Matchmaking for Beginners(99)

But all that is nothing compared to Jeremy, whose eyes look like black holes in the middle of his face, and I can see that his wide, capable, physical-therapy hands are actually shaking.

I have broken this man.

Again.

“Talk to me,” I say. “Go ahead. Say it. Say it all.”

He shakes his head. I can’t bear to look at him. “There’s nothing . . . I’m in shock,” he says.

“No. Please. Say it.”

He exhales and looks around. I can see him taking in the whole rainy, desolate street scene. And then his eyes come back to me and he says in a low voice, “I’ve talked to you fifty times since you’ve been here, and you didn’t even once think it might be good to mention that your ex-husband was here? Not even once?”

“Well? I didn’t think you’d understand.”

“What part of it wouldn’t I understand?”

“How two people who were married to each other can stay in the same house.”

“I can understand that. I trust you.”

“No, you wouldn’t.”

“Try me. Please,” he says. “Just tell me you weren’t having sex with him, and I’ll believe you. I’m not a suspicious person.”

That’s when it hits me that he really doesn’t know. I look down at my shoes.

“Oh my God,” he says. “Oh my fucking God. Marnie! I can’t believe this! You’ve done this to me again! How could you do this?”

“I didn’t plan this.”

“What does that even mean? You didn’t set out to crush me, is that it? But why did you do it?”

“Oh, God, I am really and truly very sorry. Jeremy, listen. I didn’t know when I came here that he was here. And then when he was, I was thinking it was still okay and that I’d come back home next month and you and I would get married, and—”

“That’s bullshit. You’ve been lying to me! Talking to me almost every day and never telling me anything near the truth. I-I’m speechless.”

He stares out again at the dismal, dreary street, littered with leaves, and then he turns back to me. “This place sucks. You know that? This is what you’re picking, instead of the life we had talked about? This?”

“It doesn’t look so good right now,” I admit. “But it’s really kind of beautiful in its way. You’re not seeing it at its best. And under the circumstances . . .”

He looks at me a long time, and then he shakes his head. “I’ve got to get out of here. I don’t think I can take any more.”

“Before you go, can I ask you one thing? Did Noah set you up for this? Did he get you to come?”

“Wow. You really are delusional, aren’t you? I came here because I missed you, you idiot, because I thought it would be fun to surprise you since I felt bad that you were away for the holidays. Your whole family and I thought this up. That’s why nobody’s talked to you on the phone for the past week, because we were all so excited and worried that we’d spoil the surprise.”

“Oh,” I say. “Well. This may sound beside the point, but I’ve always said that I hate surprises. Now I know why.”

He gives me an incredulous look. “You suck, you know that?” And then he shakes his head and walks down the steps and turns down the sidewalk.

“Want me to call you a cab?” I call down to him. But he doesn’t even grace that offer with a backward glance, which is fine. I don’t deserve anything from him. Nothing at all.

“I’m sorry!” I yell. “I’m really, really so very sorry!”

He doesn’t turn around for that either.





FORTY-ONE





MARNIE


“I have never heard so much yelling associated with Thanksgiving,” Patrick tells me. He’s walking from the kitchen to the living room with a cup of tea, which he hands me, and a teapot. “Well, maybe the very first Thanksgiving had that level of tension. Possibly Myles Standish caused this much trouble with the Native Americans—he was a bit of a brute, from what I’ve heard. But I’m not even sure about that.”

He looks over at me, sitting on his couch with my foot propped up and ice that’s supposedly going to help with the bump on my head. He may have forgotten that he’s mad at me for the crime of trying to kiss him. At least he let me come here. Even came upstairs and got me. Fixed the ice pack. Gave me drinks of water. And now herbal tea. Put aside his deadline about colon cancer, he said.

“Doesn’t matter in the least,” he told me. “People are digesting their turkey dinner, and they should be giving thanks and not rushing to read about colon cancer. Any symptoms they’re having tonight are just that they ate too much.”

“Yet another thing I’m responsible for today.”

“Oh, you, stop with the self-pity. It’s all going to be fine. For the rest of your life, you’re going to have the most exciting Thanksgiving dinner story anyone’s ever heard.”

Yes. After the madness died down—after I’d gone back inside and screamed at Noah, and pulled Bedford away from the turkey drippings, then cleaned up the puke when he didn’t stop licking up the drippings; after I’d cried with Lola, who told me I was a traitor, and after I’d tried to persuade Jessica not to break up with Andrew once again; after I’d packed Harry off with his bag of wiggling lobsters that never did get cooked, and sent the waitress limping off with her new boyfriend—well, Patrick came upstairs and retrieved me and gave me a place to hide. He checked out the bump on my head, peered in my eyes, asked me some arithmetic questions, and declared that I don’t have a concussion.