LATER THAT DAY, AFTER they had been kissing in the park, Simon and Libby were lying on her bed when Libby started crying. “I can’t do this anymore,” she said.
They both sat up and leaned against the headboard, their voices rolling over each other. “I can’t do this to a friend,” Libby said. “I can’t do this to myself.”
“I know,” Simon said, his unhappiness audible. “I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. I hate myself.”
“I want more,” Libby cried. “I need more than just this sneaking around as if we were teenagers, this love on the sly.”
Simon started. “You love me?”
Libby cried harder.
“We have to figure this out,” he said.
They went through all the scenarios. Libby knew people who were married for years and had other relationships on the side and no one knew, so no one was hurt. She knew people who did know and they didn’t care. “We didn’t plan on this,” Libby said. “We fought it.”
“It wouldn’t have happened if Stella was herself,” Simon said, and then he felt suddenly sick, because he realized it might have happened anyway. Simon’s mouth went dry.
“I was thinking about leaving her,” he said quietly. “That day, before she went into coma.” He crunched down into the bed, staring at the ceiling. “I thought we’d wake up and I’d go to California with the band, and maybe I wouldn’t come back.”
“Maybe,” Libby repeated.
“I don’t know what anything is anymore,” he said, and then Libby put her hands against his face and scooted down lower in the bed so that she was lying beside him.
“Neither do I,” she said. “Except you. I know you and I know me.” Libby tilted her head. “She’s still having doctors’ appointments. When those stop, things might be different again for her. I’ve seen it happen.”
Simon turned his face to the pillow. Memories flashed in his mind: he and Stella on their second date, sharing a hot fudge sundae, Stella eating all the ice cream and laughing. Stella now, drawing and drawing, so intently that a part of him felt a little anxious at how easily she could shut him out. How else could Stella be, and how else could he be in reaction to that? He turned to Libby. She was sleeping, her hair a storm on the sheets, her mouth faintly open.
Simon knew he had to get home to Stella, but he didn’t want to just slip out while Libby was asleep. He glanced at his watch. He could be a little late, couldn’t he?
He got up and dressed. Restlessly, he walked around Libby’s apartment, something he often did when she was sleeping. It made him feel more connected to her. Everything here could tell him something about her, from the Walden Pond T-shirt she had framed because she grew up near the pond, to the pulpy 1950s paperback novels she collected because she thought their covers were fun.
Libby was so meticulous a doctor, but her apartment was disorganized. Once he had found silverware in her desk drawer. Another time, he had been looking for scissors to snip a thread and he had finally found them in the coat closet.
He had never intended any of this to happen. Falling in love with Libby had been so gradual a process, he hadn’t noticed it at first. She had started out as someone who made him believe things could be better. Then she made him believe that he could be better.
His whole body was humming. He wandered into the living room and saw that Libby had left her laptop on, the cord unplugged. She’d run down the battery that way. He’d told her that repeatedly. He plugged in her computer, then looked at her desktop in amazement because it was covered with icons.
What kind of crazy system was this? If it were him, he’d delete almost all of them. What did she need to keep Spotify, Skype, and Pandora open? He told himself he wasn’t snooping. He certainly wasn’t planning on deleting anything. He was just curious about her and this wacky system she seemed to have.
He saw folders on the bottom of the desktop, unmarked, floating. Maybe when she woke up, he could suggest ways for her to straighten things up here. One folder was labeled “Meet for Dinner?”; another, “Ideas.” He shook his head in wonder. He was about to turn away when he saw his name on a document. He blinked, then saw the name of a record label, the same one that she had said she was going to send his music to. He hesitated, but then, with his pulse quickening, he clicked on it, and there it was, a copy of an email dated months ago, back when Stella was still hospitalized.
The words hit him like a punch in his heart. There is something here that we would very much like to explore further. Please have Simon get in touch with us as soon as possible.
He made a noise in his throat. Or maybe it was the sound of Libby’s bare feet coming up behind him, her hand on his shoulder.
He whipped around, standing. There she was, beautiful and pale, a liar wearing his T-shirt. He watched her face crumpling. “Oh, babe,” she said quietly.
“Why did you lie to me?”
“I . . . I was going to tell you,” she said. “Eventually I was . . . when things calmed down.”
“When? When I was eighty years old? Never? Is never the time you were thinking about?”
She put her hand to her mouth. “You don’t understand,” she said.
“Fucking right, I don’t. Why would you do this if you weren’t going to let me follow up?”
“We didn’t know each other that well then . . .”
“You know me now.”
“I did it because I wanted you to hope! I didn’t know anything about music. When this email came, Stella was still so dicey. And I wanted you to be there for her. I thought if you knew you had an out, you might take it, you might leave and not come back.”
“What?” He stared at her, incredulous. “What are you saying? I would leave? I could have worked here, right here. I could have gotten studio work maybe or a chance that one of my songs might get picked up by a music publisher and then go to someone big. At the very least it would have been a connection—”
“I wasn’t in love with you then, Simon!”
“How did you know what I’d do? How fucking dare you assume—”
“I didn’t really know you then! I just knew what Stella had told me about you! What I saw!” She started to cry, so softly it was like an undertone to the buzzing in Simon’s ears. “Then I started to love you—”
“Love? You’re talking about love? All of this is a mess—”
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” She tried to grab his arm, but he pulled away. “But you never asked me about it!” she cried. “I thought maybe it didn’t matter, maybe you’d forgotten . . .”
“Are you blaming me? Do you even know me at all?” he said, astonished. “Do you even believe what you’re saying to me?” He tried to move as far away from her as he could. But the air seemed to be moving, too, locking him in place. Oh Jesus. Everything could have been so different, and now it was all in the past. He could have taken that chance that guy had told Libby about, that one shining moment to be someone, to prove everyone wrong, from Mighty Chondria to his father.
He bent over, enveloped by a sense of nausea. It had been his choice to make and she wrenched it from him.
“Do it now!” Libby cried. “Contact them! If he was interested once, he’d be interested again!”
Simon stepped away from her. “That’s not how it works,” he said. He couldn’t look at Libby. Why had he thought that he could trust her? “You don’t get to decide my life,” he said.
“I would do anything to take it back!” she said. “I love you, Simon, I love you—and I know you love me!”
Simon picked up his messenger bag and slung it over his shoulder.
“What are you doing?” she cried. “Where are you going? Why do you have to leave now?”
“Because I don’t know who you are anymore.” He opened the front door. “And because I don’t know who I am anymore, either.” And he walked out of her apartment.