Matchmaking for Beginners(63)

Finally I rouse myself enough to tell her I have a pot boiling over on the stove and have to hang up.

I try a new tactic with Jeremy, simply stating the facts. Not coming right home. Three-month residency required for the inheritance. Staying here. All is well. We’ll be fine.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he says. “Back up. I’ve never heard of anything like this.”

“Yep,” I say. “Me neither. But there we have it. It is what it is. It doesn’t have to be a problem. It just delays things a bit for us, is all.”

“But wait. It does seem like an odd situation, doesn’t it? Having something unusual like that written into a will? Why do you think she did it?”

“Well, she was unusual.”

“It just doesn’t sound like a very nice thing to do to somebody. You know? No offense because I know you liked her, but a gift with such strings seems really . . . well, suspect.”

“I can see that way of looking at things,” I tell him slowly, but what I am thinking is that it’s extraordinary how the late afternoon light slants in the kitchen window and hits the scarred top of the brown table. I love this table. The heft and solidity of it. And the turquoise refrigerator. I love that this whole place seems to hold Blix’s personality—and how does something like that happen?

“Can you come home for a visit, do you think? Or should I maybe come up there and see you?”

“Okay,” I say. I shake myself back into the conversation.

“Okay to you coming home for a visit, or okay for me to come and see you?”

“Either one,” I say, and yawn.

He’s quiet for a moment. Then he says, “Look. I’m sorry I’m not such a good phone guy, but I just want you to know that this makes me a little bit sad. And in case you didn’t know, I really loved having you working with me right in the next room, just knowing you were there, and my mom will miss having you to talk to because you know just how to make people feel good, you know? We all need you here. My patients, my mom, me.”

“Well,” I say. “Thank you.”

“And this is really temporary,” he says. “Right?”

“Oh my God! So temporary! Very temporary!”

“Because I love you, you know. I’m going to be so lonely without you!”

“I love you, too,” I say. “We’ll talk every day. I miss you.” And then I add, “It’ll be lonely here without you, too.”

And then, wouldn’t you know that when I hang up and turn around, Noah is standing there next to the refrigerator. Shit, I didn’t even hear him come back in the room. He gets out two beers and holds one out to me, cocking his head and looking way too amused.

“Wow. That was so sweet,” he says sarcastically. “Really. You’ll have to tell me who the lucky guy is.”

“Actually, it was my fiancé,” I say.

“Excuse me? Your fiancé? Soooo . . . how long have we been divorced—and you’ve already got somebody else lined up?” He’s smiling. “What? Did you have a guy waiting in the wings or something?”

“Oh, Noah, stop it. It’s not like that at all. He’s my old boyfriend, and we’ve gotten back together and we have a lot in common, so . . . we recently decided to get married.”

“Your old boyfriend. Who might that be? Let me see if I remember the pantheon of guys.” He puts his finger on his chin, a pantomime of someone thinking. His eyes are bright with laughter. “Wait. I hope to God it’s not the one that ditched you before the senior prom!”

“No. Please. Stop. You’re embarrassing yourself.”

“Oh my God! Is it the guy you ditched to go out with the hot guy? It is, isn’t it? You got back together with him?”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Because I’m curious. Because I care about you. I did this terrible thing to you, and I’ve felt horribly guilty over it, so I’m glad to see you’re fine. That’s all. Also . . . I’m a little jealous, maybe. You got over things kind of . . . rápidamente, if you ask me.”

“I suppose you think I should still be pining for you.”

“It would have been nice to have at least a six-month pining period. I think for a two-year relationship a person should get six months of pining.”

“Ha!”

He’s gazing at me like he’s seeing me for the first time. I sip the beer he’s handed me, and then I say I’m going to see if Jessica’s around, and then he says that we never actually made it to that burger bar the other night, and why don’t we grab a bite to eat now, and the truth is, I’m a little bit hungry, and I can’t think of a good reason why not, and so we walk there. I keep meaning to ask him when exactly he might move out of the house now that he knows it’s not going to be his. Because surely that’s his plan. But the conversation is instead going all over the place—Whipple and Africa and playing music and what living in Brooklyn is really like—and I never quite get around to it.

Okay, I know this is shallow of me, but all my nerve endings and I had kind of forgotten what it’s like to be with a man who is so handsome that everyone stops and looks at him. It’s so unfair. Did separating from me and going to Africa have to actually improve his looks? And while we’re at it, at what age will looks cease to matter to me?