Adam shifted his weight uncomfortably in his seat, and his brows furrowed as he glared at me. “Don’t put that on me. You chose to give up whatever dregs were left of your acting dream. I never asked you to. I offered you a reprieve from your life, and you accepted it with open arms and never looked back.”
When I finally agreed to go on a date with Adam almost a year after my breakup with Gabe, I was barely scraping by, auditioning by day and waitressing at night . . . and the fact he had money did make things easier. But it wasn’t the reason I fell in love with him. I’d never met anyone like Adam before, so persistent, self-assured, and effervescent. He was charming and most of all, he was fun. He looked at life through rose-colored glasses, and when I was with him I did too. I’ll admit my confidence in my acting career had taken so many hits back then it was nice to step away for a while, but I never planned to stay away forever.
With each failed callback and the fading hope this dream would ever really come to fruition, I convinced myself I could find a different source of happiness and fulfillment and decided to go all in with Adam. And sure, maybe there had been some red flags I’d dismissed over the years. Things that didn’t quite make sense about our life. But I’d chalked it up to simply not understanding what it was that he did for a living, even though he’d explained it vaguely to me a dozen times. And was it worth rocking the boat on our nearly perfect relationship for what could have all been a simple misunderstanding? The answer, every time a new doubt would creep in, was always a resounding no.
The realization settled like a stone in my chest, and it took me almost a full minute to find my voice. “You’re right. I did accept all of it because I loved you, and I trusted you, and you played me for a fool.”
Adam remained quiet, maybe trying to strategize his next play, or perhaps he was simply out of moves. When he finally spoke, all he could manage was, “No, the love I felt . . . feel for you was always real, even if the rest wasn’t.” Now it was his turn to stare at me through tear-rimmed eyes.
I glared back, daring him to claim he loved me again. Clearly, he wouldn’t know love if it poked him in the eye. Between the uncomfortable truth and my vicious glare, Adam remained silent. My ears grew hot, and looking at his pathetic face only made me more irate. “No! Deceit and manipulation, those things don’t equal love, Adam, they equal greed. You put value in all the wrong things and now, you have nothing.”
I stood up, securing my purse on my shoulder and pushing back from the table, the chair legs scratching loudly against the linoleum floor.
Adam jumped to his feet, knocking his chair to the ground. “Avery, no, please don’t go!”
The guard quickly hollered, “McDaniels! Calm yourself down or visitation’s over.”
I backed away from the partition, indicating I would not be rejoining Adam at the table. “No, sir, it’s okay. Visitation is over.” I looked straight at Adam, who was still standing with his hands locked in front of him, his feet shackled together at the ankles. “Goodbye, Adam, and happy New Year.”
I hurried through the iron gates out onto the sidewalk, the brisk breeze a welcome change from the stale recycled heat inside the prison. As I filled my lungs with the fresh air, my chest inflated like a balloon, my posture straightening and vision sharpening with the deep inhalation. I somehow felt lighter, freer, and before I even could register what I was doing, I slipped the fugazi off my finger and tucked it into a zippered coin purse in my bag, a literal and figurative weight now lifted. I’d make an appointment to sell the ring this weekend and use the money to start over. It might not have been as much as I thought or hoped for, but I felt lucky to have it at all.
The same thin older security guard who had so kindly given me his MetroCard after my Gabe debacle on Christmas spotted me on the street corner and stepped out of the booth to yell over to me. “Hey, didn’t I direct you to the subway a few weeks ago? Hope you haven’t been looking for the station this whole time?” He chuckled at his own joke as he approached.
“Oh, ha ha, no. Got home safe and sound thanks to your generosity that night,” I said. “Just back here . . . visiting . . . actually, saying goodbye to someone.”
“That’s nice. Well, now that your visit’s over, do you need me to call you a cab?”
“Um . . .” I chewed on my bottom lip as I thought. “Actually, I’m not too sure where I’m going at the moment.”
“Gotta be honest, not sure any of us really do,” he offered with a comforting smile. “Sometimes when I’m not sure which direction to go, I think about what I was doing the last time I was happy and try to do some more of that. For instance, yesterday after a tough morning at work, I took a stroll to the park with my grandson . . . turned my whole day right around.”
The last place I remembered being genuinely happy? It only took a second, but as soon as it popped into my head, I felt a warmth spread deep in my core and roll in waves through my limbs.
“On second thought, sir, I think I will take that cab.”
Chapter Nine
As soon as the taxi pulled into the heart of Times Square, the familiar illuminated sign of Mimi’s Shooting Star Diner triggered a torrent of nostalgia so vivid, I could have sworn I’d stepped back in time to a decade earlier when I was a frazzled undergrad hurrying from music theory class to work a pre-matinee shift. Back then, I reasoned that the education I was getting at Mimi’s alongside my fellow waitstaff, all of whom had dreams that rivaled my own in making it to Broadway, offered me just as much as my course load at NYU.
Somewhere between singing show tunes for tips, the impromptu duets with my fellow servers, and the steadfast belief we all held that some well-known producer would wander in and offer one of us a role in their next musical, we became a kind of family. Those walls held a lot of hope and a lot of heartache, and I remembered how my pulse would accelerate at the anticipation of not knowing which one would greet me on any given day. But really it didn’t matter, we had each other’s backs either way. After five years and somewhere over fifteen hundred shifts, the diner became like home to me, and standing here now, it was as if I’d clicked my heels three times and recited Glinda’s famous mantra.
Stepping inside and scanning the dining room, I was relieved to see little had changed. The kitschy 1950s decor, the twinkling lights that practically covered the whole ceiling, the large platform-like stage smack in the middle of all the booths and tables. Three servers, none of whom I recognized, were standing under the center spotlight belting out “One Day More” from Les Misérables, doing their best to cover every single part. Even though their Jean Valjean was nothing to write home about, it didn’t matter; the crowd ate up the performance, just like always.
I waited for the thunderous applause to die down and went to the hostess stand to see if they had any seats available at the counter.