When We Were Bright and Beautiful(39)

You know what would kill me? Going back to New York and returning to Marcus. One way or another, I would cease to exist.

*

A text appears; it’s from Haggerty.

You want to talk

No, I don’t

Yes, you do

I’d never talk to you

If not me who?





22


I LOVE BREAKFAST, WHICH I EAT EVERY DAY AT THE NEIGHBORHOOD Café. For the past two weeks, I’ve been ordering the same thing: black coffee and the Little Italy burrito. The Little Italy comes with two eggs, sausage, peppers, onions, and provolone cheese. Inside, there’s a hash brown patty. Sometimes I add hot cherry peppers. After I order, I find a table inside. When my food is ready, Eddie will bring it to me, and we’ll talk for a few minutes. He’s very friendly. While our roles are circumscribed—he’s a server, I’m a customer—we share a connection, like me and Anton.

“Little Italy and coffee,” Eddie says today. “Right?” He’s twenty-seven and from the Midwest. He’s got cowlicks in his hair, expressive brown eyes, and a lisp I find endearing. “I’ll bring it right out.”

I met Eddie last fall when I was working on my grad school application. I was very serious about the process, which I treated like a job. Along with studying for the GREs, I wrote letters to my former professors requesting recommendations, drafted and redrafted my personal statement, and then hired a doctoral student to proofread it. I showed up at the café every morning, after the rush, like it was my office. Soon, I was a familiar face and talking to Eddie became part of my routine.

Today, I read Middlemarch while I sit. After September, it will be academic journals, so I’m gorging on dense novels, ones I’ve loved since high school.

But mostly, I’m enjoying dining out in public, something I can’t do in New York anymore. The press became relentless, so my family stopped leaving the building. Meals, stylists, and masseuses come to us. One night, we risked dinner in a restaurant tucked on a side street. All five of us went, even Billy. It was fine until Nate drank too much and Lawrence berated him for acting sloppy.

“There is a lot riding on this, Nathaniel.”

Lawrence was so furious I could feel heat rise off his skin. People were staring, and his mouth was twisted into a rictus smile.

But it was Billy who pushed back, not Nate. “Fuck you, Dad,” he said before stomping off. “Fuck you, too, Cassie.”

“What was that about?” Lawrence asked.

“Brother-sister shit.” I stared into my plate. “I ask too many questions about Diana Holly, I have no boundaries, and I should mind my own business. Or something like that.”

I was shaken by Billy’s vicious tone; he never would’ve lashed out when we were younger. Now he’s easily angered, and quick to turn on me. I understand how scared he is—I’m scared too—but I thought this horrible experience would bring us closer again. Instead, it’s pulling us further apart. Why can’t it be the same as it was when we were kids?

“More coffee, Cassie?” Eddie asks, holding a pot.

“Oh my gosh.” I giggle like a silly girl. “I’m already buzzing! Just water, thank you.”

“Your food will be ready in a minute. I’m sure you’re starving.”

Oh, Eddie, I think. You have no idea.

My conversations with Eddie are pleasant, non-threatening. I don’t worry about subtext or hidden meanings. Lawrence has warned me about men. “Not every boy has honorable intentions,” he told me, in the awkward, stilted way that fathers have when discussing sex with their daughters. “You need to be smarter. Stay two steps ahead.” As I got older, our talks got easier, mostly because they were science-based and cerebral. My takeaway was that men, boys, are always on the hunt; whether conscious of it (feral) or not (submissive). Their brains are more developed than other warm-blooded vertebrates, but they’re mammals fueled by testosterone, which primes instincts like dominance and self-affirmation. Sexual satisfaction is hardwired, and they’ll achieve it by aggression, deception, or both. Women who don’t see the world through the lens of men’s needs are na?ve or willfully blind.

Eddie is getting a master’s in comparative literature. The first time he brought out my food, I was reading The Shining. The next time, Song of Solomon. The next time, The Secret History. It became a joke between us: What is Cassie reading this morning?

“I should introduce you to my wife.” He glances at the cover of Middlemarch.

I feel a shiver, like the wind has shifted. “Your wife?”

“Sure,” Eddie says, affably. “She’s a big reader, too; I bet you’d get along great.”

“Where did you meet?”

“A study group, believe it or not.”

Far off, I hear humming. Maybe I’ll meet my husband in a study group too. He’ll smile at me across the table. He’ll walk me home. We’ll go on a date and eat Thai food. He’ll kiss me at the door. I’ll have the charming, wholesome relationship I’ve always longed for.

When my Little Italy is ready, Eddie sets it down in front of me. “I will have more coffee,” I tell him. “Cream, please.”

Talking to Eddie makes me feel sneaky. Like I’m getting away with something by presenting myself as a wholesome girl capable of wholesome love when I’m a dirty degenerate, a con artist who used to fuck a married man—a man with children, no less. That I’ll end up with a Midwestern Eddie and become a book-loving wife is a laughable idea. And yet, in New Haven, never say never. Maybe here I can start over as an entirely new person, relive my life, remap my choices.