The Futures(71)

“Sweetheart, obviously I’m sorry to hear about this, but I hope you understand how complicated it is. The Fletchers have many factors to consider. It hasn’t been an easy year for them. I’m sure they were very unhappy to have to do this.”

He’d used this voice on me before. A voice with an unbearable weight to it. My father wasn’t someone to whom you talked back. His lawyerly gravity made you so painfully aware of your shortcomings: your irrational emotions, your unthinking reactions, your taking things personally when nothing was personal. The world wasn’t against you. Stop indulging yourself. Why had I expected this time to be any different? But part of me had hoped for that, for some rare tenderness from my father, and I felt a doubling of the heaviness. A deflating of that hope and an awareness that I should have known better than to harbor it. He was taking the side of his client over his daughter. It shouldn’t have surprised me.

An ache in my throat made it hard to swallow. “I know, Dad.”

We hung up. The sky was clear blue, and the sunlight reflected off the snow. It was still early for the weekend, and Evan would probably be home, not having left for work yet. I could have lingered longer at Adam’s, stayed for breakfast, but a voice in my head had propelled me out of his apartment. But now, at home, something kept me stuck to the stoop, just shy of the threshold. Evan probably wouldn’t ask where I had been, or care. He’d keep assuming whatever he’d been assuming all along. But he would notice the redness in my eyes and know that I’d been crying. Over the previous few months, I’d built such a careful distance between us. He went to his office, I went to mine; he had his life, I had mine. I had Adam. There was barely anything left. But Evan would ask what was wrong, and I would start crying again, and I knew, just knew, that he would comfort me like he used to. He would remind me that everything would be okay, like the good boyfriend he always was in times of crisis. That careful distance would disappear, and I didn’t know what would happen next. I wasn’t sure I had the courage to find out.

When the door behind me opened with a suctioning whoosh, I stared straight ahead, ready to avoid eye contact with whichever neighbor was coming out. It would be easy; I knew no one in our building.

“Yup, yup, I’m on my way in now. I’ll be there in ten minutes,” the familiar voice behind me said. I turned around.

“Julia.” Evan looked surprised. He bounced down the steps to the sidewalk, where he stood and faced me. “Hey. I was just on my way to the office.”

I had to shield my eyes to block the sun. It was too bright. “Hey.”

“That was Michael. He needs me to come in for something.”

“Oh. Okay.”

He seemed at a loss for words. “Hey, are you going to Abby’s party tonight?”

“I think so.”

We were a pair of strangers.

He looked closely at me. “Is everything okay?”

“Oh, well…” I was so tired. I couldn’t keep doing this. My voice cracked. “It’s work. I got laid off yesterday.”

He stood perfectly still. “Shit. Julia. I’m sorry to hear that.”

My eyes hurt from the sun. I glanced down at the sidewalk for relief, at the snow and my salt-crusted boots, and then looked back up from under the hood of my palm. Evan was regarding me quietly, like a hunter watching a wild animal. Getting no closer than he had to. Eventually he reached out and put his hand on my shoulder, leaving it there for a moment. That was all he would give me.

“I’m sorry,” I started to choke out, the tears returning to my eyes. And I was—all of a sudden, I was sorry for everything. I wanted to rewind to six months earlier, when we stood on this stoop in the June humidity with our boxes, when we opened the door for the first time, when we hadn’t yet started down this path.

But at that very same moment, he said, “I have to get to work.” I don’t know if he heard me. When he removed his hand, then removed himself and walked down the street toward an available cab, I felt the imprint of him linger on my skin, like a memory pressing itself to me one last time before it vanished forever.





Chapter 13


Evan



“Where the hell is he?” Chuck said, craning his neck toward the glass walls of the conference room. The meeting had been called for 9:00 a.m. sharp, and it was 9:06. “He’s keeping half the company waiting.”

Roger took a swig of coffee. “I don’t think Michael’s real concerned about how busy the rest of us are.” He jiggled his knee, knocking against mine on purpose.

This was the weekly Monday status meeting, the last one before the end of the year. An empty chair awaited Michael at the head of the table. Roger and the other analysts and I sat around the perimeter of the room. Chuck, seated at the back end of the table, turned his chair around to talk with Roger. Most of the higher-ups at the table were in a sedate Monday mood, chatting about soccer practice and piano recitals, plans for Christmas in Aspen or Saint Barts. Chuck’s wedding was fast approaching, and his fiancée spent most of her weekends in Connecticut ironing out the wedding details, which left Chuck by himself in the city, enjoying one final run of debauchery. Every Monday morning, he and Roger traded stories from the weekend.

“A model? I don’t believe you,” Chuck was saying.

“For real. Apparently she’s the next big thing out of Croatia.”