The Lies That Bind(34)

    “For the most part,” he says. “But really hard, too. Listen, Cecily. I have a lot to tell you…so much to talk about….But I’d like to do it when I’m back, and we are face-to-face. If that’s okay with you?”

“Yes. Of course,” I say.

His words sound so ominous, but I reassure myself that it’s just the distance and all that he’s going through. After all, while I’ve been writing stories about trivial New York City happenings and getting the occasional buzz at a bar, he’s been dealing with matters of life and death. But as we hang up, I brace myself for the other possibility—that maybe he’s had a change of heart about us.

Over the next week, I agonize over which it will be. Scottie, who has stayed in touch with Noah, views the phone call through his own infatuated rose-colored glasses, and thinks I’m silly to worry. But Jasmine understands my apprehension, perhaps because she lost her closest cousin to cancer a few years back and has shared with me the strain it put on her relationship at the time. In a nutshell, her boyfriend didn’t seem to understand her grief—or the fact that she wasn’t in the mood for sex—so she promptly dumped him.

“Just be patient with him,” she tells me during one of our coffee breaks. “It may take him a minute to get back to where you were, but that’s normal given everything he’s been going through.”



* * *



—

On the morning of Grant’s return, I wake up with a summer cold. As dreadful as I look and feel, I tell myself that it’s a good thing—that it takes the pressure off us to be romantic. We can just talk, and I can find out how he’s feeling and doing. It will be emotional, but we will be fine.

But as the hour of his touchdown approaches, I become racked with nervousness that only intensifies when I go home and wait for the phone to ring. The hours pass, and it never does. Finally, around eleven, I take a dose of NyQuil and drift off to sleep, delirious and disappointed, succumbing to nightmares about our breakup.

    I wake up to the sound of my apartment buzzer, my alarm clock telling me it’s nearly one in the morning. I throw my covers off, get out of bed, and press my intercom, saying hello.

“Hi, it’s me,” I hear Grant say.

“Come up,” I say, hitting the buzzer, then pacing by the door.

A moment later, I’m opening it, and he’s hugging me so hard, and I know, right away, that nothing has changed.

He tries to kiss me, but I move my face, and tell him that I have a cold and don’t want him to get sick. He says he doesn’t care. I resist again, for his sake, so he kisses me on the cheek, then the neck.

“I love you,” he whispers.

“You do?” I ask, getting chills that aren’t from my fever. “Are you sure?”

He nods, then takes me back to my bed, and shows me just how much.





I awaken the next morning to the sound of my ringing phone and the foggy memory of Grant kissing me goodbye. I hear the answering machine click on and Scottie’s voice, frantically telling me to pick up, pick up, pick up!

His last “pick up” sounds especially urgent, so I force myself to get out of bed and walk over to my desk, grabbing the receiver as he rambles on about some crash he just saw on the news.

“Hey. Hey. I’m here,” I say, feeling dizzy.

“Oh my God!” he says. “Are you watching?”

“Watching what?” I sit on my desk chair, putting my head in my hand, rubbing my throbbing temple.

“A plane hit the World Trade Center!” he shouts into the phone.

“What?” I say, confused and convinced that Scottie is exaggerating.

He repeats himself slowly, as I picture a two-seater prop plane clipping the antenna atop the tower. Or maybe one of those sightseeing helicopters, offering spectacular views of Manhattan, crashed into the side of one of the towers.

“Do they know who was flying it?” I ask him.

“No! But it’s nuts! Turn your TV on. Now! There’s live footage!”

“What channel are you watching?” I ask, though I know he’s a Today show loyalist.

    “NBC,” Scottie confirms, as I walk over to my sofa, grab my remote from the coffee table, and click on the television.

Sure enough, a shot of one of the twin towers fills the screen, enormous plumes of black smoke pouring from a gaping gash toward the top of one side of the building. A smaller hole appears on an adjacent side, smoke billowing out and skyward from that opening as well.

“Wow,” I say. “That’s a lot of damage.”

I turn up the volume as Scottie and I listen to Katie Couric and Matt Lauer discuss the situation with a breathless, stuttering eyewitness named Jennifer. In a heavy New York accent, she explains how she emerged from the subway and looked up at the towers just as she heard a loud explosion and saw a big ball of fire.

“I’m—I’m in shock,” she says. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Are they sure it wasn’t a bomb?” I ask Scottie, remembering the World Trade Center bombing from the early nineties.

“Yeah. Pretty sure. They’re saying it was too high up to be a bomb,” he says.

“Or maybe a gas explosion of some sort?” I say. Although I called in sick last night, I’m surprised that work isn’t demanding that I go cover the accident.