It was miserable and I was slow as shit when I stretched my runs to three miles then five then seven—I could hear my high school track coach yelling at me to pick up the pace in my head—but it was also addictive. Running is the only thing that shuts off my brain and lets me be in the moment instead of agonizing over how my life at thirty looks nothing like I thought it would and how I haven’t had sex (or even kissed anyone) since I broke up with Jeremy in the spring. I’m beginning to fear I might never kiss anyone again. These days, settling for like instead of love doesn’t sound like such a bad idea.
Now, three and a half months into my running regime, I’m starting to see physical changes, too. I’m not destined to become some beefcake Instagram model, my frame’s too wiry, but the slight paunch I developed around twenty-eight is gone, and if I stand at the perfect angle first thing in the morning, before I eat anything, there might be the faintest outline of abs forming. I wonder if Theo will notice, too.
I cling to the fantasy he’ll look up and it will be my Rachael Leigh Cook on the stairs moment in She’s All That. After the winter of Raj, six weeks of Alex, and the god-awful summer of Elliot, he’ll realize it’s me. It was always me. That’s why it didn’t work with the others, because they weren’t me. I cringe at my own stupid, misguided hope. Life isn’t a rom-com. Instead, I look over Theo’s shoulder at his phone and see he’s on Grindr. It lands like a gut punch.
“Ta-da!” I announce once I have the green sweater on.
“No.” Theo barely glances up.
Okay, then. I take off the green sweater and throw it in the pile with the yellow one. Next, I put on a black and blue patterned sweater. “This one?” I ask.
“You look like a cut-rate David Rose.” I paid good money for this sweater. My shoulders slump forward as I study the piles in front of me wondering if any of them will meet Theo’s exacting standards.
“Are you alright?” Theo asks.
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine. You’re pouting.”
“I’m not pouting!” It comes out as more of a yell.
Theo sits up and places his phone beside him on the bed. It’s open to a long message thread with some guy who is not me. “I’m sorry. I thought we were doing the Sex and the City try on thing. I was being Samantha. I thought you wanted to get rid of things, wasn’t that the point?”
Of course that’s the point. But then I went and got it in my head it might be something more. Not for the first time, I feel like an idiot for letting myself believe that. When I don’t look at him, he ducks into my field of vision and forces me to meet his eyes. He reaches out a hand and entwines it with mine. “You know I think you look great in everything, don’t you? I was only kidding. Please don’t be cross with me.”
And there’s that damn flicker of hope again.
* * *
? ? ?
?Two hours later, after a stop at Housing Works to drop off a donation of sweaters, we’re walking toward SoHo. I tug my coat tighter against the freezing wind. Theo notices and pulls me to his side, maybe for warmth or maybe because he knows I’m still a little mad from earlier.
I relish the sense of rightness I feel tucked into his side, but know it means nothing. Theo has always been an affectionate friend—and not just with me—but after the night we met things have remained purely platonic.
“Aren’t the English supposed to be repressed?” I asked him one night between movies during a Lindsay Lohan marathon at his apartment. He’d been lying with his head in Priya’s lap all but purring as she played with his hair throughout Mean Girls. He’d sporadically turn his head to look up at her and say he was in love with her.
“Good thing no one English raised me,” he retorted.
By then, I’d heard all about his childhood governess, Lourdes, a cheerful older Spanish woman who, as far as I could tell, was a cross between a nanny and a surrogate grandmother. I walked into his apartment one afternoon to find him sprawled on the couch gossiping with her in rapid Spanish over FaceTime and he introduced us.
When he was a child Lourdes lived with his family for most of the year, but went home to spend summers in Marbella. Instead of taking the time off, she brought Theo with her, and he bodysurfed in the ocean and ate her homemade tortilla alongside her actual grandchildren. The way he told it, his parents used their best parenting on his older brother, Colin. By the time Theo came along, they were rarely home, mostly because they couldn’t stand to be under the same roof together. He still talks to Lourdes far more than anyone in his actual family.
* * *
? ? ?
?We install ourselves at the bar at the Dutch and order a round of Bloody Marys and a dozen oysters from the ironically mustachioed barman in a denim apron.
“How do you think Hannah took your news?” Theo asks.
“I mean, she was weird about it, but I guess it went as well as it could have, right?”
Last weekend, I broke the news to Theo, and he listened as I puzzled out how to tell Hannah. In public, I decided. Less chance for her to yell or cry, which were equally likely. Underneath her gruff exterior, Hannah is a big softie. But she’d be far less likely to get emotional in public. Theo had taken the news of my move in stride. So much so, I found myself wishing he’d been a bit more emotional about it.
“Have you spoken to her since?” he asks.
“No. I thought I’d give her time to process. Why? Do you think I should call her?”
“I can’t even pretend to understand the complexity of the relationship between you two. I’m just glad you’re speaking again. I’m declaring a subject change. When do you leave for Thanksgiving?”
“Wednesday afternoon,” I groan. It took a lot for me to say yes to this trip, to face going back there again, but I had to. It’s important to me to try. Especially now. “I’m in heated negotiations with Amanda. I’m trying to get her to stay a couple extra nights instead of driving down for the day. I offered to go to the liquor store for her before she heads back to campus, but she has a fake ID now. We never should have gotten her that thing. I’m thinking of offering her straight cash.”
“I meant what I said before,” Theo says. “If you want someone there with you, I’ll go.”
“No. One of us should be having fun. And you already have a flight to California.”
“Flights can be changed. I don’t mind.”
“I couldn’t ask you to do that.”
“You’re not asking, I’m offering.”
“I’ll think about it,” I tell him. I appreciate the offer, I really do. But I can’t ask him to hold me together at my parents’ house. Not again.
We’re interrupted by my phone vibrating on the bar between us. Hannah’s name flashes on the screen. “Do you think she knows we were talking about her?” Theo laughs.
I swipe to answer and Theo leans close to listen. “Hey,” I say.
“Hey! I have good news!”
“Oh yeah?”