“It’s nothing to be ashamed about,” I say. “Everyone’s been in love with Hal at some point. Lucky for me, I got my crush out of my system back in college.”
“Mine is proving a little trickier to overcome,” Tara says. “But it’ll pass. I guess you and I are both in our unrequited love era.”
“No, I told you I got over Hal in college. Freshman spring, actually, when she was such a know-it-all in that economics class.”
“I wasn’t saying your unrequited love is with Hal,” Tara says. “It’s Chris, obviously.”
“Are you high?” I ask, then tilt the conversation back to Tara’s problem. “Have you ever tried sitting by Hal during one of her work sessions when she talks out loud to herself in all that jargon with all those acronyms? It’s the most repelling thing.”
Tara smiles, even if it’s a limp little thing. “Good point,” she says. “I should do that more often.”
“It should work instantly,” I tell her and squeeze her hand. “Or your money back.”
Hal appears in the doorway, coming in from the garden. “What’re you talking about? A new type of magic mushroom?”
“Yeah,” I say, grinning at Tara as we share our private joke. “Something like that.”
“Well, count me in,” Hal says. “I need all the biohacks I can get to reach peak performance and optimize my efficiency as Astrid and I incubate the beta prototype of our proprietary software platform.”
Told you so, I mouth to Tara over Hal’s shoulder, and Tara giggles, the glimmer back in her eyes.
Chapter 19
Chris is hard to pin down in the days that follow.
There’s no allure in the chase, just a bloated sort of annoyance. Here I am, trying to get to know him more, trying to help him heal from losing his brother, and he just keeps saying that he’s out of town. Sure, it’s summer, but there’s no way he’s gone all the time or he’d be asking me to dogsit. Unless he’s found someone new for Arnie. The thought depresses me in the shape of a punch.
Guilt-trapping him is the only way forward. I’m not proud of exploiting his kindness, but there’s really no alternative.
“Hey, Chris,” I say to the voicemail because once again he hasn’t picked up the phone. “I’m having kind of a hard time. There’s a problem I’d like your opinion on. Let me know if you’re free for dinner or a drink this week. I can come over your way.”
He replies via text rather than a phone call, not like him. But at least he agrees to meet up, though he suggests brunch rather than dinner, way less intimate.
I get there early, all keyed up though there’s nothing in my system but my own blood. He chose Bubby’s, a legendary breakfast spot in the city, or so I’ve heard. I’ve never been here, but a line twists out the door and down the block, nearly reaching the West Side Highway.
Inside, exposed brick wraps the family-style joint, and the tables are packed together with the sort of efficiency you’d expect out ofManhattan. The clientele is a mix of soccer parents taking their kids out to a postgame feast, young couples mopping up hangovers with corn bread and iced coffees, and gaggles of postcollege girls animatedly sharing every negligible, essential detail of their lives as they snitch each other’s hash browns without having to ask. Nostalgia for the Redstockings rises, the olden days and golden days when Jenni was still around, and Lilly too, and we could fill a restaurant booth.
Chris arrives and manages to slide into the chair across from me without jamming up against the person behind him. “You’re early,” he says, and I pick up on the insinuation that he expected me to be late.
“Am I?” I ask, pretending not to be aware of the time. Pretending not to have changed at all since I first met him.
“So what’s going on?” he asks. “Everything okay?”
“Not really.” I’m enjoying the idea that everyone else in the restaurant likely assumes we’re a couple. “First, there’s the fact that Hal isin love.”
“In love or in jail?” Chris asks. “You make it sound like the latter.”
“They’re one and the same. Both are cages.”
Chris pulls his mouth in an oh-so-it’s-going-to-be-this-kind-of-day way. It makes me want to hurry on to the next subject, the reason we’re here.
“And also, I have this other friend who seems to be pulling away from me,” I say, fiddling with the cloth napkin that I refuse to fold on my lap. “I found out something about his life. Something bad he went through. And instead of letting me in, it just feels like he’s shutting me out.” I pause so the effect of using the third person can sink in, help him feel less attacked. “What advice would you give me? To connect with this person?”
Chris is staring down at the laminated menu, transfixed on the same spot. Reading it over and over, or more likely staring right through it. “I’d tell you to respect his space,” he says, words shearedlike hedges pruned into compliance. “Not everyone processes things by sharing them.”
I ask how someone might process them then. Chris says that actions probably do the talking, that the person probably lives his life differently based on what he’s been through.
I want to reach across the table and put my hand over his, be the lid of a frying pan, keeping the heat in. But it would just make him feel like he should further clarify that we’re not a couple. No need for that. “I just want you to have people you can talk to,” I say.
