Good Riddance(77)

“But . . . ?”

“But now, if I’m being very honest, which I probably shouldn’t be, I have an emotional investment. And if this thing now went from unbuttoning and unzipping to sleeping together, and if we had sex, would it be accidental because we were side by side and naked? I also have to ask if you have a girlfriend. And would you wake up all sorry because you were cheating on she who must not be named?”

Now, having turned me around, and counting on three fingers, he said, “No. No. And no.”

I shimmied, dress halfway down, over to the bureau and took a sip of our stolen wine straight from the bottle. “Okay, but what about this? Would it be sex for old times’ sake . . . or would we be back together?”

“You’re such an idiot,” he said.

“In a good way?”

“In a way good enough that made me miss it.”

I offered him the bottle. Before taking a swig, he said, “And for the record, Tina and I never had sex.”

“But . . .” I had to search for whatever was left that I hadn’t exhausted. “Even so, she’s around. Your bikes are stored side by side. And isn’t it true that a woman could get the idea that casual dates might qualify someone as her boyfriend?”

“If you’d ever had to talk about sustainability over dinner, you wouldn’t have to ask.”

Because those words had been spoken with his lips on my neck, I didn’t pursue the Tina topic any further. I didn’t need to. I’d stepped out of the gauzy puddle that was my dress. And somehow, without my help, Jeremy’s trousers and boxers were no longer confining his responsive lower body.

I said, “I have to get something in my cosmetics bag. I brought them just in case.”

When I came out of the bathroom, he was in bed. I joined him. He wasn’t a handsome specimen, but he was beautiful.





39


Mind If I Take a Few Pictures?



Not that I’d slept well, having fallen, postcoitally, into a pinch-me state of best-case insomnia. Jeremy, though, was dozing between my conversational pinball. I had to ask, didn’t I, about the hiatus he’d initiated—the why of it, and whether the breakup helped us get to where we were now?

He murmured, facing the viny wallpaper, “Izznit obvious we broke up ’cuz I was falling in love with you?”

That made me hitch myself up on my elbows to ask, “How does that make sense? Continue, please.”

“Tomorrow . . .”

“Now, please.”

He turned back in my direction. “Okay. I was twenty-five. I thought: Twenty. Fucking. Five. She’s been married and divorced. I never even came close. Maybe I need to get out there.”

“Out there? You work on a TV show surrounded by beautiful actresses”—but that’s where I stopped, reminding myself that he was testifying as to why he was lying next to me, not why he was plotting his escape. Of course, I couldn’t leave it there. “Can I play devil’s advocate, against my own self-interest?”

“Sure—” he said, followed by a fake snore.

“It was a pretty short break. You didn’t go off for a year like a Mormon missionary to a foreign land.”

“Very true but not what I’d call an apt analogy.”

“I just meant you had a little PG fling, then you came back. After only—what was it, two months?”

“It looked like two months. I was back before that. In spirit. Mentally.”

I did know that. Who wouldn’t have noticed his non-disappearance, his checking in? I thought it only right to say, “The falling in love part? I had that, too.”

No answer, just some murmured syllables. Was he back asleep? I asked if we were going public.

“I think we have.”

“I don’t mean at the wedding. I mean if the play got produced, can we put an extra little spin on ‘collaborators’ so people get that we’re together?”

“Sure.”

I moved my pillow closer so we’d be falling asleep ear to ear. I said, “Have I told you yet that I find you delightful?”

“Thank you. I try.”

“And one more thing: When I said I’d also fallen in love—did that sound like I was speaking in the past tense?”

“I can’t say I noticed the tense—”

“I may not have said it aloud lately. Like tonight. By which I mean the love part. Because it’s extremely present tense.”

“Thank you. Now go to sleep.” He reached over and found a thigh to pat.

A few minutes later, I heard a faint “You looked beautiful tonight.” Was he in REM sleep already, delivering a line of dialogue meant for Veronica or Betty or even the hateful Cheryl Blossom, Riverdale’s villain? I didn’t nudge him to ask, Were you speaking to me? I accepted the compliment, silently for once, smiling in the dark.



On the ride to Pickering, borrowing from a Riverdale voice-over, Jeremy intoned, “This story is about a town, once fulsome and innocent, now forever changed by the disappearance and eventual murder of a cherished yearbook.” Earlier, I’d woken up thinking that our one-woman show was doable, or at least no longer the worst idea I’d ever heard. I could imagine myself reciting lines on stage in front of pixelated images of the town. Life had sorted itself out, and I was turning into an excellent tour guide.