The interior of the pub is the same. Jarringly so.
I find myself looking for the waitress—Madison—when I walk through. Part of me expects to see her—and for her to still be pregnant. It’s ridiculous, I know, but the whole thing already feels surreal. It only becomes more surreal when I realize that even if Madison still works here, she’s now the mother of a ten-year-old.
The passage of time suddenly feels real and oppressive.
It’s been a year since I’ve moved back to L.A., and I keep waiting for it to feel like home again. Instead it feels like an old sweater I found in the back of my closet, one that I remember fitting perfectly, only when I put it on, it’s stiff and plasticky, permanently creased from being forgotten. I wonder, sometimes, if this is my penance for leaving L.A. for New York in the first place. Then I remember that Jews don’t believe in penance. Not like that, at least.
I duck into the bathroom before I head to the patio. I press my hands to the cold porcelain of the sink and tell myself that this is just another interview.
I’ve gotten good at lying to myself when it comes to Gabe.
The last time we met, we were young and brash and stupid. I remind myself that two people can experience the same exact thing in completely different ways. I remind myself that I now know better.
My phone buzzes.
It’s a text from Katie.
You can say yes, she writes.
She’d read a book recently about saying yes to things. To life. To opportunity. To everything.
“I like saying no,” I’d told her when she offered this advice the first time.
“Only because you don’t know how to say yes,” she’d countered.
Katie Dahn was someone who loved her mantras, celebrated the start of astrology seasons like people celebrated the start of baseball, and who I’d once seen swish mouthwash with her pinky raised.
She was the best friend I’d ever had.
“She’s a kook,” Jeremy had always said with affection. “She’s the kind of person who would accidentally join an MLM scheme and somehow manage to either make money or take it over from the inside.”
He wasn’t wrong.
Katie was the only thing that Jeremy and I had really fought about during the divorce. Jeremy argued that he should have first dibs because he’d met her in undergrad. That the only reason I knew her was because of him. I had countered that Katie was an adult woman who could make her own choices when it came to friendship.
Katie had promised that she could remain friends with both of us, but in the end, she came to L.A. with me. We lived in the same building, like we were college students in a dorm. I’d come home some days and find a bag of crystals on my doorstep, or a note reminding me that Mercury was in retrograde.
It seems like Mercury is always in retrograde these days.
But Katie is a reminder that even though it had gotten bad the last year or so between Jeremy and me, there had been some good there too.
“You gave it your best shot,” she’d told me. “But you were up against the stars.”
That was her way of saying our astrological signs weren’t compatible. I didn’t believe it, not really, but I did take some comfort in the belief that someone else thought the end of my marriage was inevitable in some way. That it wasn’t my fault.
Say yes, she texts again as if she might not have been clear enough the first time.
I roll my eyes and put my phone away.
There are several things she could be referring to, but it’s probably in regard to the email I’d gotten from my agent after accepting this assignment.
She wants me to pitch another collection of essays. My editor wants to buy one. I know they’re both thinking that this article would be the centerpiece of that theoretical book.
I keep telling them to wait.
I don’t know what I’m asking them to wait for.
They’re both thrilled I’m doing this interview. Everyone involved is looking to capture the same lightning in a bottle that happened the first time—when my article about Gabe made him a believable Bond and me a marketable name.
I don’t want to be ungrateful, but I also know that the main reason I got my first book deal was because I was that writer. The one that didn’t sleep with Gabe Parker (or did sleep with him, depending on what part of the internet you visit).
It’s not exactly what I want to be known for.
But I don’t really have a choice.
I step out of the bathroom and head to the patio.
Ten years ago, it was a sunny winter day. Today is overcast.
It’s a good day for writing—for holing up inside with a cup of tea and working until your eyes are bleary and you’ve missed dinner.
I wrap my cardigan around me, second-guessing my outfit. I know that for the most part, I look the same. The changes are small—my jeans aren’t as tight; my eyesight isn’t as good. There are some witchy whites threaded through my hair, which is bang-less and has been for years.
I wonder what Gabe will think of it—of me—now.
I wish I didn’t. I wish I didn’t care. I wish this was like the other celebrity profiles I do these days—where I don’t worry what the person thinks of me. Where I don’t wonder what they remember about that weekend. About that night in New York. About that phone call.
I wish I didn’t keep wondering what if?
Of course, I know what Gabe looks like now. I did my research. Technically, I never stopped doing my research, but it was nice to tell myself I had an excuse to look up pictures of him.
The last time he’d been photographed was a few months ago when he was filming The Philadelphia Story. He’d been clean-cut and groomed in a dreamy 1940s-modern mash-up reminiscent of his predecessor, Cary Grant. He’d looked good, his jawline still razor-sharp with just the right amount of salt peppered through his dark hair.
There are a few people scattered about, but that famous jawline is nowhere to be seen.