That was all I needed. It sounds ridiculous. When it’s isolated it seems like the most clichéd quote in the book. But there you go.
He dropped his bag in the entrance. He brought me in close to him. We started making out against the closet door. I wound my hands up into his hair—dirty. I felt his move down my back. I’d had sex with Paul for almost two years and hadn’t felt, in all that time, what I did now, fully clothed, with Tobias.
He angled me toward the living room and then lifted me up and carried me into my bedroom. He knew the apartment. It had once been ours. It was ours again, maybe, already.
He laid me down on the bed and undressed me. I was hungry for him, impatient—all at once ravenous—but he took his time. He peeled off his shirt and hovered over me. He was tanner than he had been a few years ago, and heavier—denser somehow. I looked up at him.
“I waited for you,” I said. As soon as I said it I knew it was true—I had. Paul, the apartment, the past two years—they weren’t real. None of it had felt like waiting. It had all felt like the slow slog of moving on. But I had been wrong. I had been struggling against a current that had, all this time, been trying to tow me out to sea. Finally, I let it.
He kissed me, and I reached up and grabbed on to his shoulders. He moved his lips to my neck and I shifted under him as he slid his hand down to rest in between my legs.
The touch of his fingers sent me pulling at whatever clothing remained between us. It had been too long.
“Now,” I said.
He pressed into me and we both exhaled sharply at the same time. He stopped inside me, unmoving.
“I missed you,” he said.
“I missed this.”
We started moving together. The rhythm of our bodies, the way he knew exactly how to touch me, what my nonverbal cues were. I felt heady, weightless, like I might spontaneously combust at the intensity of being close to him.
“Sabrina,” he whispered softly. And all I could think was my name, my name, my name—over and over again. I was found.
Later, wrapped around each other in bed, I told Tobias about Paul. He listened intently as I filled him in. The party, the last nearly two years. He wasn’t jealous; he was Tobias—thoughtful, honest, sincere.
“Do you want to end it?” he asked me.
“Yes,” I said. I kissed him again.
I broke up with Paul the following week. When he was back in town I asked if we could get coffee. We went to this depressing Starbucks on Fifty-seventh Street that was kid-filled and loud. I got there first. I wanted to pick the table.
I ordered a whole-milk misto for him and a small coffee, black, for me. I think he knew already. Usually when he greeted me he was smiling. Life for Paul was like the chorus of a song. Familiar and melodic. Never any pivotal moments. No inspiring crises.
But he knew what coffee meant.
“What happened?” he asked me when he sat down, after thanking me for the coffee. Paul was very polite.
I thought about telling him I didn’t think we were a match. That I wasn’t where he was. And those things were true, sure. But they still weren’t the answer.
“He came back,” I said.
Paul knew enough about Tobias. In the beginning, he caught me crying. After sex, sometimes, which made us both feel pretty awful.
“I see.” He said a lot of things afterward. About how Tobias would leave again. About how Tobias didn’t deserve me. But none of his arguments were trying to convince me to stay. It didn’t feel like he was campaigning for us. He already knew there wasn’t much worth fighting for.
I didn’t blame him. He only knew the worst of Tobias. Half truths and some complete fictions concocted in the heart of someone who was heartbroken. The real flesh-and-blood man was nothing like the fractured image Paul had in his mind. I couldn’t hold his distorted picture against him. And of course, plenty of it was true, too.
I left the Starbucks and called Tobias. He came uptown and met me. When he saw me standing by the door he put his arms around me. “I’m sorry,” he said. That was all. I let the sorry extend out. I let it blanket the whole last two years.
We went home, ordered in dosas, and ate on the floor. We were twenty-seven. At the time, it felt close to thirty. But now, here, it seems far closer to twenty.
We had twenty-four months left. The clock was on. But I didn’t know it. There, in the dead of winter with him, it felt like the start of forever.
9:48 P.M.
TIME IS DOING THIS STRANGE THING right now. We’re finishing our dinner. Sharing bites. Jessica passes some pasta to Audrey, who trades her for a scallop. The wine has sunken things into a casual intimacy, but for the first time since we sat down, I feel the immediacy of tonight. The need to solve and rectify what I must before the clock strikes what, midnight? Whenever it is that we will get up from the table and go our separate ways.
“You still have the pocket watch,” I say to Tobias at the same time Jessica asks, “Why am I here?”
I’m so caught off guard by the question that I turn away from Tobias. “What do you mean?”
Jessica tears off a piece of bread and soaks it in sauce. “I know the list; I was there when you made it. I wasn’t on it. I mean, I live forty-five minutes away, barely. You could see me anytime.”
Nearly two years ago, I crossed out my grandmother’s name and wrote in Jessica’s. It was born out of anger. I still had the Post-it—tattered and curled at the edges. A reminder of the Jessica who used to be there, who used to fill our living room with papier-maché and her.
Jessica isn’t used to this much alcohol and I see the telltale signs of her wine-honesty. Cheeks pink. Eyes slightly unfocused.
“Because I could see you, but I never do.”
Jessica sets down her fork. “That’s not fair.”
Jessica and I didn’t have a falling-out—I still think of her as my best friend. There was no big fight, no disagreement. But sometimes it feels like something so irrevocable happened between us, and the fact that I can’t put my finger on when makes it worse. If there was a fight, we could make up, apologize, recover. But you can’t say sorry for a slow dissolve.
“But it’s true,” I say. “You’re always too busy. When was the last time you were even in the city?”
“I have a baby,” she says.
“You were too busy way before Douglas.”
Jessica has this “out of sight, out of mind” mentality. In moments throughout our friendship she has expressed to me, always prompted, that it didn’t mean she loved me any less. “I forget,” she told me. “But it doesn’t mean I don’t need or care about you.”
We barely have a real friendship anymore. I think the last time I saw her was three months ago, at Douglas’s baptism. She has a seven-month-old baby whom I’ve only met twice.
“Since you moved out of our apartment,” I say. “It’s like you disappeared into the atmosphere. You never call me. You say I’m your best friend, but by what standard?”
“Were you there?” She turns to face me, all of her. I see, for a moment, the woman I used to know at twenty-two. Who was passionate and alive. Who would write You are today in lipstick on the tile of our kitchen floor. “You were so caught up with Tobias. I moved out, but you moved on, too. You were barely there when I was planning the wedding. And I didn’t blame you. I wanted you to be happy. I still do.”
“But I’m not,” I say. “I haven’t been.”
Across the table, I see Audrey lean forward, but Conrad nudges her gently back.
“You still think I can fix it for you,” Jessica says quietly.
“I don’t think you can fix it.” My lip has started to tremble. I know she knows I am about to cry. She knows all my tells, just like I know hers. “I just want you to still want to try.”