Anywhere With You

Prologue: My Husband Left Me for The Rowing Machine Fourteen Months Ago

Years from now, when I think back to the moment my husband left me for my rowing machine, I hope I forget I was holding the penis straw.
If I’d known where the conversation was headed, I might’ve set it down. He was just being so casual about the whole thing, explaining that he was ending our marriage the way one might mention a particularly filling soup they’d had for lunch.
When he’d first said the words “I’m leaving,” I hadn’t believed him.
“Is this a prank?” I’d asked. Or maybe I’d only thought it, which is absurd because Rich doesn’t “believe” in pranks the way other people don’t “believe” in social media or fabric softener. But what other explanation could there be? This wasn’t supposed to go this way. Rich isn’t this kind of man. We weren’t supposed to be this kind of couple.
But this is real. He’s leaving me for a rowing machine, or---rather---the new lease on life it represents. And I’m left holding the phallic party straw.
“Life is a current, Charley,” he’s telling me as he scrambles around our (former) marital bedroom. “We can’t fight it. If we drag our oars in the water, too scared of where we might go, we won’t stand still, but drift off course from our destiny.”
“Off course from our destiny.” I don’t why I keep repeating everything he’s saying as though he’ll hear how ridiculous he sounds if I manually rewind the tapes. But how else should I respond to the motivational gobbly-gook he’s parroting back from this morning’s Sunrise EDM Bootcamp? How should I react when the man I chose to build a life with decides to dismantle it brick by brick because a fitness influencer named Tinsley reminded him of the mere possibility of more? The idea of someone, anyone, better than me.
I pinch the straw penis between my forefinger and thumb. “We were going to finish Oppenheimer tonight.”
He does his stiff shouldered inhale thing. As a confrontation-averse Midwesterner, it’s the closest he approaches an eyeroll.
The vibration of the phone in my pants pocket interrupts Rich’s performative exhale and cuts into the gesture’s overall effectiveness. The tiny buzz wears out his last shred of patience and empathy for me as the woman he’s actively abandoning based on his tea leaf reading of scripted exercise affirmations.
“Get it. It might be work,” he dares me. Is that what this mid-life crisis is really about? I take the bait and check my phone---it very well could be work---but I send the call to voicemail when I see it’s my sister, Laurel.
“What’s so wrong with caring about my job?”
“You hate your job, Charley.”
“Everyone hates their job.”
“And still, you love it more than me.” He lays the statement down like a pair of twos he knows will win him the game.
I don’t dignify his statement with a response. Instead, I lean back on what I know to be true. “We just got married, Rich. We haven’t even gotten around to adding each other to our life insurance policies.” I’m blatantly bargaining at this point.
“Exactly,” he says excitedly and a little dark brown curl falls onto his forehead. His Clark Kent curl. I liked that curl. Now, I hate it.
“We’ve only been married one year, and we’re already glorified roommates. How long are we supposed to go through the motions?” he asks.
The motions. The words sear into my skin. The way he says it, it’s almost as though we’re partners—active participants in a ruse to fool our friends, our families, and the state of Minnesota. Only I didn’t know we were going through the motions. I thought we were in love.
Sure, we aren’t a passionate couple, but we’re something better: stable. Compatible. We want similar lives and like the same shows. Some of the same shows. Not all the same shows. I can’t invest in every Walking Dead spin-off AMC feels compelled to produce, but it’s important to have separate interests.
Passion is unpredictable. Volatile. Passionate people are driven by impulses and whims. Rich has never done anything on a whim. He calls Rock, Paper, Scissors an “unsophisticated game of chance.” His favorite hobby is meal prep!
“Can you honestly tell me you loved me? Even in the beginning?” he asks me, voice low.
I shake my head, tamping down the hot frustration burning beneath my ears. “That’s not how love works.” I know what it feels like to be collateral damage to someone’s doomed love story. I’ve never wanted that. I want what Rich and I have. The love of a nice, steady man that starts as a tiny seed and grows on you like vines. Though I suppose vines have a way of rotting the wood they wrap around.
“It should,” he says, almost kind. Optimistic. Delusional. “Don’t you want that too? Don’t you want someone you can’t live without? Someone you have to text to tell them you love them, even if they’re only in the other room?”
“You’re leaving me because I don’t text you when you’re in the other room? I can text you more.”
“But we never want to.” Rich stands up straighter, emboldened by whatever he’s about to say next. “It’s time for me to go off on my own adventures. Like your friend Nathan—though I doubt I’ll be so performative about it.”
“Who’s Nathan?” I ask, genuinely confused.
He shrugs. “Your shoeless friend. The one who lives in his car.”
It takes me a second to connect the dots. “Do you mean Ethan?” I cross my arms, defensive. What makes him think now is the appropriate time to bring up the best friend I lost because my husband couldn’t get along with him?
“Ethan lives in a van,” I bite out as a kindling of rage catches fire under my skin. Looks like I’m entering the anger phase of mourning this relationship with every loud, open-mouthed breath from Rich’s punchable, congested face. Now that he’s leaving me, I can finally take exception to the way he refuses to take his allergy medication and then complains about every symptom as though he’s being personally victimized by the planet without recourse.
He only stares back at me, slack jawed, because he doesn’t care where my friend lives or whether I’ll text him more. His mind is already made up. He’s already gone.
“I’m sick of being lonely in my own marriage, Charley. I need adventure and passion and the spontaneity of the tides.”
Again with the boats!
“I deserve to have someone fall for me, and I don’t know if you could ever let yourself do that. Or if you’re even capable of it. You’re too…” I watch him weigh his words before settling on, “...guarded.”
“Guarded,” I say, processing the word.
In my mind, I eviscerate him. I call him every name. I tell him that I’ve been lying about his second toe and it does look like a witch’s knuckle. I insult his appearance with jabs so specific, they’ll stealthily attack his psyche like self-esteem termites until he collapses into nothing but an insecure husk of his confident former self. I scream that I never loved him, not because I’m incapable of it, but because loving him was an impossible task.
But I don’t say any of this, partly, because it’s not true. Except for his toe. That toe is unnerving, and I’ve spent too many summers averting my eyes. But mostly because doing so would cede control of this moment over to him.
He won’t get that satisfaction. He’ll get nothing but the “guarded” demeanor he used to love, but has apparently grown to resent.
Rich blinks first. He was never good in an emotional standoff. A checkered oxford shirt I bought him lies between us on the bed next to his splayed-open duffle. He folds it completely wrong, and I resist the urge to grab it from his hands and save him from himself.
“I have to check-in to the hotel. I figured you wouldn’t want me to stay here while I search for a new place.” When he looks up at me from his phone, his eyes are soft. Patient. Sad. He looks familiar to me again. That’s the face of his I know best. “We had something good. It’s hard to leave it behind for the possibility of something great. But I can’t make you happy, and trying to is making me miserable.”
I pinch the straw through my pocket to remind myself it’s there, the tangible proof of the life I had before Richard Warren that it will have to go on now that he’s leaving.
“I care about you, Charley. I don’t want this to get ugly.” I nod, numb. “And Marlene never lets us forget that her daughter wants the place, so that part’ll be easy.”
He laughs—laughs—as bile fills my mouth. Because Rich isn’t just leaving. He’s toppling everything—my home, my finances—like he’s the bottom row of the Jenga tower that’s propping up my life. He’s handing it over to Marlene, her daughter, and her suspicious number of Dachshunds.
Anger pumps through my veins, and I lose control. For a split second, I’m the Incredible Hulk, and without thought or warning, I grab the shirt between us and rip it in two, a walloping grunt leaping through my throat like a battle cry as the fabric surrenders in my hands.
Rich’s eyes are saucers as he takes in my strength, my passion. I watch a flicker behind his eyes, an electric current in something long burnt out. I’m giving him exactly what he says he wants, letting my guard down and sharing a glimpse of the raw, unpolished Charley I hardly let him see.
But then he swallows and his face goes blank, and I know it’s too little too late. Our relationship might as well live in the drawer of mystery electronics between my iPod touch and a five-year-old Fitbit that couldn’t turn on if you boosted it with a car battery. Our marriage is dead and buried.
So when my husband of less than a year walks out the door with my extra-long iPhone cable, the four worst words in the English language glow behind my eyes like a neon sign: ETHAN POWELL WAS RIGHT.

Chapter 1: Snagging Divorced Zaddies at Ruth’s Chris Friday, Now

Why does my phone assume all photos contain memories I wish to revisit?
BUILDING A HOME TOGETHER, the device proudly announces in white sans serif across a montage of our once lovingly-appointed living room. I’d managed to snap the pictures when the moving crew began boxing away the books, the lamp, and the antique sideboard buffet Rich carved out as his own.
Because even though we bought more house than we needed and furnished it too quickly with nondescript typographical artwork and cold, concrete nightstands in an approximation of modern-cozy that fell somewhere between a WeWork and a homier-than-average AirBnB, I had needed to capture the image of it. Preserve the moment before my life dissolved into a puddle of sludge into something tangible I could hold in my hands so in these months of divorce negotiations, I could determine exactly what I was owed. How many of Rich’s collectible mugs and personal productivity books would it take to make me whole again? How many would make up for the promises we broke?
Because that’s the truth of it, isn’t it? A marriage boils down to your promises.
But divorce is about things.
And argue over things, we did. Few people, aside from Kim Kardashian and Bethenny Frankel, can lay claim to a marriage in which the dissolution was more prolonged than the partnership. Now, I’m just a divorcée, stealing glances of my past life at a traffic light.
A car honks behind me, and I squint into the morning sun to see the intersection light is a glowing green. I shut off the screen and throw the phone back in my bag on the passenger seat before pressing the gas pedal, watching for rogue pedestrians in the downtown traffic while I turn into the underground parking lot of the Minneapolis high-rise I work in. It’s the place where I spend most of my waking hours—and, occasionally, some sleeping hours.
The garage door shuts behind me, cutting off the familiar cacophony of summer road construction. I glide my Prius past the conveniently located “executive parking” spots reserved for partners at my law firm and vice presidents of the various corporations with which we share this gray, boxy building and settle for a spot in the nosebleeds that’s partially obstructed by a load bearing pole. It requires just the right amount of courage and hubris to back into.
Parked, I remove my beverages from their respective cup holders—a travel mug of coffee from the Nespresso machine, a drive-thru Caribou iced oat milk latte, a tetra pak of Saint James Iced Tea, and two different stainless steel water bottles—and start the daily, nerve-wracking process of arranging them in my arms like a German barmaid. Navigating the route to my office on the thirty-second floor without spilling a drop of my emotional support liquids requires a bit of juggling.
“Thanks,” I murmur without looking up at the floral sleeve who holds open the door. Then, the arm surprises me by snatching my travel coffee mug and my Stanley cup from my hands. “AgriTech says they’re cutting their legal budget,” its owner tells me.
“Stacy?” I peer up at my colleague’s familiar face and glossy brown hair. Stacy Arroyo is an eager second year associate with an aggressively cheery demeanor that I’m certain can only be counterbalanced by a dark pastime I have yet to identify. We are two people who would never choose each other as friends but have trauma bonded after spending day in and day out in the same hellish workplace. I would lay down my life for this woman who says “whoopsie-daisy,” and that’s a fact I’m forced to carry with me now.
“Were you waiting for me in the parking lot?”
She lifts her shoulder. “You don’t like it when I call you before work.”
“Well, I don’t like whatever this is either.” I punch the elevator call button with my now-free hand.
“Why are you dressed like a human storm cloud? You’re wearing gray on gray on gray. It’s summer. Aren’t we supposed to dress more casually? Or at least incorporate a pop of neon?” she asks, holding the elevator door open with her hip.
Today, I’m dressed in a perfectly tailored grey suit and silk shell that I’ve paired with an eye wateringly expensive taupe tote from The Row. I bought it in a retail therapy binge sometime after Rich moved out but before I’d calculated how much of my stuff I’d need to sell to buy the house from him.
Still, I couldn’t bring myself to return something I’d purchased in a rare moment of post-Rich optimism, and the quiet luxury of the smooth, supple leather makes me feel chic while eating breakfast tacos off a food truck. Every time I remove it from the protective canvas sack I store it in, I need to whisper capitalistic affirmations like “This is an investment piece!” and “I deserve nice things!”
Despite these high-end staples, my coworker—whose enthusiasm for “tasteful” body glitter under the harsh workplace fluorescents has given her golden tan skin an iridescence rivaling the vampire family in Twilight—will forever see me as the grumpy Care Bear.
I frown. “I don’t trust people who go too casual in a corporate environment. I don’t need to see a man’s bare knees in a place of business.”
At Anderson & Gottlieb, I work with plenty of normal men who ask after my weekends in an appropriately disinterested manner before following up on the status of client files and shuffling away from me. But, as with any male-dominated industry, there are a handful of partners at my law firm whose energy teeters dangerously between condescendingly paternalistic and confusingly sexual, all executed with a healthy dose of plausible deniability. Advances are often subtextual and generally too difficult to explain in a way that would make for an actionable HR complaint.
All this to say, gray suits are a necessary defensive tactic.
“You said something about AgriTech?” I slurp iced latte from its rapidly collapsing paper straw.
“Yes,” she tells me, leading the way to my tiny office that’s all windows with no room for privacy or relaxation. “They want us to cap our fees or they’ll stop sending work.”
I barely suppress my groan. “If they want to spend less on legal fees, they should try getting sued less often.”
Once we’re safely in my office, I violently plop everything on my desk like I am both Miranda Priestly and the poor intern who’ll have to pick up after her.
“They’re Bob’s client. What did Bob say?” I ask.
She dips her head to the side. “Bob said you’d handle it.”

Unfortunately for me, I can’t fall out of favor with Bob if I want to stay on the partnership track, and as a fifth-year associate, I’m completely at his mercy. Associates at law firms are trapped in a toxic, symbiotic relationship with partners, and job stability is dependent on how much those in power like and trust you.
We need them to shirk enough of their work onto us to meet our insanely high billable hour quotas and live to fight another day. Bob Champion may be a managing partner with an innate gift for name-dropping washed-up politicians from the nineties, but in this parasitic cesspool, he is my whale. He provides the endless supply of work that keeps my hours unbeatable, and I’m the tiny barnacle he forwards emails to in the name of “mentorship.”
When I first joined Anderson & Gottlieb as a bright-eyed young lawyer, I immediately set my sights on Pamela, the only female partner in the patent group and a woman with the kind of severe black bob that seems to pass judgment on my bouncy, blond blowout by merely existing in its inert perfection. Unfortunately for both of us, Pamela rose through the ranks in the era of Lean In corporate feminism and seems permanently disappointed I’m not experiencing more overt sexism to the degree and frequency that she endured. No matter how many midnight calls I answered or miles I racked up flying all over the country at the drop of a hat, it never seemed to be enough.
So now, I’m stuck with Bob because Pamela has a new protege in smarmy Paul, a fellow fifth year associate so determined to push me out of this place that he spends his Sunday mornings endorsing me for things on LinkedIn.
Stacy doesn’t miss my eye twitch. “My law school friend says Payne loves the work we’ve done for them, and they’re hiring for multiple roles…”
I drop into my office chair. “We’re not going in-house at a company that makes rat traps, Stacy. It’s not that dire,” I reassure her for the umpteenth time, because despite Stacy’s commitment to her career, I know she has a chaotic streak and watches YouTube videos on an incognito browser of workers telling off their bosses while she eats her bento box lunches at her desk.
“A&G is the safe bet,” I promise her. “We’ve worked too hard here only to start over someplace else. We’re playing the long game, Stace.”
With Stacy, I’m always playing a role: the slightly more senior associate that is yanking her up and out of this den of vipers by her pink chiffon sleeve.
She sets my water bottle on my desk and moves to leave, but then seems to change her mind and presents me with a tiny black envelope.
I open it and analyze its contents. “Why are you handing me an expired gift card to Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse?”
“It’s barely expired, and I’m hoping it’ll soften the blow of…you know…today.”
The word she’s not saying beats against my skull with a steady thump: divorce, divorce, divorce.
“Rich and I have been separated for over a year. Let’s not make a big deal about the day the paperwork goes through, okay?” I hold up the gift card. “I appreciate the gesture, but I’m fine. Drink your own expired drinks tonight.”
“Only the card is expired—the drinks are perfection—but I can’t. Brady’s mom’s coming into town, so I have to pack all my stuff and pretend I live with my old roommate.” Her voice is light, as though temporarily moving out of her apartment so her twenty-four-year-old boyfriend can defer an uncomfortable conversation with the woman who pays his cell phone plan is just another quirky Friday night.
For months, I’ve wanted to shake her, warn her, or at least forward the invoices from my divorce attorney. See! it’d say in the body of the email, this can happen even when you marry the guy who has monogrammed towels and a metal filing cabinet under his desk that he actually uses to file things. Even men like this leave! You think you can go the distance with the dude who has to ask his mom to adjust his data plan?
But I’m saved from saying something I’ll regret by a notification on my phone.
Ethan: I’m in the area, btw. It’s been way too long and a little birdie told me you might be having a tough day.
Something old and neglected flutters under my breastbone at the sight of Ethan’s name on my phone again. The one upside of divorce is that all your old friends who hated your husband come crawling back out of the woodwork. Ethan, my “shoeless friend” as Rich called him, is no exception to this social phenomenon—though it should be noted that the barefoot thing was more of a short-lived teenage phase and less of a lifelong aesthetic.
“What dude is sending you an ‘in the area’ text?” Stacy grabs my phone and examines the photo in my contacts. “Wait. Is this Man Bun from your bachelorette party? He was stupid sexy! I love this for you. Unless he’s married. Is he married?”
“He’s not…but Ethan’s just a friend.” I swipe my phone back from her. “Who travels constantly and has been audited twice by the IRS. He’s not the kind of guy you can sign up for a vegetable CSA with.” I argue reflexively, because my oldest friend has never been a romantic or sexual option for millions of reasons, not least of which is that he’s a musician who’s been perpetually touring on the college circuit since we were nineteen, and I’m…well…me.
“That’s your immediate concern for a sexual partner? Whether you can see yourself eating locally sourced turnips together? You don’t need to commit to a farm-share with the Man Bun. Just rebound with him.”
“He only wore it in a bun that one time,” I deflect, despite the fact that I haven’t seen him in years. We only started talking again the day Rich left and I sent Ethan a tonally confusing, Turns out, you were right text message paired with a GIF of Kim Kardashian popping out of the bushes.
I suppose it’s possible he still wears it in a bun. The thought of seeing him again, knowing for certain how he’s changed outside of the grainy concert photos he’s occasionally tagged in, sends a warm jolt through my ribs.
Ethan: Today’s no good, but I can be around tomorrow if you need anything.
I roll my eyes to counteract the pitiful rock sinking in my stomach. I somehow let myself forget that “in the area” to Ethan can mean anything from a state park three hours away to a dive bar in a nondescript town somewhere outside of Lincoln, Nebraska. Summers are usually slower with the occasional music festival mixed in, but he’s always hated being stuck in one place too long.
A third message appears.
Ethan: The little birdie is Lo. I don’t STILL believe I can talk to birds.
I snort at that one, and, as though summoned, my sister Laurel is now FaceTime-ing me.
“I have to take this, Stace. Have a wonderful time lovingly deceiving your potential future mother-in-law.”
She turns toward my door. “Have fun snagging divorced Zaddies at Ruth’s Chris.” She stops short, whipping her hair over her shoulder and holding up a finger in the universal gesture for sorry, one last thing. “You’re gonna talk to AgriTech, right?”
I loll my head back and find my already-exhausted reflection in the window. How is it not even eight? “I’ll make them sweat first, but tell Bob it’s as good as fixed.”
Once she’s out of sight, I sweep the gift card into the wastebasket, because there’s no such thing as a little bit expired and a table for one at a chain restaurant sounds too grim, even for me. Then, I pop in my AirPods and hold my phone level with my mouth like an octogenarian on speakerphone.
“Make it quick,” I tell my sister, glancing sidelong at the surrounding cubicles from my see-through office. “I’m pretending you’re a Pesticide Manufacturer.”
“You have a booger,” my sister says by way of greeting.
I lower my phone so I can glare at her properly. She’s parked in her car with the phone propped on the dash, fixing her lavender milkmaid braids in the video of herself. Once upon a time we had the same honey blonde hair and fair skin, but her junior year of high school, she discovered box dye and has never looked back. Right now, it’s more of a grown out ombre but she has the pixie-like features and unwavering self-confidence to make it look intentional.
Behind her, I can make out the hustle and bustle of a Love’s Travel Stop, which tells me she’s at least an hour north of her Saint Paul apartment. How early must she have started her day to already be outside of the cities?
“Why are you FaceTiming me, Laurel? I’m at work.”
“I needed to get my eyeballs on you for D-day. I was hoping to see you in some kind of revenge outfit or at least rocking a little tasteful cleave.” She sounds disappointed.
“Please don’t compare the day the paperwork goes through on my divorce to the Invasion of Normandy,” I practically beg her as I type in my network password.
Yes, today, this dreadfully ordinary Friday, is the day my divorce with Richard Warren is final. Final, final. I’m a 29-year-old divorcée and the proud solo owner of too much house.
I glance down to see Laurel fighting with the credit card reader on the EV charging station. “I meant more like, ‘d’ for ‘divorce.’ ‘D’ for…”
“I know you want to say, ‘Dick,’ just say ‘Dick,’ so we can move on to—”
“DICK…” she belts out, and because god is an asshole, my AirPod falls out of my ear so Saroya, an aspirationally gutsy law clerk who Juuls on Zoom calls, is within earshot. Struggling with my AirPod, I mouth “Client. Sorry,” to Saroya who doesn’t seem to buy it but also doesn’t care.
Laurel loves calling Rich “Dick.” When things had been good, it was a playful nickname between in-laws. When things got bad, it was an accusation. Not lobbed against him, but at me. I was the reason she’d spent years following a bland and nondescript white man on Instagram who posted ill-lit photos of food with captions like “hump day treat *drooling emoji*.” An account I still follow because unfollowing it seemed to suggest that unexpectedly scrolling past a picture of a dim hand pie would be too painful.
What’s more humiliating is at some point in the last fourteen months it actually was too painful and I had to mute him.
I shake away thoughts of my ex with Laurel’s “DICK” battle cry ringing in my ears.
“If I knew where you were, I’d find you and kill you,” I say through gritted teeth.
“You love me,” she responds in her normal, self-assured way. Everyone loves Laurel, and no one knows that better than her. “And I deserve a little fun after the SAT course from hell. I swear, at least two parents think I’m one of those Lori Loughlin-Varsity Blues college prep tutors. Easton’s mom asked again if I’d be dying my hair to appear more discreet when ‘assisting’ her son on exam day. She kept winking when she said ‘assist’ to avoid self-incrimination. You know, in case I was wearing a wire.”
“As one does.”
Laurel is the kind of obscenely inspiring high school English teachers Lit majors aspire to be after watching the first half of The Dead Poets’ Society. An embodiment of that aloof, chaotic energy seventeen-year-olds find intoxicating, she was voted Teacher of Year so many times that her school instituted a policy of rotating eligibility. My sister, Laurel Beekman, is the FDR of Williamson Academy, and if I could purchase a bumper sticker to this effect, I’d slap it on my Prius in a second.
In the summer, she teaches SAT prep courses until her will to live outweighs her desire to pay her bills. That window seems to get smaller every summer. This year, she’s made it to late June.
I hear the rumple of a convenience store bag on Laurel’s end. “Obviously I’m wearing a wire.” I’m looking at my computer monitor, but I hear the unmistakable sound of Laurel biting into what I’m ninety percent sure is a gas station pastry. The girl’s weak for shelf-stable bear claws. “But only for my future biographers and to aid the police investigation when I’m tragically murdered by a serial killer,” she informs me between bites.
“Stop falling asleep to murder podcasts,” I demand, pulling up my work email on my desktop. “It’s not good for you.”
“Speaking of my gruesome murder. . . I have something to tell you, and I don’t want you to kill me.” I inwardly shudder—I can’t handle so many people bracing me for revelations before I’ve finished my second beverage of the morning.
“What a wind up.” She wouldn’t be confessing something truly awful, would she? Not over FaceTime while she’s perched on the hood of her car and I’m at work, fully visible to all of my coworkers. With all we've been through together, she wouldn’t do that to me. Would she?
“I’m actually headed up north for a reason…to see Petey.”
That makes me sit up straight in my roller chair.
Petey. One of our oldest friends and Laurel’s most stubborn situationship happens to manage a hockey summer camp near the Gunflint Trail in the Superior National Forest. He must be between sessions. She must be looking to backslide.
“You didn’t tell me you guys were in touch. Was the last time you saw him at my wedding?”
“A few times after,” she obfuscates. “We picked things up after everything happened with you and Rich. We were just talking, but still, I didn’t want to…oh, no. Your nostril got all sad,” she says, because apparently, she’s still watching me on FaceTime. “If you’re not okay, I can…I’ll figure something out.”
“I’m fine,” I groan, though the words are more of a reflex than an honest assessment of my wellbeing. But this whole scheme is classic Laurel, and if she wants a foolhardy and misguided case of sexual deja vu, far be it for me to stand in her way. “We’ve drawn out this divorce so long, I’ve basically forgotten Rich existed. Today will be just any other day.”
“Really? I’m so relieved. I’ve been dreading telling you about the proposal.”
“He proposed?” My voice cracks. Three sets of heads swing in my direction. I put on my best wobbly smile. Nothing to see here.
“Of course not. He won’t even date me without a real commitment on my end,” she corrects. “I am. I’m driving up today to propose.”
Laurel’s relationship with Petey is recognizable to anyone who’s gone through a messy phase in their twenties. In college, they were combustible. Innocuous conversations about pizza toppings would erupt into incomprehensible, relationship-ending fights. She broke up with him so many times that she stopped telling friends when they reconciled, as absolutely no person with a functioning cerebral cortex could pretend it was anything other than a terrible idea to get back together with the guy she’d dumped twice on a single three-hour Mississippi River Boat Cruise. Now, she’s thinking of proposing to him when, as far as I know, they aren’t even together?
Dread clenches my gut. After my divorce and our parents’ shitshow of a marriage, how could she even contemplate getting married? And to Peter Eriksson-Thao? A man with Microsoft Clippy tattooed on his inner bicep? This has to be a mistake.
I swivel my chair towards the window for the illusion of privacy. “This all feels a little…impulsive. What if you—”
“Look,” Laurel commands. “The timing, it’s…bad—I’m sorry—but it has to be now. It has to be today. Or I might lose him for good.”
“See. That.” I point my finger at her nose on screen. “That is panic talking.”
“I’ve never been more clear-headed in my life.” She laughs. She actually has the audacity to laugh in a moment like this. “He leaves for his camping trip tomorrow, and I can’t let two weeks go by. He needs a gesture. It has to be big, and it has to be a real commitment this time.” She nods, resolute. I’m not talking her out of this on FaceTime, that’s for sure. “But if you need me today…”
If you need me, I’ll sacrifice my happiness in exchange for lifelong resentment towards you. That’s what her silence is saying.
The next quiet thought belongs to me.
They’ll never stay together long enough to make it down the aisle.
It’s a cruel, ungenerous opinion I’m not proud of, but it allows me to muster the strength to say, “I’m fine. I’m so happy for you.”
I hear her sigh with relief. “Thank god. I can’t tell you how worried I was. If you could see my boob sweat. Actually…” She starts to move the camera to her underboob, but thankfully, another car needs the charging station and I’m spared the indignity of FaceTiming my sister’s dampened tits.
After we end the call, I pick the Ruth Chris’s gift card out of the empty trash can because, suddenly, an expired fifty dollars’ worth of steak doesn’t seem so pathetic.
She won’t get married, though. Though Laurel’s never lonely, she’s always on her own. Hook-ups, relationships, and situationships flow in and out of Laurel’s life like sticks on a river. They can never quite handle her current, and that’s how she likes it. Between Laurel and the madness that is the Wedding Industrial Complex, this wedding will never come to fruition. I won’t even have to be the bad guy.
She’s fine. I’m fine. Today is like any other day, and it will be just fine.