Fighting off persistent waves of nausea, Jenna stood on the corner of Broadway and Bleecker, just outside the StyleZine offices, waiting for the light to change.
Everything will be fine, just calm down, get on the train, and get home.
Where you can vomit in peace.
But just as the light changed and she made a move to cross, she saw Eric storm out of their office building. She wasn’t ready to confront whatever she was feeling about their situation; she just wanted to go home and think. But before she could make a run for it, he saw her, rushed over, and pulled her into a strong hug. She hung on to him, seeing stars.
“Jesus, Jenna, what’s going on?”
“We have to talk. There’s so much I need to say to you, but I don’t know how, or what…”
“Shhh, we’re not doing this here. Come on,” he said, hailing a cab. He half-dragged her into the taxi. She slumped against his shoulder, her eyes closed.
“260 West Broadway,” he told the driver. “At Beach.”
“The American Thread Building? That’s where you live?” It was a Downtown Manhattan historical landmark with a zillion luxury condos.
“Yeah, my step-dad signed the condo over to her in the settlement. I think she roofied him first.”
Suddenly, Jenna’s eyes flew open and she sat up. “Wait, we’re going to your place? Darcy’s place? Are you crazy?”
“It’s closest. Jenna, you’re green. We have to get you somewhere, fast.”
“No! What if Darcy comes home?”
“It’s noon, she won’t be there ‘til at least eight,” said Eric. “Just relax. Here, lay down.”
As Jenna gingerly laid her head in Eric’s lap, trying to keep her breakfast bagel down, she tried to process this information. They were going to Darcy’s apartment. His apartment. This had never been an option, for obvious reasons. She’d always wondered what his at-home life looked like, what his bedroom looked like, where his things were, how he moved in those surroundings.
The cab pulled up to the huge 1800s Renaissance Revival building, and Eric got a shaky-legged Jenna to the double doors. He gave the portly doorman a pound and, in his ear, whispered, “What’s good, Raul. Forget you ever saw her here, okay? I’ll bring you those J’s you liked. For your son. I only wore them once.” Raul gave the thumbs up sign and grinned. And then, holding Jenna’s hand, he led her around the lobby’s imposing staircase to the elevators, where they went up to the seventh floor.
When they entered the apartment, it was like stepping into boutique hotel in Milan. It was airy and all-white, punctuated with sleek mahogany floors, doors, and staircases, dazzling objet d’art chandeliers; and sculptural plum and gold furniture. There were no family pictures on the walls, nothing personal at all. The apartment was arrestingly chic—but cold, spare, and uninviting.
Eric led Jenna behind the subway-tiled, white marble countertop kitchen and into a large, loft-like bedroom, with an ultra-modern bathroom. His bedroom. The space itself was lovely. But, as Jenna noted with almost-numb astonishment, it was the room of a kid who’d just come home from college, and had left it untouched since high school.
Eric had two desks that were overrun with film research books, textbooks from Art & Design HS, yearbooks, marble-faced composition pads filled with class notes, and all kinds of school miscellanea. There were wall-to-wall Nike, Adidas and Puma boxes. He had a coat rack full of baseball caps in a corner, and posters of Kobe Bryant taped to the wall. There was a pile of unfolded laundry on a director’s chair. An empty pizza box.
For the first time, it truly hit Jenna how young he really was. The bedroom was what broadcasted his youth—not the video games, not the Millennial speak, not the fact that when he bent over, nothing happened to his stomach (not even the eensiest pooch of skin). It looked like the lair of a virgin—of an early teen just graduated from Little League and Power Rangers. It was Theo Huxtable’s season-one bedroom. It wasn’t the bedroom of a middle-aged woman’s life partner.
Eric ran her a hot bath in his sunken tub. While she soaked, he sat on top of the toilet next to the tub, his feet up on the sink. She was too peaky to talk, so he just kept her company as she languished in the water. Closing her eyes, she sunk down as far as she could without drowning—and stayed there until the water went tepid. She willed the universe to deliver an easy solution for her and Eric. Something that made sense, something she could live with. Nothing came.
After almost an hour, she got out of the tub and Eric put her in one of his wife beaters and a pair of boxer shorts. In vain, Eric was trying to figure out how to make her feel better. He’d held her, stroked her hair, given her tea –-but she was just sitting there, on top of his desk, leaning back against the wall, looking listless and barely speaking. He felt crushingly inadequate.
He also felt a looming sense of dread.
“Should I get you some DayQuil? Maybe you have the flu.”
“No, I’m okay. The bath helped.”
“You’re not okay, though. What can I do?”
“I don’t think you can do anything,” she said. “For a really long time. Too long.”
“What do you mean?”
“What I want with you, you can’t give me right now.” Jenna saw Eric stiffen, as if preparing for a blow. “You asked me to admit it on the pier. And I couldn’t. Because what I want is unrealistic,” she said. “I didn’t want to burden you with my silly fantasies. But the truth is, I’d love to marry you. I want a little me-and-you. A baby with your height and…. and my taste in accessories. And I know it can’t happen, but I think about it every fucking day.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” asked Eric. “Nothing you could say would be a burden. It feels like shit when you realize the woman you thought you were making happy is keeping a massive issue from you. I felt ridiculous at that party.”
“I’m sorry for that,” she whispered.
“Do you…should we…maybe we could, like, could have a baby.” Eric could barely form the sentence.
“Are you out of your mind?”
“Why not?” he said, grasping at straws. “People procreate in weird circumstances all the time. Look at my horrible mother. I turned out fucking incredible.”
“There’s no way, at this stage of your life, that you could be a father.”
“I could! I like kids. What if we had one like May, can you imagine?”
“Honey, be serious. You couldn’t handle it.”
As much as he wished it weren’t true—he had to agree with Jenna. He smoked weed constantly, ate pizza for every meal, watched too much PornHub and went out every night he wasn’t at her house. These were not dad-ly qualities. His main two focuses were his career and Jenna—the rest of his life was one massive question mark. When he had a kid, he wanted to be established.
He wanted to approach fatherhood with thoughtfulness and dedication. He wanted to be an ABC Family sitcom dad. And until he felt like he’d be great at it, he shouldn’t do it.
“No, I couldn’t handle it,” he said, quietly. “There’s no way I could have a baby. How? I can’t even fold my laundry.”
They lapsed into fraught silence. Eric could feel her slipping away, and couldn’t bear it—so he tried to distract them from the heaviness of the conversation.
“I can’t believe you’re in my room. This is mad surreal. Like in a one-of-these-things-don’t-belong way. Like if Joe Biden appeared in one of our editorial meetings.”
“Speaking of StyleZine,” started Jenna, “we won’t be there forever. Let’s say something huge comes out of South by Southwest for you. Let’s say I get this job at Fordham. If we didn’t have the Darcy issue anymore, what would happen to us?”
“We wouldn’t have to be a secret.” He shrugged. “We’d just be together. We’d just…hang out.”
“Just hang out?” Jenna felt on the verge of madwoman laughter. “Eric, when you’re with me do you reflect on us at all? Or is this just a fun adventure?”
“Of course I’ve thought about this.”
“Then where do you see us a year from now?”
He paused. “Umm…can I get back to you?”
“See?” said Jenna. “It’s been easy for us to blame Darcy, like we can’t fully be together because of her. We act like Darcy’s the villain, but…”
“She is the villain.”
“She’s a villain, but she’s not the villain. Bad timing is.”
Eric snorted. “Bad timing never flashed her boob to Dave Getty’s dad at his bar mitzvah.”
“Is everything a joke to you?” Jenna was suddenly, blindingly angry. “No, that really happened!”
“You can’t just wisecrack your way through life, Eric! At some point you’ll have to grow up.” She slid off of the desk and started pacing. “I can’t do this.”
Eric followed her. “Do what?”
“I can’t just ‘hang out’ with the love of my life. It would never be enough.”
“Enough for what?” Eric’s voice was hectic.
“I’ll be forty-one in five minutes. And then forty-two, and forty-three, and you’ll still be in your mid-twenties. Who knows when you’ll be ready to settle down? You have no idea what it’s been like. Being so in love with you that I’m willing to let go of something so vital to me.”
“I didn’t know being with me was such a sacrifice.”
“That’s not what I’m saying!”
“Jenna, what are you saying?”
“I think we need to break up.” He stared at her in disbelief. “You can’t be serious.”
“I am,” she said, clutching her stomach. Looking at him was making her dizzy. Her heart, the emotional, unthinking part of her, was desperate to stay—to lock herself in a room with him forever—but her brain knew she couldn’t.
“You really want to break up with me?”
“Nothing’s worse than the idea of me without you,” she said, her voice breaking. “I don’t even know how I’m going to survive. You’re everything.”
“Then…why…what…”
“Eric,” she whispered, her heart breaking.
“How am I gonna get through the day? What’ll I have to look forward to? What purpose will I have? I mean…who else even knows me?” His face crumbled.
“Don’t,” she sobbed, moving toward him. He stepped backwards, crying and furious about it. Embarrassed, he swiped away the tears before they had a chance to fall.
“What was the point of falling in love with you if I couldn’t keep you?”
“Don’t you think I feel the same way? But Eric, I’ve wanted a baby my whole life.”
“Fuck babies. I just want you.”
“I want you too, but love isn’t always enough.”
“What else is there?”
“Life! Let me ask you something. We’ve been hiding from Darcy, but I still tried to introduce you to my world. You know my best friends. You even know May. But I’ve never experienced your life outside of me. I’ve only met Tim once, because I forced you to bring him to my house. All those clubs you go to, the parties, the concerts. Darcy would never be at any of those places, and yet you never asked me to go. You clearly don’t see me fitting into your world either.”
He threw up his hands. “You’re breaking up with me ‘cause you wanted to go to a Lil Wayne concert?”
“Eric!”
“No, don’t you see how stupid this is? Love is all that matters. You and me.”
“That’s a very young way of thinking.”
“Now I’m immature.”
“You’re inexperienced.”
“Okay, voice of experience. Why don’t you explain to me what it takes to sustain an adult relationship. Since your big-girl instincts worked out so well for you before.”
“Excuse me?”
“Is this about Brian? Is this your way of getting rid of me to go back to him?”
“You know there’s nothing between us!”
“Yeah okay,” he said, not fully believing her. He shook his head, trying to understand what was happening. “Was this always the plan? Was it just my job to fuck you till you got your swagger back? Till you felt hot enough to go get the forever guy?”
“Don’t do this.”
“No, tell me. Who exactly do you want? Break down your after-Eric plan. Is it like, a Wall Street nigga? Engagement in four months, pregnant six months after that? A wedding in the Times, an Upper West Side penthouse and the PTA? Will that make you happy? No, you’ll be bored and repressed and stuck with some bullshit ass suit you can’t talk to, who’ll never see you, who couldn’t even begin to know how to make you come till you fucking cry. I’m your air, Jenna. Me. I know where you live.” He pushed her in the chest with his index finger, hard, just over her heart. She stumbled backwards.
“Yeah, whatever.”
“Look at me, goddamnit, and stop trying to hurt me.”
Eric glanced at her, and then focused on some unknown point on the floor.
“You do know where I live, so you know better than that. All those things—the house, the PTA—I wish I could have them with you,” said Jenna. “An after-Eric plan? I’m not leaving you to go find someone else.”
Eric looked genuinely confused. “Well, where are you gonna get the baby from? CVS?”
Jenna’s whole body slumped. She couldn’t explain her plan, because she had no idea what it was. “I love you so much, Eric. But you’re not ready for what I need.”
Eric exhaled, defeated. Jenna watched him turn this over in his head.
“Could I beg you to stay?”
“You could,” said Jenna. “And I would. But I’d always feel like something was missing.”
“That’d kill me,” he said, his voice barely audible. “I wish I could be everything you want.”
“You are. Just twenty years too early.”
Backing up, Eric sat down on the side of his bed and put his face in his hands. “This doesn’t feel real.”
He went completely silent for minutes. “Say something,” she pleaded.
He looked up. “People search in vain forever to find what we’ve got. I don’t know shit about anything, Jenna, and I might be inexperienced, but I know you’ll never love anyone like you love me.”
“I won’t,” she whispered.
“And yet you can leave me so easily for a baby you don’t have and a husband you’ve never met. I’m here, I’m real, and I just lost to a goddamned fantasy. I must’ve never really had you at all.”
There was a blank concentration on Eric’s face, like he was already attempting to erase Jenna from his memory. He didn’t want this pain. He couldn’t take it on. “You should go,” he said.
Jenna nodded, eyes cloudy with tears. She couldn’t expect him to understand. She started roaming around the room, looking for her clothes. After about ten seconds, the realization of what was happening hit Eric—and he bolted over to her, crushing her against his chest. She locked her arms around him, weeping.
“You are my insides,” she rasped. “You have to know that.”
“Don’t go yet,” he said, his voice anguished, choked. “Stay with me. Just for a little while. I can’t let you go yet.”
They climbed into Eric’s bed, the one he’d slept in since he was a child—and they curled up, spooning in the fetal position. Over the next two hours, they lay there lost in unified, but silent despair. As the truth of their disentanglement—that they weren’t going to have each other anymore—became real to them, the sting sharpened by the minute. The next day, Jenna would have faint bruises on her arms from how tightly Eric held onto her.
Eric’s scars weren’t the kind anyone could see.