“No,” Amanda says, her jaw firming. “It’s OK. I didn’t really think I could meet her or anything. It’s not like Lily Marple and I were going to be best friends. God.”
I pick out a few more onions with my fingers.
“Do you not like them?” she asks. “Since when?”
“I don’t think I ever did. It’s fine. I’m just eating around them.”
“Shit, sorry. I didn’t know. I don’t remember that at all.”
What she could actually be saying is:We don’t remember a lot of things about each other.
Though we’ve been back together only for about six weeks, Amanda practically lives at my apartment now. At first, like many firsts with her, it was exhilarating. We screwed constantly; we stayed up late eating Chinese food in bed like we had when I was twenty-five; we went to the gym together, we showered together, we did, well, everything—other than when she was at work, or when I was with Joey—together. But then the tug of the manuscript,Between Me and You, and the promises I made with that manuscript, called me back, and with that, the tug of why I was writing it—for Tatum.
Then I remembered that I was firmlynottwenty-five anymore, and there were concrete reasons why part of me preferred adulthood. That Chinese food at midnight leaves you with heartburn, and screwing constantly distracts you from real life. Amanda is needier now than she used to be, or at least how I remember her to have been. She’ll straddle my lap when I’m writing or she’ll pout when I tell her I’m checking in with Tatum. She’s older too—almost forty, and I know she wants kids of her own, so I get it. I get that she wants me to be all-in, but it’s impossible to be all-in when I’m not even sure if I’m all-out with Tatum. Of course there are the divorce papers, and we’ve finalized all the decisions, neatly sliced our life in half—This is yours, this is mine, thank you very much.But it doesn’t feel as final as it seems, though maybe this is just another lie I’ve convinced myself of rather than facing the stark truth: Tatum doesn’t love me anymore. This is at least half the reason I haven’t finished the script yet: I rewound our collective history and wove it into the fabric of the pages, but I have no idea where we’ll go from here, no idea how to finish it. If the characters will end up happy; if in turn, Tatum and I can end up happy.
“Listen,” I say today at breakfast. “Even without this crisis with Cassidy, I can’t come back east with you. It’s Christmas, and I have to be with Joey.”
“And Tatum,” Amanda replies flatly. “I thought they were going away? To Hawaii?” She saysHawaiilike it is Siberia, an absolute punishment of a vacation.
“Not until after Christmas. Her dad comes, and her sister ...”Be honest, be more honest,I tell myself. “It’s not just that. I want to be here. Not that Ihaveto, but I want to.”
“Fine.”
“He’s my son, Amanda.”
“And she’s still your wife, after all.” She wipes her lips with her napkin, pours some of her coffee over her food so she won’t eat the rest, then covers the mess with her napkin. She does this whenever she thinks she’s had enough but doesn’t trust herself to stop; I remember it from back then too. Old habits can be tough to change. “God knows I can’t compete with that.”
I wish I could pour coffee over us, throw a napkin atop the two of us to stop whatever is about to come next. I don’t want to hurt her; I don’t want Tatum to hurt me. There is so much damage in this world already. Wouldn’t it be nice if we stopped bruising each other and could untangle our messes without leaving more marks?
“Amanda,” I say, but have nothing else to soothe her.
“I’m sorry about the onions,” she says. “I guess I should have known.”
42
TATUM
DECEMBER
Monster collapses on the kitchen floor while I’m pouring myself coffee. I hear a loud thud, and it takes a moment to register because Joey is at school, and the house is otherwise quiet, just as I need it to be to go over the towering stack of scripts this afternoon. I’ve promised my team I’ll make a pick on my next three projects—line up my entire next year—by Christmas. Piper and Scooter and the kids are arriving in two days; I’ve left myself no time to consider the next twelve months of my life.
I race around the kitchen island and see him, helpless, shaken, in a pool of his urine.
“Monster! Oh baby boy, oh sweet boy, no, no, no, I’m here.” I sink to my knees and cradle his head.
His lost eyes find mine, his nose nuzzling my lap.
He is too big for me to carry myself. And I promised myself I wouldn’t call Ben. It’s a stupid thing: my pride, the welt that sits with me because he’s with Amanda, and I’m still alone. There’s Damon, but that isn’t much of anything yet, just a second date where he kissed me again, and I felt woozy with desire, but then I said good night and returned to my cocoon, behind my wall, figurative and literal. I can’t call Damon because my dog is dying.
I find my cell in my back pocket and dial the vet.
“My dog, Monster Connelly Livingston, he ... he collapsed, and he’s breathing and I guess he’s alert, but he’s a hundred pounds, and I can’t get him to you, and I don’t know what to do now ...”
I don’t even realize I’m crying until Monster licks my fallen tears off his snout.
“Ms.Connelly,” she says, because she always knows when Hollywood royalty calls—it happens this way all over town. “We’ll send someone with a van out to you immediately.”
“You can do that?” I hiccup.
