“Eventful. But that’s not important right now. What are you doing here? Where’s Annie?”
He glances at his watch. “Home by now, I would imagine.”
“She’s at Harold’s? Okay. I need to—”
“No, no.Herhome. Back in New Jersey. She left last night. You didn’t know?”
I drove all this way to see her and she was actually closer to where I started from this morning? Goddammit. I stop taking off my coat, sliding it back onto my shoulders in preparation to leave again. “No, I didn’t know. What happened? Why did she leave?”
He shrugs with one shoulder, clearly not understanding how big a deal this is. “Some sort of personal matter, I believe. I was going through Graham’s books, finally, and found a few things that I knew you’d want, so I came here to give them to you. But you were heading up to New York, and Annie—what a lovely young lady, by the way!—she seemed quite distressed. Said she needed to get back home as soon as possible, so I offered to look after the shop so she could go and attend to matters. I couldn’t recall when—or if—she’d said you’d return, so I went ahead and came back today to open up.”
“She justleft?” My stomach sinks as I remember her telling me that her sister is expecting. I hope it wasn’t anything related to that. I start calculating how long it will take me to drive north again, to get to Asbury Park and try to make myself useful to her and her family.
“Oh. She did ask me to give you this,” he says and pulls an envelope out of the drawer beside the register.
I snatch it from his hand and tear it open, nearly ripping the folded-up piece of lined paper inside in my haste. It was torn off of my legal pad, and Annie’s handwriting is messier than usual, as if she wrote in a hurry.
Cal,
I’ve thought about it, and I’m sorry, but my answer has to be no.
It’s not that I don’t want to be with you. It’s that I want it too much. I’m falling in love with you, Callahan, but I’m not convinced the feeling is as mutual as you believe it is.
There are a lot of side tables out there, you know, and in so many styles. I’m just the first piece you came across that had the approximately correct dimensions for the space. Maybe you’ll find something that works even better if you keep looking. I can’t encourage you to stop shopping now and get stuck with something you won’t still love in a year or five years or fifteen or twenty, because I suspect you’d rather keep it around after it no longer suits rather than let it go. After all, we both know how stubborn you can be about change.
I care for your heart too much to let it settle for me. And I care about my own too much for it to be something you settle for.
Be well.
Annie
P.S. Nicole stopped by about the goose. She wants you to call her.
P.P.S. Please water Harold’s plants until he gets back. I left his house key on the desk in the office, and the care instructions are in a binder beside his fridge.
“I don’t understand,” I say aloud, rereading the letter for a second time. “I thought she understood how much I…” I trail off as I hit the postscript again.Nicole stopped by about the goose. She wants you to call her.
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I should have told her. I should have told Annie as soon as we started getting closer that my ex was the one for whom I was doing this massive, potentially reputation-ruining favor. I was so concerned about keeping Nicole’s name out of it and reviving my lost friendship with her that I lied by omission to the woman I claimed to love, and shit, how must that look?
Not great! It does not look great.
Of course Annie is second-guessing everything. Of course she thinks that I’m still hung up on my ex-girlfriend, because why else wouldn’t I tell her the goose was Nicole’s? I can’t blame her for getting in her head about it, especially knowing her history with past lovers wanting her because of how well she could mold herself into whoever they wanted her to be. She just always seemed so confident, so strongly herself with me that I took for granted how fragile and hard-earned those parts of her were. I see now that keeping this secret must’ve only added to any concerns Annie had that I was using her as a good-enough fill-in for the Nicole-shaped gap in my life.
And, shit, maybe that is what I was doing, albeit inadvertently. When I asked her to stay with me in Baltimore, I now see what I was really asking was that Annie contort herself to keep fitting where I wanted her instead of shaping space for herself. I told Annie we’d take good care of each other, and then I failed to uphold my end of that promise.
I’m such an idiot. And I’m no better than the assholes who came before me, making their continued affection feelconditional on how well she could keep playing the part of the woman they needed her to be.
I pull out my phone and call Nicole, who answers at the last second before it goes to voicemail.
“Cal. Hey. I’ve been waiting to hear back from you.”
“You came in yesterday?” I snap. Nicole isn’t the one who screwed up here, but emotion makes it impossible to moderate the sharpness in my voice.
“Yes…” she replies. “Is that a problem?” She pauses. “Oh. Is this about your new girlfriend? Annie, right? Did I…I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything to her about us. I was just happy you’d found someone who seemed so nice and—”
“She’s gone.”
