Thanks, Elle-belle. Gotta get back to a discounted cash flow analysis.
Fun. Staying at A’s tonight but girls’ night tmrw?
Sarah and Mina invited us to their friend’s cousin’s party …
Oh right. Really don’t want to go, doesn’t start until 10 …
Let’s say we’re sick?
Used that excuse last time. How about saying the super coming to fix pipes?
Genius.
Do some yoga before you go back to your desk. Self-compassion starts with balance.
Standing in the bathroom stall yoga studio, Rae attempted tree pose but wobbled on her heels, catching herself on the black plastic wall to avoid tipping right into the toilet and having to explain to all the wannabe bosses why her suit was drenched.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
THE GIRLFRIEND PROMOTION
“Aren’t subway delays the best way to start the day?” Rae asked Dustin unironically the next Tuesday morning. They were commuting to work together on the L train after spending the night at the Lorimer Loft. “It’s like the conductor wants us to have five more minutes together.”
With no empty seats, they were standing up, crammed against the door. Rae’s arms were wrapped around Dustin’s suit jacket instead of the germ-magnet pole, and Dustin was dropping kisses on her forehead, one every three seconds, a more pleasant means of counting time than her usual huffs and grunts.
“Write that in the Stall Street Journal,” Dustin said. “The joy a subway delay brings when you’re with your true love versus the fury when you’re all alone.”
“True love?” Rae asked, hoping she wasn’t wrongly interpreting a universalyouas a personal one.
“Sure,” Dustin said, with an equal ratio of rationality to romanticism. “That’s what we found, didn’t we?”
“Guess we did,” Rae said, kissing him right on the lips and marvelously amused at how her jaded, jealous former self would bescowling at them, one ofthosesubway couples. “All thanks to an algorithm.”
“Destiny is never digital,” Dustin protested. “The app just helped carry out its work, like one of Santa’s elves.”
It sounded like something Ellen might say. “Want to get dinner with Ellen and Aaron tonight?”
“I have Jessica after work.”
“Right.”
Rae was glad that, so far at least, Dustin was keeping her in the loop about his weekly sessions with Jessica, his psychologist. He still refused psychiatrists, as they’d want to put him back on “anti-emotion meds.” He didn’t want to feel less, he’d told Rae. He just wanted to be able to let all his feelings exist as free-flowing liquids and gasses instead of congealing as solids and sending him into lockdown mode. “Another time, then,” Rae said.
“Another time,” Dustin agreed. “Jessica thinks it’s too early to ask you to be my girlfriend.”
“Oh,” Rae said, trying very hard not to suspect Jessica of wanting Dustin for herself.
“But I think she’s just projecting her insecurities that the woman she’s been dating for eight months hasn’t introduced her to her pet guinea pig yet,” Dustin said.
Rae giggled in that silent way she only did with Dustin. “Could be.”
“So will you?” Dustin asked. “Be my girlfriend?”
His eyes were warm against the sterile subway lighting, and Rae found it nothing short of perfect, how he was asking to take this step forward with her while they were stuck in a dark tunnel together. It was far more symbolically sturdy than if he’d posed the question from the rooftop with an unobstructed view.
Her left brain processed a swift sense of victory at getting one step closer to her married-by-thirty vision, but her right brain waved away those forward-looking thoughts, too busy basking in thebeauty of this very moment with the person she could finally call her boyfriend.
“Yes, please,” Rae said, kissing him again on the lips, aware of but unfazed by all theGet a fucking roomfuming directed their way in this crowded subway car. “Best promotion I’ve ever gotten.”
