NOW
To: “Ambrosia Wellington” a.wellington@wesleyan.edu
From: “Wesleyan Alumni Committee” reunion.classof2007@gmail.com
Subject: Class of 2007 Reunion
Dear Ambrosia Wellington,
From meals at MoCon (RIP) to rituals only Wesleyan grads would understand (like studying in your undies in Olin), you bled red and black. We’re counting down the days until we get to catch up in person with you—our alumni—to relive all the old traditions. We can hear your Primal Scream already!
Sincerely,
Your Alumni Committee
The weeks leading up to the reunion are short and tense, excited texts flying between Hadley and Heather. I respond with obligatory yays but all I can think about is the note.
I snap at Adrian for almost everything. Not knowing if he should wear a suit to the dinner or if jeans would be okay. Asking if he should pack an umbrella. Asking if we should see a fertility specialist, because it has been six months and I’m still not pregnant. He always brings it up casually, as though he’s not expecting anything, but I know he’s expecting everything. Like every man, he wants to create a likeness of himself.
“I’m getting worried, that’s all,” he says. “You’re thirty-one. I read somewhere that your egg supply gets cut in half when you turn thirty.”
I picture Adrian googling it in bed after I’ve fallen asleep. My annoyance coils up, a familiar snake. “Don’t worry about my eggs. I’m sure I have lots. Maybe the problem is with you.”
He doesn’t react, just sits on the bed beside his half-packed suitcase—even though he isn’t getting the annoying reunion emails, he somehow manages to follow their instructions like an obedient boy. “Maybe it is. But I’m willing to get my guys tested. I told you that months ago. I just want us to have a house full of kids. Little Amb-ians.”
The first time he used that term was at our wedding, in his semidrunk speech at the reception, where he promised both sets of parents that grandkids would be on the way. I stood beside him, face sore from smiling, willing myself to want the one thing that would make him happiest. Adrian was so confident, so sure of us, so certain about our life together. He’s a great guy, Billie had told me before I walked down the aisle, and I knew she was right. After everything I’d done, I got to be loved by a guy who really was great.
“I want that too.” I don’t point out the obvious, the lack of a house to fill with kids. We had big plans, once, fevered conversations that lasted all night. We can travel. We can do anything we want. But then reality set in. We had an apartment and bills to pay. And after the reality came the resentment, flaring under my skin like a sunburn. Adrian didn’t need to go anywhere. He was content with the status quo. His romantic gestures and declarations of love did nothing to quell the anger gestating inside me, its own hard fetus.
I tried to picture what Adrian saw in his head, two toddlers crawling around my parents’ backyard in Pennington while we sat on the deck, wineglasses in hand, cooing over how adorable they were. I could taste the wine, smell the steaks on the barbecue, but I just couldn’t picture the part he actually cared about—the kids.
“Maybe we need to have more sex.” Adrian’s hand goes to my thigh. “We aren’t exactly regular. You know, Justin told me last time we had beers that he and Hadley are gonna start trying. They want to put down roots.”
“Good for them,” I say, secretly pissed off that she didn’t tell me herself. Put down roots. Everyone else feels safe when women are hooked into the ground like trees.
“Yeah,” he says. “But when’s the last time we did it?”
We used to have sex daily, always spontaneous, all over the apartment. I judged Billie when she told me she and Ryan had a standing Friday-night sex date. Now Adrian and I rarely do it weekly, and sometimes I actively avoid it by pretending I’m asleep.
“Well, let’s do it later,” I say. “I need to go. I’m heading out to meet Billie.”
“It’s my night off.” His lips bow into a pout. “I thought we could hang out.”
“I already made plans.” I slip out of my pajama pants and step into a pair of jeans. “I barely ever see Billie.”
Adrian sits up on his elbows, hair falling over his eyes. “You text her nonstop. It’s like she’s in the room with us. You barely ever see me.”
“I see you all the time.” I suck in and pull up my jeans. “It’s not like we could get away from each other in a place this tiny.”
“It’s not so bad,” he says. Then, more softly: “Do you hate our life?”
I meet his eyes as I button my blouse and resent the hurt that I see—the hurt I put there. “I don’t hate our life. I just don’t want this to be all our life is.”
It might be the most honest thing I’ve said to him in a long time. He leans over and kisses me, hand in my hair, and something stirs inside me, the need to not just be touched but be felt and seen. His other hand migrates into my jeans and instead of making an excuse and telling him later, always some undefined later, I let him pull me on top of him.
“You know I love you, right?” His breath on my cheek, my own breathing getting faster.
“I love you too,” I say, instead of my typical response. I know. Because I do love him. I love the way I’m reflected in his eyes. Marrying Adrian was like looking into a perpetually flattering mirror. He sees me as the person I want to be. I wish I could see that girl as clearly.
Billie and I meet at Broken Land, a Greenpoint bar that we consider the halfway point between us. She’s already sitting at the bar when I arrive, glass of wine in her hand, her olive complexion flushed. I like drunk Billie best. She gets loud and flirty and forgets the world she left at home, the husband and kids and Instagram personality. Pictures of our nights out never surface in her online life, and that doesn’t make me feel like a dirty secret as much as the only authentic, unfiltered pocket of her existence.
She kisses my cheek. “You’re dieting, aren’t you? For the reunion? You look skinny.”
“No.” I pull away. Back at Central, we would skip lunch when we felt bloated and weigh ourselves on my mom’s scale, celebrating arbitrary numbers. “I’m just stressed.”
“What’s there to be stressed about? You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I know,” I say. “It’s just weird. I’m not the same person anymore.” Detective Felty would argue otherwise. In blips of panic, I let myself consider that he wrote the note. That he knows about the photo, tucked back inside John Donne where it belongs. That he knows the last words I ever spoke to that boy, and the ones he said to me.
When the bartender comes over, I order a glass of prosecco, then change my mind and get a bottle. If Adrian asks when I get home, I’ll tell him I only had one, and it won’t be a lie.
“You’re going to sleep in that room again,” Billie says. “In Dorm Doom. And you haven’t told Adrian what happened. He’s going to figure it out.”
I roll my eyes. “You did not just call it that. It’s only a building. Anyway, I booked a hotel, remember?” I ignore what she said about Adrian, because I still hope I won’t have to tell him. He’ll be distracted all weekend by Justin and Monty and open bars.
Billie grabs my hands. I notice her nail polish, Tiffany blue. I always notice people’s nail polish. It’s a good indicator of their mental health, as ridiculous as that sounds. Billie’s nails are perfect. The day she shows up with red cuticles, angry skin gnawed down, I’ll know something is wrong.
“Come on, Amb. I know you better than anyone. Something is up.”
In my early days at Wesleyan, Billie wanted me to make friends. Just not best friends. I told her about Sully but not the details.
“I’m stressed out, that’s all. Work’s crazy busy lately.” I squeeze her fingers, just hard enough to be painful, before letting them go.
She takes a sip of her drink, adding a second red-lipped stamp to the rim. When we both waitressed at Villa Francesco’s when we were home in Pennington for summers during college, we made fun of women whose lipstick would cling to increasingly empty glasses.
“Are you going to see him?” she says, softer now. “The guy you were madly in love with and refuse to talk about?”
“Buddy,” I say, more an exhalation of breath than an actual word. “Of course not.”
“Relax,” she says. “I’m not saying you’re going to sleep with him. And I mean, you know what happened with Colton. We came this close the weekend of my bachelorette. And we would have, if it wasn’t for his moral compass.” She rubs her arms.
“Have you ever thought about messaging him?” I ask. Our bartender pops the cork on my prosecco. It feels like I should be celebrating something.
“To say what? ‘Hey, I’m married with two kids now’? Sometimes I wonder about how things would have been different if he were a worse person.” She pauses. “I tried to creep him on Instagram. It’s private, but his profile picture is of him and a dog. Hopefully that means he isn’t married.”
“Hopefully? Why, so you have a chance?”
She shrugs. “He can’t belong to me. I just don’t want him to belong to anyone else, you know?”
I know all too well.
Every time Billie spills part of her soul, I ache to give a bit of mine, just like we did in our Central days, trading secrets in the dark at a thousand sleepovers. She knows I loved a boy called Buddy and that things went awry. I wanted to bring him home for winter break and introduce them.
“He won’t be there. Buddy. He isn’t going.”
“Well, maybe he’ll show up. Just keep an open mind, that’s all.” She swirls the last drops of wine around in her glass. “I’m not saying to cheat. You know I love Adrian. But maybe you need the closure.”
I drain part of my glass to keep my mouth from forming the expression it wants to make. I drink more so I can’t let myself know if it’s a smile or a frown. The truth is gratefully confined to my brain.
He can’t show up, thanks to what I did to him.