“See? Can’t remember.”
I could. Without even having to try, I could tell him everything about that night. We did eat the quail—which was terrible. Or I should say, I ate it. Danny, who was wearing a tie over a T-shirt (no joke), ordered truffle fries and tried to push the truffle part off of them, drowning them in ketchup to mask the taste. And I wore a short dress, which I thought made me look sexy, but it probably made me look like I was trying too hard. I forgot to be embarrassed. I forgot to decline the last bite of almond cake when he offered it to me. And I didn’t even pause in front of my door debating whether to let him come upstairs. It was as if from go, I had no ability to play games with him. I don’t know why I was so confident in my terrible dress. I was, though. I was confident I had found my person. Who happened to be twenty-one and a freaking jackass.
Danny shook his head. “I know at some point it started going well. But I don’t know, the details are a little slippery . . . maybe it’s because, whenever I think of you, I’m stuck on the day we met.”
I stared at him, not sure where he was going with this, not sure I wanted to know.
“We were at the football game, right? And you were sitting in the row in front of me.”
“I was behind you, Danny.”
He shook his head. “No, definitely not. You were sitting in the row in front of me, and I tapped on your friend’s shoulder to ask if she had an extra beer. And she did, she had brought a six-pack, which was right beside her, and there were two beers left, and she started to give me one. But then you stopped her, literally pulled the beer back and said, no way.”
He was right. That was what I’d said. And he was also right that I was sitting in front of him. I had turned around and looked at him. This guy who had that killer smile—those eyes—and I realized that probably no one had ever turned him down before. No one had ever said that they didn’t have an extra beer for him. They probably ran out and grabbed one for him, if they needed to.
But I had wanted that beer—had been looking forward to it—and I knew that if she gave it to him, she would keep the other one for herself. So I pulled it back, told him he would have to head up to the concession stand. You know, like everybody else. Sorry, was I asking you? he’d said. But he was already flirting a little. He was already leaning forward to see what I would say next.
Danny shrugged. “And, the thing is, you weren’t playing games or trying to impress me. You just genuinely wanted the beer.”
He looked right at me.
“I tried a million times to get you to see what you were doing, to get you to understand what the cost was. Putting us to the side. The cost to you.”
“So I wasn’t supposed to change at all?”
He shook his head.
“That’s not what I’m saying. I didn’t expect you to stay like you were at twenty-one.”
“Sounds like that’s exactly what you wanted.”
“You were the most honest person I’d ever met. That’s why I chose you. And it’s why I wasn’t particularly weirded out about the fake cooking videos or you playing make-believe. I didn’t think you could lose what defined you. But that’s exactly what got lost,” he said. “I couldn’t reconcile the woman you turned into with the person I know you are. Or were . . .”
My heart started racing. “So you should have just left.”
“But it’s my fault too. You would ask me, all the time, It’s not a big deal, right, if I lie about this? Or if I fake it a little?” He shrugged. “I gave you permission to give yourself away. And the worst part was when you stopped even asking. I became someone else you would try to spin.”
I put my hands up to stop him. “I can’t listen to this.”
“Why? Because you don’t want to hear it?”
“Exactly.”
He nodded. “So ask me again why I did this.”
I stared at him, feeling like I might explode. Was he seriously looking right at me and telling me that he did this to save me? That he did this for love? Even if I believed him, who wanted love if this was what it looked like?
I hadn’t taken off my wedding ring, not the entire time we’d been apart, but I took it off now. I took it off and put it on the sofa between us, the soft sofa that looked so wrong in there.
Then I stormed out the door, trying to ignore a tugging on my insides as I headed down the stairs.
It wouldn’t go away, no matter how fast I moved, this tugging, like a despair I didn’t want to feel yet, that I still thought I could outrun if I just got as far enough away from him, as quickly as I could.
41
I don’t remember the drive home. I vaguely remember stopping at a rest stop, trying to catch my breath, trying to make sure that I arrived in one piece.
I finally got back to Montauk at 6 A.M., the sun rising up over the ocean and the dunes, the roads still empty.
Rain opened the door. She was already dressed, ready to start her day.
I was still in my dress from the night before, tears and mascara running down my face.
She looked me up and down. Then she turned to the couch, to a tall guy with a baseball cap on, extra-long crutches by his side, a ragged scar on his knee.
Thomas. Her boyfriend. He was looking at me with a far more sympathetic expression than my sister was.
Rain met his eyes. And she turned back toward me.
“What makes you think you can just show up here?” she said.
Then she moved out of the doorway and let me inside.
August
42
Did you know that chanterelles are picked, at their peak, in late summer?
Chef Z loved chanterelles, and counted down until a specific date in July (which he refused to share), when he picked them from the garden. Then he made them a centerpiece of a course each night for as many nights as the mushrooms would allow. It had been eight nights since Danny had shattered my world and, on each of them, Chef Z’s world was shattered by chanterelles.
He started on Sunday night with a pear and chanterelle salad, moved on to stuffed artichokes with crab and chanterelles, moved from there to a crostini, a fricassee, a pasta with chanterelle mushrooms.
Every night, Z gave the staff a lecture about the versatility of the vegetable, their meatiness and flexible quality. And, every night, he almost cried (the closest I ever saw him to crying, at least) when too many of the chanterelles returned uneaten.