But the gig also wasn’t particularly demanding, and in the beginning that was nice—it gave us plenty of time together. Tobias would come over on a Thursday and spend the weekend straight through. We ordered the requisite greasy pizza and Chinese and watched 24 on television in the living room when Jessica wasn’t there—which was a lot. Jessica was mostly at Sumir’s, but when she did hang out, it was always fun. She and Tobias were developing their own relationship, their own unique language. They’d e-mail each other articles about tennis or music, two things I couldn’t keep up with the way they could. But mostly she wasn’t there; mostly it was just the two of us. I am embarrassed to admit how fine that was for me. How much I didn’t miss her.
Especially because now that she’s gone, and that it has been her choosing and not mine, I miss her terribly. Not every day. Not constantly. But in moments when I come home and the apartment is dark, or when there is a great rerun of Friends, or a new episode of The Real Housewives, or I’ll find a dried-up face mask in the back of my medicine cabinet—the missing stings like a slap. Not that she’s not there, although I feel that, too. It’s more that I can’t call and tell her these things. I could, of course, but it would make it worse, because I know she doesn’t care. The baby would cry and Sumir would shout, Who is it? and she’d say, Sabby, what’s up? I can’t talk. And the loneliness I’d feel from that particular interaction—her life so full, mine still so microscopic—all the same misfit details—would be enough to send me back to bed.
I introduced Tobias to David and Ellie during that winter. I wanted him to be a part of the fold.
“I don’t know why he does it,” Jessica said in regard to David on one rare night the six of us had gone to dinner. Tobias, Jessica, Sumir, and I were walking home from the East Village. Tobias and I had pushed the dinner three times. He never wanted to go out—All I need is here with you—and I wasn’t one to argue, but Jessica had finally insisted.
“He deserves to be with someone who can love him in a real way.”
“Maybe he doesn’t want that right now,” Tobias said. It was cold out, our breath was making short, fast-moving clouds in front of us. My fingers were numb. We had spent all our money on dinner, though, and besides we weren’t far from the apartment.
“Everyone wants that,” Jessica said. It was dismissive. Tobias shrugged it off, but I could tell it irked him.
“The last guy seemed nice,” Sumir said absently.
“No, he didn’t,” Jessica said. “He seemed like all the rest.”
“Maybe he’s happy,” Tobias said. He knew Jessica, knew that she was opinionated, that she liked things to be her way. He even joked about it with her. I was surprised when he pushed back.
“He’s not,” Jessica said, a little bit angrily. She was unaccustomed to being challenged, too. She didn’t like it.
“Babe, you don’t know,” Sumir said. We glanced at each other. The two peacekeepers thrust into roles we didn’t want.
David was Jessica’s friend in college, but I suspected over time, as we moved to New York and life evolved, he had grown to like me more. He called me sometimes to make plans without her. Jessica could be intense. Her constant pursuit of self-improvement wasn’t everyone’s bag, I knew that. She’d want to have deep, intellectual talks in the back of dimly lit bars when other people didn’t want to talk at all. She had sweeping ideas about love and life and she was still, in those days, talking in generalities. She hadn’t yet been married, hadn’t yet had a baby, hadn’t folded to the practicalities of life. She liked to talk, which is maybe why I missed her so much in those first years without her—she left such a big, quiet space.
On the corner of Washington and Perry a man shouted Tobias’s name. We turned around. A guy was jogging over—late thirties, maybe—dressed in a suit. Tobias smiled.
“Jeremy,” he said. “No way.” They exchanged a hug. “How have you been?”
“Good, work is wild. Irena is still traveling like a crazy person.”
Jeremy looked to me, and Tobias slipped an arm around me. “This is my girlfriend, Sabrina,” he said. I loved hearing him say girlfriend. I could have played it on a loop.
I held out my hand. “Nice to meet you.”
“We’re gonna take off,” Jessica said next to me. We hugged and I waved good-bye to the two of them. Tobias was still engrossed with Jeremy.
“So how do you two know each other?” I said, turning back to them.
“Jeremy was my boss when I was at UCLA. We worked for Irena Shull. She did a lot of travel pieces. I was only an intern, but this guy let me come on shoots. He even convinced the magazine to fly me to Zimbabwe.” Tobias smiled wide. “I can’t believe you’re still in that game, man.”
He was lit up. I felt my stomach squeeze. I’d never seen him this animated talking about anything he was doing now.
“How about you?” Jeremy asked.
Tobias shrugged. “Working, which is good. It’s not particularly stimulating, but life is good.” He tugged me in closer to him and rubbed his thumb back and forth on my waist.
“We should grab a drink sometime. You still have my number?”
Tobias nodded. “Yeah, I’ll hit you up.”
Jeremy left, and Tobias and I started walking again arm in arm. “I didn’t know you went to Zimbabwe to shoot. That’s really cool.” It sounded so silly. I was fishing for something, I just wasn’t sure what.
“Well, I didn’t shoot. But it was fun.” He paused. “Jeremy’s great. He’s going to be a huge deal someday.”
“So will you,” I said.
Tobias spun me around and kissed me. “I love you,” he said. “So much. I don’t know what I’d do without you. You’re it for me, Sabrina.”
“Me too,” I said. There weren’t big enough words. I pressed my lips to his again, satisfied.
*
Jessica got married sometime later. The wedding was at the Central Park boathouse. It was beautiful, but it poured rain, and they couldn’t take any pictures outside—something that visibly upset Jessica. She cried half her makeup off before the ceremony. The makeup artist kept running around with a blotting pad, muttering, “It’s good luck.”
David came and brought a Vanity Fair writer who Refinery 29 had put on their Hot Single Men list three years running. He hadn’t been invited with a plus-one and the events coordinator had to scramble for seating. Ellie didn’t bring a date, but she had just started see ing a guy she’d met on JDate. He was a pharmacist. They stayed together for four years before she married his friend after the least-scandalous breakup ever. The ex even came to the wedding.
Jessica doesn’t have any sisters, just much younger brothers, and I was her maid of honor. We’d gotten ready at the Essex House on Central Park South. I wore a lavender silk dress with a lace trim belt Jessica had picked out. She wore an ivory taffeta gown with a smattering of sequins at the waist. When I first saw her, standing there fully dressed, I teared up. She was so beautiful. She had on tiny sapphire earrings that were her mother’s and blue satin shoes that she kicked off midway through the dance party.
“You should get married every weekend!” Ellie sang. She was twirling to Robyn, and too drunk. That was the problem with throwing a wedding in your early or mid-twenties—no one was reasonable with an open bar.
Ellie was inches away from the DJ when Tobias caught her and spun her back toward the floor. The song changed to Sinatra, and I watched them sway together. From over the top of her curls, Tobias smiled at me, and my heart tugged at this—this man who loved me and was looking after my friend.
I gave a toast. In high school I had taken speech, and from that point on I liked speaking in public. I was good at presentations in college, and was comfortable pitching books to my bosses in meetings. But when I got up there and looked down at Jessica, I started shaking. There was too much I wanted to say. I couldn’t fit it all.
“You’re an inquisitive person,” I had written to her. “You question everything. But you never questioned Sumir.”
I said some more stuff then, about meeting her freshman year in the dorms, about her coming home to tell me she had met someone— Sumir. I left off her bathroom-mirror quotes, even though I’d put them down in the speech. I’m not sure why.