Josh clears his throat, feeling the urge to spin the sentiment into something optimistic. “If you genuinely want to spend years watching Caleb fuck up while he grows into the person you know he can be, that’s when you get married.”
Ari says nothing. The dead air gives Josh a brief sensation of panic. This is the problem with the immediacy of the phone: every nonresponse can be a subtle hint that the other person is about to hit the eject button on the conversation. Sophie would always say things like “well, I should let you go” or “wow, it’s so late on the East Coast” at the first moment of silence.
“Shit,” Ari says finally, “it’s almost one. Time to put on a grisly true crime podcast that definitely won’t give me nightmares.” Her polite sign-offs are at least disguised as frothy remarks.
“Maybe you should expand your horizons and learn something aside from how to commit murder and get caught.”
“What do you suggest?” she asks. “This Week in Tech?”
“Not if you want to fall asleep. Apparently.” There’s a luxurious fifteen seconds of quiet that Josh feels no pressure to fill. Just Ari breathing and the occasional sound of tires bumping along the cobblestone street five stories below.
“You know, every night,” she says, “I lie here by myself and think, ‘Tomorrow is the day I’ll wake up and feel okay about this.’ There has to be a tipping point, right? Do you ever feel like you’re living a depressing ending, but you never get to the last page? There’s no pithy final line? It just keeps going.”
Fragments of thoughts and observations and painful experiences offer themselves up in his head but nothing comes out of his mouth. She probably needs comfort—not exactly part of his repertoire.
“God, I should hang up.” She laughs in a way that sounds forced and then, “Sorry for the cringe…I’m just—yeah…”
If landlines were still a thing, there would be a dial tone, but there’s no sense of finality when she ends the call before he can respond.
9
“WHO ARE YOU TEXTING?” GABE asks, craning his neck to glance at Ari’s chiming phone as they reach the fourth-floor landing of Radhya’s apartment.
“Get off.” She swats at his chest as they walk down the hall.
Tues, Nov 22, 9:23 p.m.
Josh: I actually slept last night.
Midnight to 6 a.m. according to my tracker.
Ari hesitates for a half-second before rapping on the door. “Are you decent?” she calls. “It’s not a dealbreaker if you aren’t.”
Ari’s had a key for five years, but the courtesy knock has been a habit since they’d shared the railroad apartment.
Ari: ooh nice of you to let me win at insomnia
Rad’s door flies open with a loud groan. A tall man with floppy, sandy hair and a beakish nose ducks past Ari and Gabe with a tiny acknowledging nod. He’s clutching his coat and a light blue button-down shirt that’s unmistakably part of a server’s uniform at Radhya’s current restaurant.
Gabe’s gaze follows him down the hallway. “Radhya’s celebrating early.”
NoFucksgiving is a sloppy gathering of wannabe entertainers and people with master’s degrees who realized they could double their arts nonprofit salaries by waiting tables and bartending during “the most magical time of the year.” For the next month and a half, they’ll be working overtime while tourists descend on the city and office workers put on their finest cocktail attire for a slew of awkward annual holiday parties.
Ari hangs up her plaid peacoat. It’s been weeks since she’s trekked out to Brooklyn. Not because she doesn’t want to see Radhya. But maybe there’d been a bit of an overdose of advice and tough love in the immediate aftermath of Cass moving out. In the past month, Ari hadn’t quite figured out how to integrate her best friend back into her life once the shock had worn off. And Rad can’t stop asking questions like, “Did you call my divorce lawyer?”
Josh: Have your recent…purchases helped at all?
Ah yes, her radical acts of self-care are currently plugged into her spiderweb-like network of charging cables—each one unique, for some reason—on the floor where her nightstand used to be.
Ari: I’ve been trying a new thing where I use them in the morning.
supposedly it improves your math skills.
Josh: At least you have a reason to wake up.
“Who was that?” Ari calls out.
“Back waiter,” Radhya answers from the bedroom. “Cute, right? Hey, can you call my phone? I can’t find it.”
Ari taps on her contact name. A robotic British accent declares “Calling Rah-dee-yah Am-bah-nee Woman Cook Medium Skin Tone” through Radhya’s Bluetooth speakers.
She nudges Gabe. “Do you know how to stop my phone from announcing every single call like there’s a tiny aristocratic butler in there? I changed the settings one time to play DJ during a party and now it automatically connects every time I’m in this apartment. What if some accidental porn popped up on my phone?”
“Since when is porn ‘accidental’ to you?”
Radhya walks out of the bedroom, heeled boots under her arm. “I don’t want to know the context of this conversation.” She lifts the couch cushions, searching for the device. A muffled buzz sounds from the floor beside her armchair. Radhya lifts up a pair of jeans, the back pocket glowing. “Aha!”
Radhya ends the call and gives Ari a hug. “I’m glad we’re doing this. I haven’t seen you in forever.”
Ari straightens a cushion and plops down on the couch, making the springs creak. “I had to clear my busy schedule of quietly moping.”
Ari: you were in a long-distance thing.
You slept alone for most of your relationship
“So, that’s where you’ve been.” Rad glances at Ari’s phone suspiciously. It does feel slightly illicit to sit in Radhya’s apartment, texting with Josh. “Are we still on for Ikea next weekend?”
“Oh.” Shit. “I already went,” Ari says carefully. Slightly guiltily.
Radhya frowns. “You went by yourself?”
“Now I can enjoy a tiny bit of lumbar support with my despair,” Ari says, sidestepping the actual question. “I’m the proud owner of a shoddily constructed, hastily assembled, untreated-pine bed frame.”
“I need a new duvet cover.” Radhya lets her boots drop onto the rug with a thud. “Why didn’t you tell me you were going?”
“Now you don’t have to help me complete a construction project with those tiny hex wrenches.” Ari hasn’t been hiding her shopping partner, it just…hasn’t come up organically.
A loud ding sounds through the Bluetooth speaker. Ari plops down onto the now-orderly couch and glances at the message.
9:26 p.m.
Josh: Yes, but she was there in theory.
Radhya’s expression shifts from confusion to detective mode. Avoidance doesn’t slip past her. Distraction it is.
“You look amazingly hot in that dress,” Ari says, nudging the conversation in a new direction. Radhya’s wearing one of those loose-but-sexy sweater dresses that always look like shapeless tents when Ari tries them on. She glances down at her own jeans and old T-shirt. “And I look like the babysitter you hired to watch your fashionable toddler.”
“Wanna borrow something?” Radhya asks as she puts on chunky gold earrings.
“Anything Ari borrows is guaranteed to come back with a whiskey sour stain on it,” Gabe warns.
Ari: having a bed to yourself is the best
I would think you of all ppl would appreciate never having to find a loose hair in your sheets
Josh: Or crumbs.
Ari lets out an inadvertent cackle. Gabe and Radhya glance at each other.
“Okay, out with it,” Rad says. “Why are you smiling at your phone? Who’s the rebound?”
Ari forces her face to slacken into something neutral. “It’s not a rebound. Jesus.”
“The bartender?” Gabe asks.
Radhya continues to press. “Was Ikea a date?”
“No!” Ari insists with more vehemence than the question demands. “I have friends.”
Rad takes the seat next to her. “No one makes new friends after a breakup. It’s hard enough to be likable when you’re actually happy.”
“This is a person I can be miserable with.”
“So, there is a person,” Gabe says.
Ari stands up. “Why are you interrogating me?”