Her phone started buzzing on the bedside table.
“It’s your dad,” Dustin said, handing her the phone with a look formed by all the conversations they’d had about her fractured relationship with her father.
She stared at his name on the screen, debating whether to pick up. By the time she decided she would, it had gone to voice mail.
“I’ll listen to the message later,” Rae said, infuriatingly pleased that he’d left one. She wanted a few hours to imagine it might be more sentimental than it was.
“Told you he’d remember your birthday,” Dustin said, looking relieved.
Rae switched the subject. “Think of all the suckers already at work,” she said. “Stressing out about decimal points and tiny moves in the stock market.” From this bedroom sanctuary, the manufactured frenzy seemed nothing short of ludicrous, some stand-up comedy skit that had spun out of control into an entire world order.
“Joke’s on them,” Dustin agreed.
“So what should we do all day?” she asked. It seemed luxuriously rebellious, a whole day stretching before them with no Excel spreadsheets or PowerPoint slides to update.
“I thought we could ride bikes down to Prospect Park and have a picnic,” Dustin said. “And try out some new cafés and go poem spotting.”
Rae looked at Dustin’s face and all the brightness he’d scrounged to plan her perfect birthday and reciprocate the things she’d done for his. But she could see it, too, the fatigue around his eyes, the desire to keep sleeping.
“I think my old age is catching up to me,” she said. “How about we just go poem spotting right here?”
“You sure? You love birthdays.”
“Yes,” she said, thinking about all the future birthdays she’d get to spend with him, how they’d have plenty of time to do all those activities once Dustin got better. “I’m sure.”
“I’m not hungry,” Dustin mumbled, facedown in bed a couple weeks later.
Rae was sitting on the edge of Dustin’s comforter, already dressed for work, offering up what she’d branded an “auspicious omelet” packed with avocados, beets, and organic clovers, all high on the list of depression-fighting foods.
With the Scramblettes officially broken up, Rae had decided it was time to learn how to properly flip omelets and had worked her way up the yolky learning curve through hours of YouTube tutorials.
“Just have a few bites,” Rae said, stroking his back with the hand that wasn’t holding the plate. “You need your energy.”
“For sitting at a desk for twelve hours straight? No, I don’t.”
She’d tried to correlate his downturns to specific triggers, but they seemed to appear out of thin air—or thick air, rather, through which he could move his limbs only very slowly.
Setting the plate on his bedside table, next to the glass of unsipped ice water she’d gotten him, she crawled into bed beside him, wrinkling her ironed clothes as she wrapped his bare torso with both arms.
“Just three more days to get through at work, and then we have the wedding this weekend,” Rae said. John and Jenn were getting married, a vineyard ceremony and reception on the North Fork of Long Island—the Napa Valley of New York, East Coasters called it.
Dustin grunted. Rae wasn’t sure if it was aYeah, I guessgrunt or anI don’t want to go to that eithergrunt. She didn’t ask him to clarify, just peppered his shoulder blade with kisses and said, as gently as she could, “We have to go to work.”
“You go,” Dustin said. “I’ll work from home.”
Rae’s first thought was that she should work remotely today too, but there was a big client pitch later this morning, and she’d finally been invited to be in the room. She wouldn’t be the one presenting, of course, but it was progress.
“All right,” Rae said reluctantly. “I’ll see you this weekend.”
Dustin grunted again, a definitively negative grunt this time. He turned his face toward her. His cheeks were too hollow, hazel eyes glazed over.
Rae pressed her cheek against his, not caring if his stubble scraped off her foundation.
“Come over tonight?” he mumbled.
“I can’t,” she said, nearly changing the words as she spoke so she wouldn’t have to disappoint him. “Ellen and I are having a girls’ night.” She’d bailed the last three times.
Dustin turned his head away.
