Aftermath of Dreaming(88)

“It’s confetti, honey, Betsy doesn’t allow—”

“I don’t care what it is; are you gonna do this with me?”

Suzanne turns to me one last time. “I’m ready, aren’t I?”

“Yeah, you are.”

“Come on,” my brother-in-law says to me. “You’re part of this, too.”



Monday morning at 7:02 is not a tranquil time at a radio station. Everything here seems extremely, extremely urgent, so maybe the outgoing message on Michael’s cell phone isn’t out of line after all.

“What time do you think he’ll be done?”

Michael’s assistant is like a Doberman pinscher, but one who is perky, blond, and able to look great at this ungodly hour. I, on the other hand, have barely slept. The eleven hours I slept after Matt and Suzanne’s wedding brought me straight into Sunday afternoon, and either my sleeping schedule was so screwed up from that or it was the deciding/knowing what I need to do about Michael that kept me up all last night. Whichever it was, I gave in at six A.M. Got out of bed—at least no scream dreams happen on nights without sleep—made coffee, got dressed, jumped in my truck, and now here I am. And Michael was right—the freeway traffic was a bitch.

“It all depends on how long he stays in. It could be—”

Michael charges through the door. “Winter, get me the press clips on that—”

He sees me standing beside her and breaks into a surprised smile. It is the first time that his usual way of greeting me is correct.

“Yvette, hi. What are you doing here? This is great. Did you hear the show? I think we’re definitely—”

The look on my face stops him.

“No, forget it, right.” Michael takes my hand, and leading me into his office, turns to his assistant. “Winter, buzz Graham, tell him I’ll be in a little later, and get the—”

Withdrawing my hand, I enter Michael’s office without him.

“Forget it, Winter, I’ll give you the rest later.”

“You want carrot juice, Michael, or a latte?” Winter says as Michael walks in, but he shuts the door as his answer.

I am half sitting, half leaning on the conference table, figuring the largest object in the room will lend me support.

Michael moves in front of me and straddles me like a chair. “How’d you get so f*ckable this early in the day?”

“Michael.” I can’t help but laugh.

“What? I mean it.” He is pressing on me, kissing my mouth and neck and ears. My back becomes diagonal to the table.

“I don’t think we should see each other anymore.”

Michael straightens up and starts to withdraw his arms, then must realize how that would look, so he keeps them there, arms still around me, but his face so near that it feels uncomfortable considering what I just said. I wonder if he thinks continued physical contact will eradicate it somehow.

“I just think we do a lot better when we’re friends.”

He drops his arms completely and steps back a little bit. “Uh-huh.”

“Don’t you, really? I mean, if we could stay friends and still somehow also have sex, but we can’t, or I can’t, it seems to me.”

Winter sticks her face in the door. I always think “rain forest” when I see her; I am certain she spent her junior year abroad there. “Graham said he can wait, and that press clip you wanted—”

“In a minute, thanks.”

She looks crushed by Michael’s words, then a smile appears on her face, as if she has picked up on the tension in the room and couldn’t be happier.

We are quiet as we wait for her to leave, and I suddenly feel we are like divorcing parents with a pet that neither of them liked.

“Do you want to hear about it from my perspective?”

I am almost shocked that he has one about us.

“You know, you’ve done this before, and it just seems to me like things are going along great when suddenly you have to change it. We hang out, have a good time, isn’t that enough? Does everything have to mean something serious?”

“No, everything doesn’t, but I don’t think this is ever going to mean anything at all, frankly, and maybe it never really has. Not that we don’t care about each other, but you know what I mean.”

Michael is watching me in a way he hasn’t before. Quietly and listening. For the first time, I feel like a complete person to him, not just a response that he needs. It confirms what I am doing even more.

“So let’s stop seeing each other now while we’re still friends. A lot of it was good; we’re just not the One for each other.”

“I don’t know if the One really exists.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t either, but I want to find out.”

Sounds of the radio station start filtering in. I can hear the cadence of the morning news, and it gives me the same certain yet uneasy feeling I always felt sitting on my parents’ bed before kindergarten watching my father prepare for work. As if something big and different were about to happen that would change my life, but I was only just now finding out about it.

“So I guess this means we can’t have sex anymore?” Michael says it like he’s kidding, but I know him too well.

“Yeah, I think we should finally really not.”