The Girl He Used to Know(7)

But that was years ago.

Slowly, we make our way to the counter and place our orders. In college, she would have asked for juice, but today we both order iced coffee.

“Have you eaten breakfast yet?” I ask, pointing toward the pastry case.

“No. I mean I didn’t know if you’d already eaten so I ate a little but not really enough to count as a full breakfast, but I’m not hungry now.”



* * *



As the words tumble from her mouth, she looks down at her shoes, over my shoulder, toward the barista. Anywhere but at me. I don’t mind. Annika’s mannerisms are like slipping into a comfortable pair of shoes, and though I feel bad admitting it, even to myself, her nervousness has always made me feel at ease.

I try to pay, but she won’t let me. “Is it okay if we sit outside?” she asks.

“Sure.” We sit down at a table shaded by a large umbrella. “You look great, Annika. I should have told you the other day.”

She flushes slightly. “Thanks. So do you.”

It’s instantly cooler due to the umbrella, and the color on Annika’s cheeks fades away. When I lift my glass to put the straw in my mouth, she tracks the movement of my left hand and it takes me a second to realize she’s checking for a wedding ring.

“How’s your family?” I ask.

She looks relieved that I’ve started with something so neutral. “They’re fine. My dad retired and he and my mom have been traveling. Will’s still in New York. I saw him a few months ago when I flew out to see Janice. She lives in Hoboken with her husband and their six-month-old daughter.”

“So you’ve stayed in touch with her?” Janice was always more than just Annika’s roommate, so it shouldn’t surprise me that their friendship is still going strong.

“She’s my closest friend even if I don’t get to see her that often.” She takes a sip of her coffee. “Do you live around here?”

“West Roosevelt.”

“I’m on South Wabash,” she says.

A ten-minute walk is all that separates us. “I wonder how many times we’ve come close to running into each other.”

“I wondered that too,” she says.

“I wouldn’t have pegged you for an urban dweller.”

“It’s only a twenty-minute walk to work, and if the weather’s bad, I can take the L. I have a driver’s license, but I don’t own a car. It’s not like I really need one to get around.”

“How do you like working at the library?”

“I love it. It’s all I ever wanted to do.” She pauses and then says, “You must like your job, too. You’re still working there ten years later.”

“It’s a solid company, and they’ve made good on all their promises.” I’m even a bit further along on the career path they laid out for me during the interview process, and most days I like my job just fine. Some days I hate it, but then I remind myself that, just like Annika said, it’s all I ever wanted.

“Do you still swim?”

“Every morning at the gym. What about you? What do you like to do in your free time?”

“I volunteer at the animal shelter when I can, and I have a part-time position at the Chicago Children’s Theatre. I help teach an acting class on Saturday mornings. I wrote a play.”

“You wrote a play? That’s amazing.”

“It was just a fun thing to do. The kids did a great job with it. I’m working on another one right now, for them to perform at Christmastime.”

“How old are they?”

“I work with several different age groups. The youngest are four and five and the oldest are in the nine-to-eleven range. They’re a great bunch of kids.”

“Do you have any of your own?”

Her eyes widen. “Me? No.”

“Are you married? Or in a relationship?”

She shakes her head. “I’ve never been married. I was seeing someone, but we broke up. Are you married?”

“I was. We divorced about a year and a half ago.”

“Were you married to that girl? The one you told me about on my answering machine?”

So, I guess she did get the message after all. “Yes.”

“Do you have kids?” She looks apprehensive as she waits for my answer.

“No.”

Liz had very clear goals in mind when it came to her career, and she wasn’t going to stop climbing the corporate ladder until she shattered the glass ceiling. Her passion for business was like a homing beacon when I first arrived in New York, beckoning me toward her. I was all for Liz climbing the corporate ladder, but each rung had a timeline attached and when she informed me she wouldn’t be ready to start a family until she was forty-one, and what did I think about freezing her eggs—I thought she was kidding.

She wasn’t.

It’s funny how the very trait that attracts you to someone is the same trait you can’t stand when you’re untangling yourselves from each other. And not funny ha-ha. Funny like how in the world could you not have seen it?

I’d agreed to meet with Annika today because I’d hoped for some answers, but by the time we finish our coffee we’ve progressed no fur ther than idle small talk. She is in no way prepared to revisit what happened between us, at least not yet, and it would be unnecessarily harsh to push her.