ll stay out of frame, and I’ll leave if it gets weird, Ipromise. Here, I’ll get you more wine so you can really lean in to it,” she said, moving to swing her legs over Nora’s.
“No, no,” Nora said, draining the small amount of wine that was left in her glass. “I don’t want to have too much before I fly tomorrow. It always makes me woozy.”
“Waaaaaaah,” Dee said dramatically, grabbing at Nora’s shins in playful desperation. “You’releavingme tomorrowandyou won’t give me anythingentertainingto watch tonight!”
Nora laughed and bent her knees, gently toppling Dee to the side. “I ought to sleep,” she said. “You know me and my early starts.”
“I swear to God, Nora,” Dee said, standing. “If you make noise before six a.m. again, that’s it for you ever being my houseguest in the future. Even when I get a gigantic condo in Berkeley with my new huge salary.”
