And then August rolled around. Cass moved two hours north for a semester-long visiting professorship at Bard and decided that the Google doc hadn’t gone far enough.
“We can unchain ourselves from the hierarchy,” she’d said during one of their video calls, “where couples”—she’d used air quotes—“are prioritized over other relationships.” While Cass leafed through her Moleskin, paraphrasing the relationship anarchy tenets she’d heard about on a TED Talk, Ari was half-listening, half-wondering about the emotional intensity of her wife’s “other relationships.”
To be fair, Cass always hated hierarchy.
“Love is abundant,” Cass reassured her. “It’s overflowing.”
But a month later, she had apparently run out of love for Ari.
She’d never left before. Not like this.
The past few weeks have been like living underwater—everything’s blurry and distorted. Ari doesn’t even remember putting on her least-flattering pair of jeans and an old hoodie this morning. She has no memory of getting on the train or meeting Rad at her restaurant’s loading dock after the brunch shift.
Ari had intended to finish one of her freelance writing projects last night. Instead, she woke up at five a.m. on a mostly deflated air mattress, with a string of drool on the pillowcase, disoriented by the blank walls, just one nonsensical incomplete sentence in her open Google doc.
She’s been picking at it all day, tapping out mediocre punch lines on her phone and deleting them.
The writing was Gabe’s idea—one of his many side hustles. It’s a platform for “creative entrepreneurs” called NeverTired where strangers pay professional comedians to craft wedding toasts, bat mitzvah speeches, even sermons.
Jokes written for her own stand-up material: none. Work-in-progress scripts opened: zero. One-off writing gigs that take way too much time and pay just enough to create the illusion that it’s worth the effort? Seventeen in the past two weeks.
Plus, she doesn’t have to leave the apartment.
It’s the little things that are getting tougher to brush aside. The stuff you barely notice while you’re in the relationship suddenly require phone calls and paperwork to undo. Which utility bills are in Cass’s name? Are they going to stay on the same Verizon family plan? Will they continue to share Cass’s mother’s Comcast log-in?
Instead of one giant knot, it’s a tangled mess of yarn.
“Are you still texting Cass?” Radhya asks, holding up a harness across her hips. “I told you to block her.” She puts down the harness and tilts her head. “Please tell me you did not send her another nude—”
“I’m trying to finish this maid-of-honor speech,” Ari snaps, which is completely true and not technically a denial about sending Cass a very flattering image captured in the bathroom mirror last night.
Rad winces. “I don’t know how you stomach writing about everlasting love when you’re in the middle of a divorce.”
Ari examines something that looks like a crescent wrench with a tongue at the end. “Why are they all purple? When did purple become the official color of sex toys?”
“So are you still texting Cass,” Radhya asks, “or is it just the lawyers communicating now?”
“Can we not discuss that in front of the tongue?”
“You need to do a clean break. Cleave her.” Radhya flattens her hand and makes a violent chopping gesture. “Throw your energy into something positive instead of hanging around an empty apartment feeling sorry for yourself.” That’s Radhya-speak for let’s move on to the next item on the breakup to-do list. Radhya is the sort of person who would be able to sort out the internet-service-provider situation during a brusque two-minute phone call to customer service. And it’s hard to argue with someone who’s been in this exact position.
Ari doesn’t like this stage, either. But wallowing feels heavy and comfortable. Like a gravity blanket.
Radhya shakes her head and makes the chopping motion again. “Cleave. Remember all those long weekends you had to spend with her awful friends?”
Without actually leaving evidence of their distaste, Cass’s friends made Ari feel as though she radiated don’t-quite-belong vibes. No-talent vibes. Just-a-phase vibes.
To be fair, the enmity goes both ways. Radhya wasn’t exactly a fan of the way Cass had tracked Ari down while she was on one of her cruise-ship comedy gigs and publicly proposed to her next to the wave pool. Or the way Cass encouraged Ari to quit that actually-pretty-good job and “pursue more prestigious opportunities.”
Radhya reaches in her bag for her phone. “Dammit. My grill guy called out. I need to get back to the restaurant.” She’s a sous chef at a “new American” place in the West Village while trying to turn the occasional catering gig into a series of pop-ups, with the help of Ari’s connections in the cater-waiter world. “Crash on my couch? You don’t have to be alone. We could make some headway with the pop-up concept. Test recipes, pick out the decorations, watch several seasons of Below Deck Mediterranean—”
Ari shakes her head. “I’m fine. I have the air mattress. And I’m gonna talk to the beer garden manager this week.”
Rad puts her hands on Ari’s shoulders. “I want you to know that I’m completely fine with you sleeping with him again in exchange for letting us use the location.”
“I appreciate that support.”
“Since you have the apartment to yourself, you should pick something loud.” Radhya hands her an S-shaped coil of maroon silicone. “What about this?”
“That’s a couple’s toy,” Ari says quietly, trying not to ascribe any poignancy to the moment. “We had one like it. I’m pretty sure Cass took that, too.”
* * *
AFTER ABBY AND the movers leave Josh with an apartment full of musty old crap, he agrees to walk Briar back to her Tribeca apartment just to avoid looking at the stuff for another hour. Josh shoulders past the hordes of SoHo tourists, listening to Briar’s boring anecdotes about dating “a certain actor from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.” Josh has nothing better to do on a Sunday afternoon, anyway. No dinner service to prep for. No one to expect him to be anywhere or do anything.
“If Maddie’s too basic,” Briar says, “I’ve been messaging with this girl Norah, who’s—”
“I told you to stop with that.”
“—almost finished with her orthodontics residency.”
Josh rubs his temples as he bumps into someone taking a selfie on one of the city’s remaining cobblestone streets.
“She lives in Jersey City—”
“No.”
“It’s just across the river….”
“It’s another state.”
Briar comes to a sudden halt in front of a nondescript storefront with a brick-and-stainless-steel fa?ade and one small, inconveniently placed window.
“Oh! I’ve been wanting to check this place out! Can we go in for a minute?”
The store has the pseudo-medical look of the high-end skincare retailers Sophie liked visiting on their trip to Seoul. There’s nothing on display. No claims of rejuvenation. Just one small, subtle sign engraved with CreamPot.
“I’ll wait for you out here,” he says. A year ago, Josh might have invested in a hydrating serum, but what fucking difference does the size of his pores make now?
“You have to come in. I want a photo of me in there for my feed. Potential spon-con! Plus, they only let cis men in here if they’re accompanied by a woman or nonbinary person,” she adds. “It’s your lucky day.”
On the other side of the heavy glass door, the space is stark white—like an Apple Store without all the greasy fingerprints. A concrete plinth displays a small sculpture in bold fuchsia that almost looks like a toy Sophie kept in her nightstand.
He stops walking. “I thought this was a skincare boutique.”
“Chlo? Sevigny swears by this place.” Briar starts snapping photos of the layout from various high angles.
Josh shoves his hands in his pockets. It’s best not to pick anything up and risk dropping it or touching some invisible on button. “I’m not standing in here with you like we’re shopping together.”