All Grown Up(79)

It was a beautiful, warm day—we wouldn’t have too many of those left now that it was almost mid October. So I decided to get off the Expressway at the next exit and pull over to put the top down on my car. Some fresh air might help to clear my head on the half-hour drive. But as the roof lifted off the top of my car, instead of blue sky, all I saw was a billboard.

A giant damn Match.com advertisement that had to be three-stories tall.

I laughed sardonically and shook my head. Forget fate, it read. Take your future into your own hands. Join Match.com today. She’s waiting for you.

The universe is really fucking with me today.

“Yeah,” I grumbled. “She’s not waiting for me.”

I took a deep breath, put the car into drive, and turned on the radio—only to have the song end and a new one come on. One by the Backstreet Boys. I reached down to turn it off but couldn’t bring myself to push the damn button.

Forget fate? It was pretty hard to when it was busy throwing shit in your face.

***

Long Island Expressway West—Manhattan.

The large, green road sign up ahead showed an arrow pointing to the two left lanes. The sign next to it had an arrow pointing right.

Long Island Expressway East—Eastern Long Island.

Home was left. Yet when I came to the fork in the road, at the last second I jerked the car right and took the turn to get on heading east.

Why? I had no fucking idea. It just felt like I needed to go out to Montauk, for some reason. Maybe I needed to clear my head…I wasn’t sure. Though, going to the place that reminded me of my parents sham of a happy marriage and the woman I loved who’d just started dating another man probably wasn’t the best place to find clarity.

But once I got on the road, there was no turning back. For some reason, it was where I needed to be today.

The fall traffic wasn’t too bad, and I pulled down Old Montauk Highway just as the sun started to go down. I still had the top down, and the air temperature seemed to drop twenty degrees between the loss of daylight and the breeze blowing off the ocean. Montauk was a ghost town this time of year. Most of the driveways were empty as I passed, including the one next to mine—not that I’d expected anyone to be around. I pulled into our adjoining driveways, the sound of gravel crunching under my tires reminding me so much of summer.

With no suitcase or any bags at all, I parked and took a deep breath of the fresh air before getting out. Closing my eyes, I smelled the ocean and summer. Maybe this really was what I needed to feel better.

Though, that fleeting thought didn’t last long. In fact, it disappeared the moment I opened my eyes and started to get out of the car.

What the fuck?

What the actual fuck?

How had I not noticed that when I pulled into the driveway?

I’d come out here searching for something—maybe a sign that it was time to move on. But what I hadn’t expected was that sign to be literal.

Greeting me from the lawn next door was just that.

Sotheby’s

For Sale

Exclusive Listing

***

I felt like I was sitting in someone else’s house—like I’d walked into an Airbnb I’d rented for the weekend, rather than the back deck of a place where I’d pretty much felt at home my whole life. It was fucked up to feel like I didn’t belong here anymore when this summer it had felt like the only place I belonged. What a difference in a short period of time.

I’d considered going into town and picking up a bottle of, well, anything, in order to forget the sign outside. But I’d come out here for clarity, and drowning my sorrows would only make things blurrier.

So instead, I sat on the back deck and finished watching the sun go down. I looked over at the empty deck next door and then back to the spot where we’d first danced to her favorite music. She’d smelled so good that day. I took a deep breath in and closed my eyes. I might’ve been nuts, but I could actually smell her scent, see her laughing as I took her in my arms, feel the way her soft body felt pressed up against mine. That’s what felt like home now. Without her, everything felt empty. It wasn’t the house or the place—it was me, inside.

I opened my eyes, and the most fucked-up thing happened. Right where I’d imagined myself dancing with Valentina, I saw my parents dancing—the same way they used to. My mother wore that white flowy dress she used to put on after she got out of the shower, and my dad had on navy blue swim trunks. They looked so goddamned happy. What a farce.

I sat outside, seeing things that weren’t really there for a long time, until it was so dark I couldn’t see the deck next door anymore. Then I went inside. I figured I’d crash here for the night since it was late. The end-of-season cleaning crew had stripped all the beds, so I went up to my parents’ room where the spare blankets were kept and planned to just sleep on the couch. But when I pulled a blanket down, something came tumbling down along with it—straight to the floor and smashed all over the place.

My parents’ Mason jars.

One of them, anyway. The other I saw tucked into the back of the closet behind the rest of the blankets.

Great. Just what I needed. Shattered glass to clean up and more memories of a life that was built on a lie.

I went to the kitchen closet to grab the broom and dustpan, and then back upstairs to the bedroom to sweep up the glass. God knows why, but I picked the folded little strips of paper out of the glass pile and set them aside on the dresser. Without looking at them, I wasn’t even sure whose they were—my mother’s or father’s.