The porch was bright and warm. Everything felt a little shallow, a little weightless, but Rae wondered now if those adjectives weren’t opponents of love but allies to it. What was so great about deep, heavy things anyway? Depth just gave more space to fall, and weights reminded her of what she couldn’t lift.
“All right,” Rae conceded. “Let’s give long-distance a try.”
Stu wrung Rae’s hand, then kissed her on the mouth. “And that, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, as Aaron and Ellen cheered, “Is how you negotiate with a banker.”
“Well done,” Rae said, not upset with the outcome.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
AND THE CYCLEBEGINS AGAIN
How’s ur day going babe
Stu texted Rae while she was at work a couple weeks after Labor Day. Everyone was back in the office, stressed as ever, and it was as if the August lull had never happened. The long days and nights on Elmer Lake felt a world away, a world Rae wasn’t sure she belonged to after all, now that she was back in the hustle and bustle of her metropolitan routine. The pace stimulated her senses in a way the peace didn’t.
Stu had texted her earlier too, a good-morning message that she hadn’t had time to reply to yet. She felt impatient, and not just because of his poor grammar. She wanted him tojust knowhow her day was without having to explain it to him. She wanted him to understand the specific frustration that comes when a decrepit subway turnstile eats your MetroCard for breakfast, the all-consuming dread of going to work that gives way to the adrenaline rush once you get there and strut into a fifty-story office buzzing with worker bees and their bosses, the seething resentment you feel when you have to treat every imaginary deadline like a real one.
But of course there was no way Stu could know these things. He’d never been to New York and didn’t know the first thing about the cutthroat finance world. That was one of the reasons they were such a good fit, Rae reminded herself. He balanced her out that way.
I’ll call you tonight!she texted him back at her desk—hurriedly, so she wouldn’t get scolded for using her phone.
But as she kept sitting there, crunching numbers in Excel, the twitch to text became too intrusive to ignore. Not the twitch to text Stu but the twitch to text Dustin. Today was his thirty-first birthday, as she’d accidentally remembered, or never successfully forgotten. Last year, for his thirtieth, his whole family had gone on a hiking vacation, but Dustin had fallen into a dark patch for weeks afterward, completely shutting her out. She’d bought concert tickets to see one of his favorite bands at Madison Square Garden, but he hadn’t been up to going. He’d told her to give away the tickets, but she hadn’t. It would have felt too much like surrendering.
The twitching had started in the fidgeting of her feet on the subway this morning and then worked its way up to her fingers as they tapped on her keyboard, adding a sequence of gibberish to the deal summary she was working on. Now the twitching had extended into her limbs and her lungs, and she escaped to her bathroom bunker to ask for help from the Scramblettes.
SOS. Tempted to text Dustin happy birthday.
Ellen texted back right away, and Rae could practically see her pausing her chickpea milk presentation to reply to this mission-critical alarm.DON’T DO IT!!! THINK OF HOW FAR WE’VE COME.
But squatting on the same toilet she’d been using since she was twenty-two years old, Rae didn’t feel like she’d come very far at all. Her life was stalled, pun intended. Cutting out Dustin for hooking up with someone when he and Rae hadn’t even been dating now seemed embarrassingly childish, the same overdramatic defense mechanism she’d used on her dad and her ex-boyfriend but without a fraction of the justification.
I thought we were #TeamStu?Sarah chimed in.
A bday text isn’t cheating,Mina said.
TEAM STU!Ellen said.Gotta get back to meeting but STAY STRONG.
When ur 80, which do you think u will regret more? Mina posed. Texting Dustin or not texting?
Rae found this very profound and felt a surge of affection for Mina despite their months of drifting apart. Ellen could see things as so black and white.
She recalled the Bellini quote Dustin had recited on their second date:Only do something if it claws at you and forces its way out in spite of oh so much …
The context had been around writing, but what was texting if not the most modern literary genre? This birthday message was certainly forcing its way out. It wasn’t disloyal to Stu, she reasoned. If anything, it showed how much she’d moved on—her ability to reach out in a cordial way rather than pretend he didn’t exist because it was too painful to talk to him.
In a matter of seconds, she unblocked, then resaved Dustin’s number. Cell phone companies should make the process of retrieving blocked numbers more difficult, she thought, though she was glad they didn’t.
She drafted five texts, in decreasing order of emotion, and settled on option three—Happy birthday! How are you celebrating?
Stifled by the bathroom’s silence, she shimmied her hips until the toilet sensor flushed. Empowered by the confident sound of rushing water, she sent the text.
A half second of relief was replaced by regret.
Any power she’d had in striding out of the Lorimer Loft, ignoring Dustin’s calls, blocking his number—she’d forfeited it all with this single text. Once again, he held all the cards.
He was probably on a Caribbean island with The Sun Hat Girl, phone locked in the safe of the hotel room as they got couple’smassages on the beach. When he finally saw the text, he’d misinterpret it as Rae trying to throw herself at him, and he’d explain it away to The Sun Hat Girl as some psycho he’d never actually dated who’d deluded herself into thinking they were soul mates. He’d have no idea how happy Rae was with Stu, how much she appreciated being appreciated, how delightfully simple it was being with someone who wasn’t at war with himself.
She thought about adding aP.S. I’m dating someone, hope you’re doing great!but it seemed like that would make her sound even more desperate if he didn’t know she was telling the truth.
