“It’s really good to see you again, Emily Jane,” Chris says.
“Yeah,” I say, still not breaking eye contact. “It’s good to see me again too.”
This gets him grinning, which makes me grin too.
“And you too,” I add. “Obviously.”
Chapter 38
As we’re catching up in his apartment that afternoon, Chris asks what happened to me.
I tell him that I accidentally found the divine woman. “Hiding inside me this whole time, what a prankster,” I say with a snort. “Story for another time, but look, I’m just saying if you’re having second thoughts about Olivia, I’ll support you if you want to get back with her.”
He soaks that up and then he says that he doesn’t want to get back with her, that there’s this whisper of relief at the bottom of the hurt that tells him it was the right thing. “But it doesn’t make it easier,” he says. “One second I was picturing growing old with her, pushing her around in her wheelchair and putting wool socks on for her when her arthritis gets too bad to bend over. And the next second she’s out the door, gone forever. It’s just not natural to flip a switch on love like that.” He pauses for a breath that seems to get clogged in his throat.
Taking a big gulp, I pay Chris a compliment. It’s clunky as it trips off my tongue. “Look, Chris, I’m proud of you,” I say. “It’s not easy to jump off a speeding train. It takes a lot of guts, and you’re doing great. It’s a real honor to be your friend.”
Chris, too, seems to find my praise jarring but doesn’t comment on it. He just asks what I mean about jumping off the speeding train.
“Getting off the life path you were on,” I elaborate. “It’s a hard thing to change direction against all that inertia.”
“Was it hard for you to get off the life path you were on as a kid?” he probes. “The more conventional track?”
It catches me off guard because not many people ask about my past life. Usually I prefer it that way, but not now. I want to tell Chris the truth. Lies don’t have the allure that they used to.
“Not really,” I say. “I always felt a bit out of place just by existing. I didn’t really have friends or that sort of thing. I was ready to be out of the house from the time I was about twelve.”
I think about telling him about Mr. Hubert and the piano lessons gone wrong. I don’t, not now, but I will at some point. That acknowledgment feels good in itself, knowing that I’m no longer repressing the truth or silencing it, that I’m just choosing to share it another time, on my terms. Tonight is about Chris.
“So when I got to college, I was lit on fire with rebellion,” I carry on. “The flames were my savior. It was pretty easy to burn the old order down to the ground. The harder thing has been realizing that okay, maybe I overshot the target. Maybe all men aren’t misogynists, maybe all commitment isn’t confinement.”
I fill him in on my trip upstate and the fuzzy little fawn and how I met the divine woman, or more accurately, how I realized I’d met her long ago. “I’m trying to reconnect with my intuition, which is also the cosmic knowing, which is also the sacred feminine energy in Mary Magdalene’s teachings. They’re all part of the same divine force,” I explain, like I’ve just received my PhD on the topic and tossed my tasseled cap up into the air for effect. “And I’m actually semi-supportive of Jenni’s and Hal’s marriages now. I even told Tara to go for the guy she’s in love with. They’re getting serious, and look, I’ve barely got any spite.” I smile-grimace to prove the point and poke fun at myself.
Chris rests his arm on my shoulder. It makes me jolt. All those years of feeling nothing while throwing myself at strangers, andhere I am out of breath just from Chris’s arm around my shoulder. I’m getting soft but I like it that way.
“I sure missed a lot while I was trying to stay away from you,” he says.
“You were trying to stay away?” I ask.
“Of course I was. Thought you knew that.”
“I suspected.” This right here is happiness, I decide, the whole basin of it. Knowing you were missed and knowing you don’t have to be anymore. “Now let’s order some pizza. I’m starving,” I say.
Arnie wags his tail at that. I place an order from Dona Bella’s. Chris tries to pay but I won’t hear of it. “You should never have to buy your own pizza after a breakup. That’s one rule I’m holding on to,” I say. “Plus, I’m a stock trader now. I’ve got some earnings to blow through.”
I show him the Women’s Revolt chat on my trading app. It’s up to nearly ten thousand members—not that scale indicates success, but it’s still kind of cool. We talk about investing for a bit and Chris says I could teach the guys on Wall Street a thing or two.
“Yeah, I could, but I’d rather teach the women on Main Street,” I say. “We’re the ones who’ve been sidelined for centuries.”
“Fair point,” Chris says and tells me about a woman accountant he hired on his team. He’s worried she feels out of place with all the guys and asks for my advice. This says a lot about Chris, that he’s thinking about how to help someone else when his engagement and all his life plans have just fallen through.
Chris says it’s nice to be able to bounce ideas off me again.
“Yeah, I’m pretty great,” I say. “But I have more humility now. Haven’t you noticed?”
We share a smile at that, and then the pizza arrives and we eat it right there on the floor. I keep staring at the bare wall. The white paint looks like it’s stinging from having the pictures ripped off it so fast. The nail holes are still there, big and gaping. It gives me an idea.
“Hey, Chris, do you care about getting your security deposit back?” I ask.
