The stark beauty of last.., p.26
Late Night Love, page 26
And so, I do. Bit by bit, I sink into the well of despair inside of me. I face it head-on. It fucking sucks, and yet, it’s also a relief. A relief from the exhaustion of fighting my pain. I let it wash over me. I sink beneath the waves. I let myself drown.
Day by day, it gets easier. The sadness lingers underneath the surface, but it no longer consumes me. When the ache recedes, it makes room for other things. I drink cheap wine on outdoor patios in the middle of the weekday with Faith, Mandy, and Riley, reminiscing about the season. Even when I’m not telling a joke for an audience, the laughter makes the pain easier to deal with.
It gets easier. But it never goes away.
28
“You’re quiet today,” my mother remarks offhandedly. “You’ve been quiet all summer. I thought I’d be hearing about that big raise by now.”
I wince. If there’s one person I can never hide what I’m feeling from, it’s my mother. I’ve been avoiding her all summer for that exact reason, and because I know she’ll ask me about Chris.
“Just focusing,” I say evasively, focusing all my attention on the challah dough in front of me. I’m no baker, and my challah braiding skills are passable at best. But I’ve been doing it all of my life, so pretending that it requires every ounce of my concentration isn’t fooling anyone.
“Have you decided what to do about next season yet?”
“No,” I admit, biting the inside of my cheek. “My agents are still negotiating on salary, so I’ve been putting off my decision.”
“Ah, yes. Procrastination always solves everything,” she says sarcastically, tucking the last strand of her challah into its braid and turning to face me.
“It’s complicated,” I finish braiding my challah and brush egg wash over it. I open the oven, setting both our challahs inside to finish rising.
“Love always is.”
“Who said anything about love?”
“Please, Emily.” She rolls her eyes. “I saw those pictures. It was love.”
“Key word: was.”
“You broke up.”
“We did.”
“And that’s why you haven’t made a decision about next season yet.”
“No.” She raises an eyebrow at me. “Well, yes. Maybe. Kind of,” I sigh. “I don’t want it to. But the thought of seeing him every day, working with him like that again…I don’t know if I can do it. I don’t want to go back. But I also don’t want to not go back.”
“I can see why that would make things difficult.”
“Is it embarrassing that I’m scared to see him?”
“Not at all.” She reaches over to grasp my hand. “It’s scary to face people who have hurt us. But you can do it.”
“I can?”
“You can,” Mom says, squeezing tightly. “I know I’ve treated you delicately because of your past struggles. But you’re strong, Emily. You can do hard things. You’ve done hard things. And I knew the moment I saw you on the Weekend Update this fall that you were where you were meant to be.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me?” My voice wobbles. “I thought you didn’t support me. I thought…I thought you wanted me to give up.”
“Oh, Emily. I never wanted you to give up. I was only trying to make sure that you didn’t sacrifice your happiness and mental health while you worked so hard to make your dreams come true.” She hugs me tightly. My tears turn into sobs as I lay my head on her shoulder and let the emotions that have been weighing me down make their way out now that I’m safe in her arms. “I hate seeing you sad. That’s my right as a mother, but I never want you to stop fighting for what you believe in.”
“I’m going to go back next season.” I lift my head so that I can meet her eyes. “But I have to talk to him first,” I add, gratefully taking the tissue she offers me when we pull apart. I don’t know how she somehow always has tissues on her—it’s one of those magical mom powers that I’ve never been able to crack.
“And what are you going to say?”
“I don’t know.” I frown, and her arm tightens around me, her hand rubbing soothing circles against my shoulder. “We have to decide who will take the head writer job, and the Update desk.” The thought of doing either without him makes me sick to my stomach, but I don’t have a choice.
“I wouldn’t worry too much,” she advises. “It’ll all work out.”
“At least now I can find a nice Jewish boy.”
“I’m sure when you get back together, Chris will convert,” she replies, as if it’s simply a matter of fact.
“If he does convert to Judaism, it’s not gonna be on my behalf.”
“We’ll see,” she shrugs. “I have faith.”
“You met him twice.”
“And that was all it took for me to see that he loves my only child the way she deserves to be loved.”
“He was pretending, Mom. He flirted with me on the Update for show, not because he meant it.”
“Well, god forbid someone ever flirts without intending to propose marriage.” She rolls her eyes.
“He played me. He was doing it to try and make himself the only Update anchor next season.”
“I seem to recall you trying to do the same thing.”
“It’s different.”
She makes a disbelieving noise in her throat. “Do you remember your father’s friend Larry?”
“Larry with the mustache?”
“No, Larry who plays racquetball,” she clarifies. “Before your father and I became official, as your generation likes to refer to it, I asked Larry out. While I was still dating your father.”
“Well, if you weren’t exclusive, you didn’t really do anything wrong,”
Tracey smiles. “That’s true. But I did it because I knew it would hurt your father’s feelings. I wanted to push him into being serious with me, so I did something underhanded. And now we’ve been married for twenty-five years.”
“I assume there’s some lesson in this for me to figure out?” I say dryly.
“Don’t sass me.” She swats me with a dish towel. “But yes, there is. The lesson is that we all do foolish things when we’re first falling in love. It’s scary, and people make mistakes. But those mistakes don’t make a relationship. It’s not about what you do wrong. It’s about what you both do right.”
I pause, rocking back on my heels as I take in her words.
All this time, I thought learning about Chris’s initial deception meant that the foundation of our relationship was a lie, in a way that we could never overcome. I thought it meant I couldn’t trust my instincts, because everything between us had felt so right.
It doesn’t fix all of our problems. I still don’t know if he would have told me about his initial lie, or that he loved me, if I hadn’t overheard him saying it to Jessica. He still tried to go behind my back and convince our boss to deny our relationship.
“I don’t know if I can trust him.” My throat bobs with emotion. “I only found out the truth by accident. He should have been honest with me.”
“He should have been,” she agrees. “But you can be intimidating. You inherited that from me.”
“That and the flat feet,” I mutter.
“You should be grateful that you’re not still in the shtetl that gave you those flat feet,” she replies indignantly.
“Oh, my god,” I groan. “Is this conversation over yet?”
“Not quite.” She smirks at me. “See, I’ve known you your whole life, and we still have our disagreements. No relationship is perfect. That doesn’t mean it’s broken, or not worth saving.”
“That’s different. I can’t get rid of you. You’re my mother.”
“Fair enough. But can you really look me in the eyes and tell me that you want to be rid of him? That you’d rather have your pride and have him be out of your life then try to fix things?”
“I don’t know.” We both know I’m lying. I’d rather have Chris. “He didn’t trust me.”
“Really, Emily, you’ve known each other for a few months. You expect that kind of trust to just fall into your lap? These things take time.”
“I don’t know if I have that kind of time.”
“Please. You’re young.” She waves a hand dismissively. “You have time for second chances. Especially when it’s love. Just like I predicted.”
My eyes nearly bug out of my head. “Like you predicted?”
“I told you at the beginning of the year that I’d be sending you your husband.”
“And you think that’s Chris.”
“It could be. He came to Shabbat dinner, Emily.”
“Maybe he just wanted to get a free meal out of you.”
“Maybe he just wanted to get you out of your underwear.”
“Mom!”
“Don’t be a prude. Not after you insisted I read that Tessa Bailey novel.”
“Fair enough.” Once again I’m reminded that it’s hard to avoid talking about sex with your mother when you regularly swap romance novel recommendations.
“All I’m asking is for you to try, darling. If you try and he isn’t able to give you what you need, then you move on. And you’ll be fine. I’ve never worried about you finding love. I only fear that you might have found it already and lost it because you’re afraid to fight.”
Almost an exact echo of Chris’s words to me the night before our last show. I’ve always been a fighter, so why couldn’t I this time?
I accused him of being a coward, but I’ve been acting like one, too. The depth of my feelings for him terrifies me. After spending so long dreaming of finding what we have together, it still felt safer to push him away than to risk getting hurt again. If he could hurt me this deeply after only a few months together, what could he do to me if we stayed together for years?
He could break me.
Or he could make me happy, if I let him.
The Monday after my weekend with my parents, I call Chris and ask him if we can talk. He answers on the first ring and promises to meet me somewhere by my place in half an hour.
Even though I spend the walk over mentally preparing myself, the sight of Chris standing casually and holding our coffees makes my chest ache. Several angry New Yorkers bump into me when I stop walking right in the middle of the sidewalk, stunned into immobility by my first glimpse of him. He’s wearing a faded Celtics T-shirt and a Harvard hat. He smiles as he sees me, and I feel like crying.
I drink him in for as long as I can without it being obvious. Three seconds is all I need. I haven’t forgotten so much as a freckle on his face.
“Hey.” I stop in front of him, both of us just reveling in the mutual awkwardness of the situation.
“This is for you.” He holds one of the coffees out to me robotically.
“Thank you,” I reply with equal lifelessness. I sip it, because I need something to do with my body aside from ogle at him and think about how much I want to be in his arms. I nearly spit it out. It’s way too sweet and definitely contains real milk.
“This is yours,” I offer it back to him. “I don’t have an STI, don’t worry.”
“Probably a little late if you did,” We swap coffees, and I nearly drop mine at the words. The casual reference to our intimacy as if it’s already in the past. As if he’s already moved on.
But then I notice his hand shaking slightly as he lifts his drink, and the pit in my stomach recedes. Maybe if I were a better person, I wouldn’t feel knee-wobbling relief to know that he’s as affected by me as I am by him. It’s a small comfort, but a comfort nonetheless, to know that even if I have been suffering, I wasn’t the only one.
Chris and I find an empty table in the shade and sit. We’re quiet for a few minutes before I realize that I should probably be the one to start this conversation, since I asked him to meet. I should have practiced how I wanted this to go. But even imagining being face-to-face with him again was too painful.
“So, how are you?” I ask when the silence grows truly unbearable.
“Great.” His easy grin doesn’t reach his eyes. “I’ve just been enjoying my time off.”
I swallow the lump in my throat, and refuse to let myself dwell on those words. It’s too late for them to make any difference, and pretending otherwise will only hurt us both more. “Is this the part where you ask me why I invited you to get coffee?”
“I was wondering. The last time we talked, I got the impression that you never wanted to see me again.”
“I should apologize.”
“We both hurt each other,” he says gently. “We hurt each other for a long time, professionally and personally.”
“We did,” I agree, taking a sip of coffee. It tastes bitter on my tongue, and not just because it’s unsweetened. I hate that he’s basically a stranger to me now. “I’m coming back next year.”
“Good. Live From New York needs you,” Chris pauses, his eyes glazing over with something like longing. “It wouldn’t be the same without you.”
“It won’t be the same.”
“You’re right,” Chris inhales, and my eyes track the way the breath travels in his throat. “I told Jessica to give you the head writer job. And the Update.”
“What?” I nearly spit out my sip of coffee. “You’re not serious.”
“I am.”
“You can’t do that!”
“Why not?” He smiles sadly. “You deserve it.”
“But you shouldn’t be the one who decides.”
“No,” he agrees. “I probably shouldn’t. But I spoke to Jessica, and she refused to choose, so I had to take matters into my own hands.”
“But…what about you?”
Chris’s eyes widen. “Are you really worried about me?”
“And Zoe,” I say quickly. “What if she wants to go to law school? What if you need money?”
“Don’t worry. I’m not getting a pay cut,” he chuckles softly. “After we fought at Shabbat dinner, Zoe and I talked. I realized—because she told me, and I finally listened—that I’ve been pushing her to follow in my footsteps because I wanted to protect her,” he pauses. “I’ve fucked up a lot of things out of a misguided desire to protect the people I love.”
My eyes burn with unshed tears. I open my mouth, but I can’t find words to say.
“She was right. If she needs to take out student loans, it’s not the end of the world. I want her life to be easy, but it should still be hers.”
“You’ve done a lot of soul searching,” I say thickly.
“Therapy.” Chris smiles, that dimple on the left side of his mouth popping into view. God, I missed it. “It’s worth the hype.”
“It really is,” I pause. “You’re really giving up the Update, and head writer? For me?”
“You deserve it.”
“So do you.”
“That might be true. But I spent a lot of time watching other people lose out on things that they had earned when I was Alex’s writing partner. You were right, Emily. I protected myself. I don’t want to be that person anymore.”
“I still love you,” I blurt, the words just falling out of my mouth. Fuck. Why does he have to be so goddamn wonderful?
“Emily,” he breathes.
“You were right, too. You told me I was running away, and I was. Because I was terrified that you had the power to hurt me so badly.”
A muscle in his jaw feathers. “I hate that I hurt you. Every time I picture your face that night—” He chokes up, emotion overcoming him, and my gut twists.
“We both hurt each other. But that was the past,” I say. “I forgive you, Chris. On one condition.”
He pauses, remembering when he said those same words to me. “What is it?”
“Be my partner again. On the Update, and as head writer,” I pause, working up the courage to finish my thought. “And…in life. If you want that.”
“Emily,” he inhales sharply. “You couldn’t have said this two months ago?”
“I needed time, to figure out what I wanted. If you still want me.”
“I do,” he groans. “But it’s not that simple.”
“Can’t it be?” I plead.
“I’ll do the Update and head writer jobs with you. But that’s it,” he says firmly. “I love you, Emily. But things got so messy between us. If we’re going to be partners again, I can’t risk things going badly again.”
“But what if they don’t?”
“You didn’t fight for me before.” His chest heaves slightly, his throat bobbing with emotion. “I said everything I needed to say, and it wasn’t enough for you. I wasn’t enough for you.”
“That’s not true,” I reply, stricken. “You are exactly enough, Chris.”
“I begged you.” His voice is quiet, distant. It feels like I’ve already lost him, and I hate that. “I put everything on the line for us.”
“You did. And I should have listened. I should have trusted you. But I’m trusting you now,” I plead. “You told me on New Year’s that you wanted to believe things wouldn’t end badly.”
“And look where that got me.” He laughs bitterly, the sound sending ice skittering through my veins. It’s so cold, so unlike the man I’ve come to love. “Fuck, Emily,” He drags a hand down his face. “You don’t know what you’re asking of me.”
“I do,” I insist. “Because it’s the same thing I’m asking of myself. You broke my heart, Chris.”
“You broke mine too,” he whispers. “When you walked away from me.”
“I want to make it right. I want to put us back together. I think about you all the time. I thought it would get easier, but it didn’t. And I don’t want it to. I don’t want to keep missing you.”
“So, we’ll move on.”
“I can’t.”
“You will.” He gives me a sad smile.
“So, what? I just have to watch you move on?” My heart twists. “Watch you fall in love with someone else someday?”
“No.” He shakes his head. “Because I’m never doing any of this again. Not with anyone.”
“You’re wrong,” I pause, the wheels in my mind turning. “You’re wrong about love, and you’re wrong about us. And I’m going to prove it to you.”
