Matchmaking for Beginners(43)

“So,” he says, leaning against the doorjamb with his arms folded. He has on his nice, crisp, professional white coat with his name embroidered in maroon script, and he’s smiling at me. “So,” he says again, in this pseudocasual tone he uses when things are more important than he wants them to be, “when do you think you’re going to be over this other guy?”

I give a little uncomfortable laugh. “Noah?”

He wrinkles his nose. “Please. Don’t say his name in the office. This is sacred space.” He looks around, and I see that his eyes are more serious than I’ve seen them since the day of the condom incident in twelfth grade. “Just level with me here. Before I invest any more of myself in this relationship, you’ve gotta tell me if you’re ever going to be really done with him.”

“I think—well, I think that in all the ways that count, that I’m already done with him,” I say carefully.

I am pretty sure I am telling the truth.

“No,” he says, “it doesn’t work that way. You were married to the guy! He did a horrible thing to you. It’s only been a few months, and people don’t bounce back that fast.”

“But I have bounced back. I work extra fast.” And then I tell him about Blix, who said some words that steered me toward happiness—a spell that suddenly seems to have come true in a way that none of us were expecting. And here I am. I have arrived at the door of happiness, I say, thanks to some words to the universe that someone chanted for me. For a moment, it occurs to me that I should call her and let her know how it all worked out. But then that thought dissipates; Blix might not see this as the big life she’d promised I’d get. Why disappoint her?

I look back at Jeremy, who is shaking his head comically, like he has water in his ears or something. “Oh God! Please don’t tell me I’m basing my whole future happiness on some fortune-teller’s notion of the universe!”

So I laugh and kiss him right there in his office, right on his smooth, clean-shaven cheek, but then the phone rings, and I have to go back to my desk to answer it. He stands there watching me while I switch around some appointments. I watch him out of the corner of my eye, and I suddenly feel all the doubt dragging on him, and I know that to him I’m the Louisville Slugger and he’s the ball. And, well, it pierces my heart, is all, that he doubts me.

I take it up with Natalie, my personal enabler and therapist, the next day. What I want to know is this, I tell her: Can a person (say, me) actually be ready to move on from a devastating heartbreak so soon? Or am I just kidding myself?

“Well,” she says. She is busy changing Amelia’s diaper, so she’s facing away from me. “Well, of course you can. Anything can happen where love is concerned. How do you feel?”

“I feel . . . I feel like I’m in the right place. Where I’m supposed to be.”

She turns and gives me a big smile. “Oh, I’m so glad to hear you say that, because that’s what I think, too. You and Jeremy have such great chemistry! Brian and I were talking about it last night, as a matter of fact.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, you’re so easy together. And he’s funny and he’s cute, and you seem really, really healthy and happy. Best I’ve seen you in years.”

“I am. I mean, I think he’s great. The only thing is, I just—well, I’m not nervous and scared around him. You know what I mean? I don’t feel . . . all fluttery. It’s just comfortable. So is that what love is?”

She looks at me like she knows something very wise that I haven’t figured out yet. “Of course it is. It’s such a relief to be with a guy who loves you more than you love him, isn’t it?”

And oh my God, I think, she’s exactly spot-on. That’s what this is: he does love me more than I love him. In fact, he’s kind of like a little puppy dog around me, always wanting to please me. So that’s what my teeny tiny little sense of hesitation is: he adores me, and although I can make a list of all his wonderful qualities and I know that he’s perfect for me, I am not suffering the way I usually do when I’m in love.

She’s talking away. “That’s the way it is with mature love, you goose. And it’s wonderful! You’ll see. It’s one less thing you have to worry about. He’s not thinking about somebody else or about to realize he doesn’t really love you after all.” She picks up Amelia, who kicks her fat little legs and flaps her arms. She’s so adorable that it’s all I can do to keep myself from going over and whisking her right out of Natalie’s arms.

“Wow,” I say. “You’re right.”

“Just one thing: How’s the sex? That tells you what you need to know, I always say.”

“Wellllll, his mother—”

“Oh, right. You’ve got that prim mom of his in the next room, don’t you? Okay, so he’s got to get his own place. And then everything will be perfect. And to tell you the truth, sex falls off as the most important thing in the whole world. You’ll see.”

I look over at my sister, who is possibly the luckiest person in the whole world, managing to celebrate the daily mundanity of marriage without having one iota of regret. She’s shown me the texts she and Brian send back and forth, and they’re all about who’ll pick up the milk and should they have tacos for dinner, and did she take the car in. Not even one pronouncement about undying love.