Matchmaking for Beginners(72)

With difficulty, I manage to say, “Noah. Come off it. You don’t believe that even while you’re saying it.”

“I do believe it,” he says. “It’s true. And now some other guy has you. I lost out, and it was my own fault.” He shakes his head and smiles at me. “I’m just not husband material. Waaaay too fucked up.”

“Way,” I agree.

He says a whole bunch of things after that.

He says, forgive me for saying this, but I don’t think you are even remotely in love with the guy you’re seeing now.

He says, remember the time we woke up in the middle of the night and we were already having sex, but both of us had been sound asleep and we don’t know how it happened?

He says, this is kind of like a secret time in our lives. Time out of time. Together but apart.

“Not together,” I say with difficulty.

“Have you told your family I’m here?”

“Of course not.”

He smiles and comes over and takes the platter out of my hands and places it up on the shelf I was straining to reach. He’s Noah, so he doesn’t simply come over and take the platter—he kind of saunters over. And when he reaches for it, his hand brushes against me very, very slightly. And then after he puts the platter up where it belongs, he stays there, standing so close I can see the little dots of stubble of his beard, can feel his breathing as though it’s my own breath he’s taking. His eyes are on mine and I know from the expression on his face what’s going to happen next. He’s going to lean down and kiss me.

I brace myself against it. I think as hard as I can: no no no no.

Then to my surprise, he turns away and goes back to the table, where he picks up his phone, and giving me a short wave, he leaves the house. The front door bangs behind him.

I am shaking. I get a glass of water from the sink. A man in a window across the way is dancing. A man is dancing, and I am standing here drinking water, and somehow now I know that it is only a matter of time until Noah and I get to the kissing part.

I have never wanted anybody more in my life.

Jeremy calls me the next day on his way to work. I can tell I’m on speakerphone in his car, because I get to hear all the Jacksonville traffic—the whooshes of trucks going by and the snippets of other people’s radios as he passes them. I’m on my way to work, too, walking along Bedford Avenue to Best Buds, studying the people who are rushing past.

“Hey! How are you?” I say when I pick up.

As he always does, he plunges right into the list of things he’s done since the last time we talked. Went for a swim last night. Played checkers with his mom. Had pork chops for dinner. Went to bed early.

“How are the patients? Any good stories?”

“Well, Mrs. Brandon came in yesterday, and you know how it is. Poor thing, her sciatica is still bothering her, and she’s blaming the treatment, so I asked her if she’s taking the anti-inflammatory drugs, and she said she’s not because they hurt her stomach, and I said she should take probiotics at the same time, and she said she’d heard of those but never knew if they were safe.”

“Huh,” I say.

“Oh, but there’s this. You’ll be happy to know I got the carpets cleaned in the waiting room. Looks nice. A guy came in and said he could clean the whole office for fifty dollars, and I didn’t know if that was a good deal or not, but I don’t think the building management has cleaned the carpets in the entire time I’ve been there. Did you notice how soiled they were?”

“I’m afraid I didn’t,” I tell him.

“Well, they’re awful. I thought you would have noticed.”

“But sounds like they’re clean now,” I say.

“Yes. Oh, yes.”

I let a beat of silence go by and then say, “Hey, guess what! I got a job.”

“You got a job? In Brooklyn? Why would you do that?”

“Because—because I think it’d be good for me to be out around people more, and this woman in a florist shop asked me if I wanted to work there because I was sort of talking to some customers there, and she—”

I stop talking because I realize he’s been trying to interrupt me the entire time.

“No, I realize what a job will be like,” he says. “But what I’m wondering is—why are you embedding yourself in this community if you’re going to leave soon?”

“Well, it’s three months. I can work for three months, can’t I?”

“I don’t know. I thought you’d be busy getting the house ready to sell or something. Not going out and working in—what? A shop of some kind?”

“For a florist.”

“Yeah. A florist. You do realize I’m counting on you coming back, don’t you?” He laughs, a stiff little chuckle that rings completely false.

“I told the woman that I’m only here until the end of the year,” I tell him. “Don’t worry. I’m coming back.”

“Well,” he says and pretends to growl. “See that you do. Because there’s somebody on this call who’s getting very, very lonely without his girlfriend around.”

I toy with the idea of dropping my phone in the storm drain.

After that, it takes a little bit to put this conversation back on solid ground again. He tells me the weather is still hot, that he hopes to go see Natalie and Brian tonight, that he thinks Amelia looks like me. And then he says brightly, “Oh! I told my mom about our engagement. I know, I know. We agreed not to tell everybody until later on, but she was so down the other night that I wanted to cheer her up. And it did! She was thrilled. Over the moon.”