Dustin looked like he might say yes. He looked like he might apologize. He looked like he might even thank her for helping save him from himself.
“I’m staying,” he said instead, tone implying she was the one who was choosing to go.
But this wasn’t walking away. This was limping toward safety. Maybe that was a Wall Street–like loophole to lessen the guilt, or maybe it was the honest distinction that would keep her upright.
She took two handfuls of messy curly hair and kissed the top of his head. “I’ll always love you,” she said, despising the future tense, thealways. The best way to always love someone was to never actually use the wordalways. OrdinaryI love yous just stacked into an elegant forever, one present-tense, adverb-free line at a time.
Dustin opened the computer back up and resumed the documentary.
Walking mechanically around the apartment, Rae collected only what seemed imperative—the Stall Street Journal, her work computer and charger, the yoga mat she hadn’t used in months, the skillet she’d contributed from the penthouse.
Then, leaving her toothbrush in the bathroom, leaving her blazer on the peg, leaving Phyllis and the sunflowers in the window, leaving her key on the counter, leaving Dustin lying on the couch listening to the sound of a man’s voice warning that it would take only thirty-nine minutes and twenty-two seconds for a North Korean nuclear missile to reach New York, Rae left the Lorimer Loft, let the door close behind her, and walked alone to the stairs, out of time to wait for the elevator.
It wasn’t until later, at Ellen and Aaron’s apartment, that she’d look in the mirror and see how much of herself she’d left behind too, all the parts that had ever felt whole, as indivisible from Dustin as he was from depression.
PART 3
775 DAYS TO GO
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
RECOUPING LOSSES
“This one’s a gorgeous, fully furnished studio, below market price,” the landlord told Rae as he showed her a dorm room–sized apartment on the corner of Wall Street and William. “A real steal.”
It was a couple weeks after the breakup, and Rae was looking for somewhere to live so she wouldn’t have to keep crashing on Ellen and Aaron’s couch. It was the first apartment she’d toured, on the twelfth floor of an elevator building. The apartment’s only window faced the sleek glass of Rae’s office.
The separation Rae had once insisted on keeping between where she worked and where she slept now seemed like little more than an impractical ideal. It wasn’t like she was ever able to unplug anyway, and living next door would prevent the subway from snatching more hours from her life than it already had.
“Fully furnished” in this case consisted of a double bed, a desk that doubled as the kitchen table, and an armchair barely more comfortable than Rae’s office chair.
Rae could now afford something nicer than this three-hundred-square-foot sliver, but she’d made herself calculate what else she couldput that money toward—her grandpa’s health care bills, a Caribbean cruise for her mom and Mr. Non-Right, her 401k. She didn’t like thinking about her Poet’s Fund anymore—it just reinforced the feeling that she was deluding herself into thinking she’d ever have the guts to trade in a corporate life for a creative one.
And what did she need the extra space for? It wasn’t like she’d be hosting the Scramblettes or bringing guys back here. She tried to tell herself that, once more time had gone by, once her heart had healed or at least once the fresh bleeding had stopped, she’d be open to meeting someone new, but it was impossible to picture that now, maybe because her imagination had quit working, or maybe because it was just too farfetched a fantasy. This apartment didn’t have to be home, just a place for her to lie low in while recouping her emotional losses.
“And look at thisdishwasher,” the landlord went on, as if pointing out a private swimming pool. “Very unusual amenities for something at this price.”
The discounted price was because this was a lease takeover, likely from a brave, lost soul who’d bailed on Wall Street after one too many all-nighters. Rae preferred the six-month commitment to the standard twelve months, as it fit with her timeline of working hard through year-end, getting promoted, and then quitting after January bonuses to move back to Indiana.
She’d been tempted to return to the Midwest right after the Dustin Divestment, as she mentally called the breakup, but if she moved now, she’d be running away. If she moved in six months, she’d be walkingtoward.
She hadn’t heard from Dustin since the breakup, not that she’d expected to. As the Uber had brought her back across the Williamsburg Bridge, she’d left a voice mail for Dustin’s mom, whose number she had from exchanging the occasional photo. Rae knew the message would be enough for his mom to intervene, just as she knew it would be enough for Dustin to never speak to her again.
She hadn’t deleted or blocked his number or even been tempted to, so numb was she with closure. His birthday had come and gone without a single twitch to text him. She ached to know how he was doing, but it was the type of ache that inhibited action. It seemed she’d finally given up on trying to crack open cracked doors.
Even my tears are too stuck to flow, was the Bellini line that resonated most right now, not that she was trying to think about Bellini at all.
“And did you see the tub?” the landlord asked. “Jacuzzi sized!”
Rae walked the one and a half steps into the bathroom. The tub was as shallow as a sink, and she’d have to bend her short legs to fit. Kindly, she stayed quiet.
She hadn’t been using her voice much lately, grinding at work to block out the hurt and returning to Ellen and Aaron’s after they’d gone to bed so she felt like less of a bad houseguest for not wanting to chat.
“It’s available for immediate move-in,” the landlord said, making it sound like a fantastic deal for Rae rather than his own money going down the drain every night it went empty.
Rae scanned the place once more, quickly so her eyes wouldn’t have to linger. “I’ll take it.”
She recalled the first apartment she’d rented after college, how she and her traitorous ex-roommate had looked at twenty-seven spots, holding out for the one. Now she was ready to sign at the first option. She tried not to extrapolate it as a symbol of how she was on track to settle in life and love.
