Chapter 16

Julia

The loft was in an old building in Tribeca. There was a freight elevator, which he used sometimes for moving his oversize canvases, but we took the narrow metal staircase. He had the whole second floor—half for his living space, half for his studio.

I started to knock on the unmarked metal door, but Elizabeth said, “Don’t bother. No one can hear you.” She pulled a jangling ring of keys from her purse.

Saturday night, the night of the big party. She’d shown me pictures of Donald Gates, and he looked exactly the same in real life: unkempt gray hair, paint-stained cargo shorts and plastic Crocs, a belly that strained against his T-shirt. But his voice was deep and booming, and even from a distance, I could see the brightness in his eyes. He had a pipe clamped between his teeth. He looked like the king of his small kingdom.

“Donald,” she said. “This is my sister, Julia.”

“Julia. Lovely. Elizabeth talks about you all the time.”

“Did the frames arrive this afternoon?” she asked.

He sighed. “They got the order wrong. We have to send them back.”

The apartment was one big undivided space, vast and pleasantly chaotic. A kitchen in one corner, with a metal sink as big as a bathtub. A long wooden table in the middle of the room covered in dripping, flickering candles. A massive living area with mismatched couches and armchairs grouped around rugs and coffee tables. A thick slab of a sliding wooden door, standing partially ajar, opened into the studio.

“I’ll show you the studio later,” Elizabeth said, pouring us each a glass of wine at the island in the kitchen. “It’s pretty spectacular.”

“So this is where you work?”

“Most days. He’s getting ready to mount a new show at a gallery in Chelsea, so we’re over there sometimes, prepping the space. Here. You should meet the others.”

Donald Gates had several assistants working for him. Some, like Elizabeth, were on summer break from college. Others were closer to my age, young artists pursuing their own careers in their spare time. They were sitting at the long wooden table watching a skinny Asian boy roll a joint. “Hey, guys, this is my sister, Julia. She’s visiting for a while,” Elizabeth said as we slid next to them on the bench. The others looked up and said hello in unison.

I’d been skeptical about tagging along. It made me feel so old, the idea of following my younger sister to this downtown loft. Elizabeth is cooler than me, I’d always known that, but I wasn’t sure if I was ready to have it rubbed in. She already seemed to know the city better than I ever had. But I was skeptical for another reason, too. Those orbiting the great Donald Gates would surely resort to insufferable pretension when they got together. The thought made me cringe: lofty theories and showy name-dropping, a posture of sophistication, conjuring—for me, at least—the ugly ghost of previous seductions.

But as I sipped my wine and listened to their patter, I found I was wrong. They talked about their work with a weary professionalism, like union members down at the local. The walls in the Chelsea gallery weren’t right for the kind of mounting they usually used. Pearl Paint was out of Donald’s preferred brush. Donald wanted to finish a big series, and they were all going to have to work late to get it done. The work wasn’t about pretension. It was about humble logistics. Theirs was a mild sort of complaint, and I could tell that Elizabeth and her coworkers actually took pleasure in it. It was the breaking down of something big into a series of finely grained tasks, like glass melting into sand, something you could sift through your fingers.

The skinny Asian boy handed me the joint. I took a small toke before passing it. I didn’t want to get too high or too drunk. I’d gotten to New York a day earlier, on a sweltering Friday afternoon, and that was overwhelming enough on its own. I tilted my head up. The ceiling of the loft was so high that I could barely see it. Donald had bought the space in the 1970s, when the city was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. I tried to imagine what it would be like to live in one place for so long. Keeping your head turned to the light, letting the seasons change and the decades pass, doing your work.

A little later, when we stood to get another drink, Elizabeth led me to the wooden door. “Don’t tell anyone,” she said. “We’re not really supposed to bring other people back here.” She made sure no one was watching, then we slipped through the opening.

The noise of the party vanished behind us. The studio was even bigger than the living space. The dim light that filtered through the windows gave just enough illumination to see by. The room had the patina of long use: paint-splattered floor, walls spidered with cracks, empty tubes and crusty brushes. But the artwork hovered above and separate from the ordinary mess of the room. Donald Gates was known for his big, aggressive, abstract canvases, a throwback to an earlier era. “You can get closer,” Elizabeth said, nudging me forward. I felt drawn to the paintings like a magnet to iron. The thick and tactile smears of paint. The blend and contrast of colors. They were so beautiful, but so ordinary, too. It was just paint, applied by the human hand. They glowed, gently, through the darkness. I couldn’t believe that something that revealed itself to be so simple, when seen up close, had the power to move me so much.

“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” Elizabeth said. “It’s hard to turn away.”

“Exactly.”

“He’s just a guy. He sleeps, eats, breathes just like the rest of us. Gets grumpy, makes stupid jokes. But then he does this, and I realize I have no idea what’s going on inside his head. How he comes up with it.”

“It’s so beautiful.”

“I know.” A beat later: “We should get back to the party.”

The night continued. Guests arrived bearing bottles of wine and gifts of food. Some were young, like us, but many were closer to Donald’s age. The gathering felt like an assortment of friendships collected over a long period of time, like a plant shooting off vines in radius. As the hours passed, the room gradually quieted until it was only the lingerers with their empty glasses. Donald was holding forth from a high-backed velvet chair, a shaggy mutt curled at his feet. Elizabeth stood up, stretched, and yawned. “I’ll say good-bye, and then we can go, okay?”

Despite the late hour, in bed back at Elizabeth’s apartment, I couldn’t sleep. I kept remembering how Elizabeth had looked, when she said good-bye to Donald. The dog awoke, his tail thumping the floor when Elizabeth reached down to scratch his ears. Donald patted Elizabeth on the shoulder. Together they looked like a version of home. Elizabeth had found the tiny nook in the world that was shaped just for her. She possessed a sense of belonging that seemed so rare to me in this city. But I’d encountered it before; a path that I’d been too foolish to pursue. I turned on the bedside lamp. My wallet was sitting on the dresser, and inside it was the business card I’d been hanging on to all these months. I took it out and stared at it for a long time.

In the morning, the card fell loose when I stood from the bed. I double-checked the time—well past noon on a Sunday. A perfectly reasonable time to call. I took a deep breath and dialed.

  

I hadn’t been planning to stay longer than the weekend. My tote bag held a few changes of clothing, my phone charger, a book, and that was it. I took the train down midday on Friday, and I had a return ticket for Monday morning. Rob sounded nonchalant when I called. “Okay,” he said. “No worries. I gotta go. See you around, Julia.”

Elizabeth met me at her apartment on Friday afternoon. “If you want to shower, the shower’s weird,” she said, showing me around. “The faucet is on backwards. Let’s see…help yourself to whatever’s in the fridge. You can use my computer if you want. I have to go back to the studio for a few more hours, but maybe we can get takeout or something for dinner. Oh, and I already changed the sheets on the bed for you. You’re welcome.”

I smiled. Despite the grubby Chinatown setting and Elizabeth’s budding artistic pursuits, her habits were reflexive—the manners of a good hostess, which our mother had instilled in us. The apartment was small, but it was sunny and clean, the window propped open to let in the breeze. A bouquet of bodega carnations sat on the bookshelf. Her roommate’s bed, where I’d be sleeping, was neatly made with hospital corners. I’d taken a nice bottle of wine from my parents’ collection and stuck it in my bag as a housewarming gift. We’d drink it later, on the roof, with our cheap dinner.

I had an e-mail on my phone from Abby. She and Jake were in Barcelona. We’d promised each other that we’d Skype at least once a week while she was on her European jaunt. Her e-mail asked if I wanted to talk that afternoon around 4:00 p.m., their nighttime in Spain. It was 3:52. I opened Elizabeth’s computer and logged on, and soon the computer chimed with the sound of an incoming call.

“Abby?”

“Buenas noches, amiga!”

“Hey, you’re practically fluent!”

She laughed, her voice echoing as it traveled the span of the Atlantic.

“Are you guys having fun?”

She sighed, or I think she sighed. I couldn’t tell with the lousy audio connection. “Holy shit, Jules, it’s amazing. I’m quitting my job and never leaving.”

“How long are you there?”

“Barcelona for another two nights. Then Valencia next week, then Málaga, then we’re going over to Morocco.”

“Where’s Jake? How is he?”

“Too much wine at dinner. He passed out. He’s good. We’re”—she smiled, glancing down—“I’m really happy. Things are really good.”

“Oh, my God, you’re blushing. When’s the wedding?”

“Shut up.”

“You know, I’m the reason you guys met. Dibs on maid of honor, right?”

“All right, all right. Hey, what about you? Where are you? I don’t recognize it.”

“In New York. I’m staying at Lizzie’s.”

“Jules! You had to wait until I was gone, huh?”

“It’s just for a few days. I’m going home on Monday.”

“Why such a rush?”

“Well,” I said, looking around the tiny apartment. “For one, I don’t live here anymore. And I’m staying in Lizzie’s roommate’s bed. She’s back on Monday.”

“You should stay longer. You can stay at my place. It’s just sitting there.”

“You didn’t find a subletter?”

She shrugged. “Too much of a hassle. My rent is cheap. Jules, I’m serious. You should stay there. What else are you going to do? Aren’t you bored to death up in Boston?”

“But your roommate—”

“Cat won’t care. You know she practically lives with her boyfriend.”

It seemed too crazy, too all-at-once. “I don’t know. Let me think about it.”

“I’m going to e-mail Cat now. I’m gonna say that you’ll call her tomorrow and get the keys, okay? I’ll send you her number and stuff. Hey, have you talked to Evan lately?”

“Evan?” His name felt funny when I said it out loud. “No. Why?”

“Well, are you going to see him? Now that you’re back?”

“I doubt it. We haven’t talked since December.”

Abby was quiet on the other end. I thought the video had frozen, but I could see the flicker of her eyes. Part of me was tempted to change the subject, avoid the Evan minefield, but I remembered what Abby had said on the phone. Enough of this repressive WASP bullshit. She was right. “Okay, spill. What’s up?”

“I saw him. The other week. At a party.”

“You saw Evan? How is he?”

“Are you sure you want to hear?”

My stomach dropped. He was with another girl. Or he’d launched into a tirade against me. Or both. But I needed to know, all of a sudden. Evan. The thought of him filled me with an aching curiosity. “Yeah. Tell me.”

“He’s good, actually. He has a new job. Spire let him go. They let a bunch of people go. It sounded like things were pretty rough for a while.”

“Where’s he working?”

“Brace yourself. He’s a hockey coach.”

“You’re joking.”

“At some summer program up in Westchester. It’s sort of temporary while he figures out what he’s going to do. I guess he got a bunch of severance from Spire. He seems to like it, though. He said the kids are great.”

“Is he still living in our old place?”

“I think so. Jules, listen. You should call him. Or at least let him know you’re back in town. Don’t you think that’s only fair?”

Fair. I was glad for the shitty video connection, disguising the hot beginnings of tears. I could only think of that night, Evan making it so clear that he didn’t want to see me again. Fair wasn’t a factor.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Abby. Did he…um, did Evan—”

“Did he ask about you?” She shook her head. “I think he wanted to. I mean, you know Evan. He’s so Canadian. He probably didn’t want to be rude and put me on the spot. But so what? Call him. Life is too short. Hey, so I’m sending you Cat’s number. Go get the keys from her. Deal?”

“Deal.” I smiled. “I miss you.”

“I miss you, too. I’m glad you’re back.”

That night, on the sticky tar roof of her apartment building, I told Elizabeth about Abby’s idea. Part of me was hoping for one last exit ramp, for Elizabeth to raise her eyebrows and say it was crazy. But instead she exclaimed that it was a brilliant idea, and she clinked her plastic cup of wine against mine. I wondered how my parents were going to take the news. I’d have to ask my mother to send down a box of clothes.

“This is great, Jules,” Elizabeth said, crumpling the wrappers from our banh mi into a tight, waxy ball. “It’s going to be a great summer.”

  

On Sunday, Cat opened the door. We’d met a few times, through Abby.

“That’s all you have?” she said.

I shifted my tote bag on my shoulder. “Yup. For now.”

She showed me around their West Harlem apartment quickly, apologizing for her abruptness, but she was on her way downtown to meet friends for dinner. “That’s the thing about this neighborhood,” she said, responding to a text, slipping on her sandals, tying her hair back in a bun, a flurry of motion. “I love it, but it’s so far from everything. Anyway, I sleep at Paolo’s most nights. He’s in the East Village. It’s just easier.”

I spent a lot of time walking that first week. I had nothing else to do. I woke up in the morning, and it was always the first thing I realized: there was nothing I had to do that day. But this was different from how I’d felt in Boston. Then, the emptiness of the day stretched before me like a punishment. The discipline of my routine was a way of combating the loneliness, the reading and running and walking the dog like beads on a rosary. But at Abby’s I woke to an empty apartment, and the emptiness actually felt good. Peaceful. Every morning was different. Sometimes I’d make coffee in the kitchen, drinking from Abby and Cat’s mismatched mugs. Other mornings I’d go to the diner on the corner, watching the sidewalk traffic over eggs and bacon. Or I’d set out on a long walk to some unknown destination and pick up things on the way. Coffee from a Cuban restaurant, milky and sweet. A hot, spicy samosa for breakfast at 11:00 a.m., because I could do whatever I wanted.

Was it that the city had changed since I left? Was it such a different place, altered by the events of the previous year—the collapse of the economy, the election of a new president? Maybe it was, in small ways. The quieted construction sites, halted until the money started flowing again. The real estate listings, marked down further and further. The miasma of worry that hovered in the subway cars, nervous and desperate job seekers, commuters distractedly thinking of their 401(k)s. But mostly, life went on. Before long, it would be back to normal. The market would rebound. Apartment prices would pause, catch their breath, then resume their relentless climb.

But my city, my New York, was different. It was empty of the people I had known, of the associations I had clung to before. Abby was gone, on another continent for the summer. Evan was living his own life. Adam had surely moved on to another girl. Elizabeth was busy with work. This, too, was different from what I’d felt the summer before: neglected, and bored, and constantly waiting. Waiting for Evan to get home, waiting for his attention to refocus on me, waiting for him to fill whatever this vacuum was. Waiting, and wanting, for someone else to solve my problems.

I walked down Frederick Douglass Boulevard, near Abby’s apartment, or through the twisting blocks of the West Village, or down the Bowery, or along the Battery. One day I walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and along the promenade in Brooklyn Heights, looking at the city from a new angle. The skyscrapers glittered in the late afternoon sun; the harbor was dotted with the white slashes of sailboats; the spray from a Jet Ski refracted the light. I could pick out Jake’s apartment building, the balcony where Abby and I had stood during his party the previous summer.

Through it all, I began to see how badly I’d gotten things wrong. I kept looking for salvation in other people. I kept waiting for something else to come along. But that was never going to be the solution. The solution wasn’t going to be Rob, either. It wasn’t going to be staying at home, listening to my parents. I was lonely because I was alone—because everyone was, and no one could solve that for me. I could only learn to solve it for myself. For once, that knowledge didn’t feel oppressive. I walked through the dusk back across the bridge to Manhattan. I didn’t know where that realization pointed me. But for the moment, I let myself be content with it, with knowledge divorced from action.

I saw Elizabeth for dinner every couple of days. We’d eat something cheap and easy in her apartment, pasta with butter or scrambled eggs with cheese. I ate a lot of my meals alone, on bar stools or park benches. I liked the way it felt. I was free to observe the city, uninhibited because no one was observing me. I’d been slow to appreciate the invisibility New York grants. No one cares what you do, and that’s a good thing. I felt more alive that week than I’d felt since graduation. Or maybe even further back, since that summer in Europe. In the middle of that first week, my mother sent a box of clothes to Abby’s apartment. In among the T-shirts and sundresses she had tucked a note, written in her delicate script on a sheet of her monogrammed stationery. Jasmine was cleaning out the kitchen drawers, and she found this old disposable camera. She got the pictures developed—I thought you might want them. We miss you. It’s very quiet here without you. xxx, Mom.

I walked, and I walked. I walked down the West Side a lot. I could pass Adam’s apartment building on Riverside Drive, and it was surprisingly easy—I felt nothing. I finally acknowledged what I’d been carrying around for so long, and I had started to make my peace with it. But the one neighborhood I avoided was the Upper East Side. I didn’t even like to cross the invisible midline of Central Park. I worried about what might happen if I ever ran into Evan. What scared me was the possibility that I could inflict more hurt. That there was more damage to be done. That Evan and I might bump into each other, and I would say or do something that only made things worse.

I knew what was on that camera that Jasmine had found. I kept the unopened envelope of pictures on the desk in Abby’s room. Over the following few days, it gradually disappeared underneath an accumulation of receipts and spare change. I didn’t forget about it. I would open it eventually. But I wanted to take my time.

  

Sara Yamashita was waiting for me in a booth at the back when I walked into Balthazar at 12:30 on Wednesday. She stood up and kissed me on the cheek, smelling like mint and cigarettes. It had taken her a moment to place my name when I’d called, the Sunday before. A pause, then recognition. “Julia! Of course. Adam’s friend. I always wondered what happened to you.”

The room was buzzing, the mirrored walls reflecting a sea of attractive faces. “Have you been here before?” she asked, stirring a packet of sugar into her iced tea. “I’m getting the cheeseburger. You can’t go wrong with that.”

“I’ll do the same,” I said, closing my menu.

“So you went back to Boston? What happened?”

“It’s a long story.”

“Well,” she said, spreading her arms. “That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?”

I had never really told anyone the full truth. Adam knew, and Evan knew. Abby, my parents, other friends—they knew about the breakup, but they didn’t know what had triggered it. No one searched for a precise, time-stamped reason amid the rubble. But Sara was different. She knew about me and Adam. I wouldn’t be able to leave him out of the story. It was why I forced myself to stick to the plan, even when gripped with nausea on the walk to lunch. If I didn’t take this chance, I wasn’t sure I ever would.

“Was it something to do with Adam?” Sara asked. “You’re not still seeing him, are you?”

“Yes. And no. We’re not still seeing each other. Adam is part of the reason I left last year.” I took a deep breath and told her the whole story. My relationship with Evan. The things that started going wrong. Adam’s reappearance in my life at exactly the right time. Everything Evan confided in me and the way I’d repeated it. And then, eventually, the implosion. By then our food had arrived. Sara listened attentively, nodding and asking a question every now and then. She didn’t dispense excessive sympathy or judgment or outrage. She just listened until I was finished.

“Wow,” she said. “Holy shit. You must be hungry after that.”

I nodded and picked up my burger. I was hungry. Starving, actually.

“You seem like you’re doing okay, though. All things considered.”

“I am. I think so, at least.”

“God. I wish I could say I was surprised.”

“You’re not? Has he—”

“Has he done stuff like this before? Yes. Unfortunately.”

I swallowed a bite of my burger. “To you?”

“Maybe never as bad as this. But he’s just shady, you know? We were dating freshman year, and I applied to an internship in the city for the summer. I asked him to read my cover letter—you know, proofread it, edit it. He took a long time to give it back to me. Like, a week, two weeks. He kept saying he was busy, but he’d get to it. When I finally gave up and went ahead and applied, I found that they’d already filled the position. Another Yale student.”

“Adam?”

“He was like, why are you pissed? He acted like I was totally nuts. Then he broke up with me two days later. But you know what? This shit’s going to catch up with him eventually. I’ve seen him around a few times since the Spire story. He’s insufferable. But he knows this was a fluke. His editors are already asking for more. They want their genius reporter boy to keep working his source. Which is you, I guess.”

I pictured Adam squirming in his editor’s office. Sara smiled.

“Yeah,” she said. “Exactly. I’m sure he’s spinning the bullshit for them as fast as he can.” She dragged a french fry through a hill of ketchup. “But you came back, huh? Do you know what you want to do?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. This stretch, as nice as it was, wasn’t going to last forever. Within the hour, most people in this restaurant would push back from their tables and return to their offices, where they’d continue carrying out whatever slight rearrangement of the world their jobs demanded of them. But they were doing it. They were in it. They had found a way to fit themselves into the flow of time. I poked at the remains of my burger. “I’m still figuring it out,” I said. “I’m staying at a friend’s place for a while. I guess I’ll start applying to jobs soon.”

Sara cleared her throat. “Can I give you some advice?”

“Of course.”

“I’m an only child. I never had an older brother or sister or anything like that. You’re the oldest?” I nodded. “Right, so you can understand. I always wished someone had warned me about what it was like after college. How weird things are. And I had it really easy. My parents are connected. I got a job right after I graduated. I had nothing to complain about. But I still felt like shit. No one told me how hard it was going to be. It sounds like you went through this last year, too. You can relate.”

She leaned back, letting the waiter clear our plates. “Dessert? Coffee?” he asked, glancing toward Sara. “Two coffees?” she said. Then she continued.

“What I mean is there’s nothing wrong with you. You had a shitty job, a shitty guy who messed things up for you. But that happens. You can’t really avoid that stuff. It’s not easy, figuring out what you want. It’s really hard. And I mean what you want, not what your friends want, not what someone else wants.”

I was quiet. She paused. “Is this making sense?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess I just—I know what you’re saying, but I don’t know…how do you actually do it? I mean, how do you figure that out?”

“Well,” she said, sitting up straight. Then she laughed. “This is kind of silly. I’m, like, two years older than you. Tell me if I’m being obnoxious.”

“No, not at all.”

“Well, I don’t know. It takes a while. It’s trial and error. But you just have to start doing it. And you have to trust yourself, to know what matters to you. You’re a smart girl. You’re going to be fine. Don’t let other people think they know better.”

The waiter set the coffees in front of us, two china cups quivering in their saucers. Sara tore open three sugar packets at once and emptied them into her coffee. “I have such a sweet tooth,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s terrible.”

Time seemed to slow down—the dissolve of the milk into my coffee, the clink of the spoon against the cup, the breeze from the door opening at the front of the restaurant, the grains of sugar falling from between Sara’s fingertips into the black liquid. I thought about what Sara had said. I thought about the canvases, hovering, in Donald Gates’s studio. I thought about the unopened envelope of photos back at Abby’s apartment. I thought about the loneliness of the spring, which had recently transformed into something else. A purer, simpler feeling. Like the satisfied, heavy-limbed awakening that follows a long night of sleep.

I looked up. Sara wrapped her hands around her coffee cup, waiting for me to speak.

“Thank you for that. It’s really good advice.”

“Is it? I’m not sure it would have actually helped if someone told me that after college. Honestly, I probably wouldn’t have listened.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Please.”

“Why did you ask me to lunch? I mean, last year at the party. I’m grateful, really, but why do all this?”

“You seemed smart. You seemed better than the situation you were in.” She shrugged. “Also, you seemed better than that asshole Adam. I can relate to that. I only wish you had called sooner. We had a job opening a few months ago that would have been great for you.”

My stomach dropped. I had been in Boston, I reminded myself. I hadn’t been planning to move back to New York. “You filled it?”

“I did. I’m sorry, Julia. I wish I had something to offer you now. But things come up. I hear about things through friends. You are looking for a job here, right? You’re staying in New York?

“Yes. Yes, I’m staying.”

“Good,” Sara said, smiling.

  

I saw Cat every few days when she returned to the apartment for a change of clothes or, occasionally, to spend the night. She had tattoos and cool thrift-store outfits, and when I first learned she was a musician, I thought, That makes sense. Then she clarified that she was a cellist, studying at Juilliard. Her boyfriend, Paolo, was the lead singer in an indie band. It was a Thursday night. Cat was standing in the kitchen, eating a bowl of cereal before she headed back downtown.

“You sure you don’t want to come along?” she asked, rinsing her bowl in the sink, opening the fridge. Cat’s visits to the apartment were always crammed with action, a determination to squeeze as much utility as she could from her trip uptown. “They’re playing at the Bowery Electric. It’ll be a great crowd. We’re going out afterward.”

“I think I’m going to stay in. Thanks, though.”

“Text me if you change your mind.” She paused amid her flurry and looked at me. “You know, the drummer—he’s single, and you are totally his type.”

I laughed. “Go, I’ll be fine.” Cat waved as she walked out the door, and then the apartment was quiet again. Cat had lived in this apartment for four years, since she had started at Juilliard, and the place carried the sediment of permanent life: framed posters, painted walls. I could see why she didn’t want to give it up. There was an elaborate sound system in the living room. Cat sometimes plugged in her stereo headphones and listened to recordings of her work, head nodding and eyes scrunched closed, opening only when she paused to scribble down notes.

A towering stack of CDs sat next to the speakers. I don’t know what inspired me that night, after Cat left, to crouch down and examine them for the first time. She had gestured at them before, telling me to play them whenever I liked. A familiar title stood out in the stack. Kind of Blue, which Adam used to play for me. I slid the CD into the tray. A moment later, the music began, filling the apartment. The twinned initial steps of piano and bass, the soft invocation, the shimmering light of percussion, the eventual pierce of the trumpet. Adam liked to put things before me, novels or albums or movies, and when he told me of their greatness I’d nod along, feigning comprehension, letting his gestures guide my response. I must have heard this album a dozen times at his apartment, but that night was the first time I actually listened to it. I let it fill me, like water rising in a glass.

I’d finally opened the envelope of photos that afternoon. I felt myself on the verge of something. My mother would have opened the photos after Jasmine had them developed; it was the only way for her to have known they were mine. I imagined her pulling the first one from the stack, her hand twitching instinctively toward the trash bin. No one would have been the wiser. But instead she had sent them to me. I felt grateful to her in that moment, when I took out the photos for the first time. At least she was letting me decide this for myself.

My digital camera had broken while we were in Rome, two summers earlier. The battery fritzed, refusing to hold a charge. I bought a disposable camera in the train station on our way to La Spezia. We were spending the last week of the trip in the Cinque Terre. The first photo I’d taken, the photo at the top of the stack, was of Evan in Riomaggiore. He was standing on a stone boat ramp that led to the sea, his back to the water, the afternoon light casting his long shadow before him. The boats around him were painted like wooden candy, bright blues and greens and pinks. Evan had resisted when I told him to go stand for the picture. “Come on, Jules, let me take one of you,” he said with a laugh. “You’re the good-looking one in this relationship.” But I shook my head. “This picture is for me,” I said. “I want this for when we get back.”

The magic had faded so quickly. I must have misplaced the camera when I was back at home, unpacking from the summer and repacking for senior year. That by itself wasn’t so remarkable, but I felt a surge of sadness when I sat back onto Abby’s bed and looked at the pictures for the first time. Why hadn’t I missed these? Why had I never thought of that August afternoon on the edge of the Mediterranean, and let that lingering memory spark the recollection of the camera I’d misplaced? I’d never even bothered to miss it. I’d never bothered to appreciate what we had.

Evan looked so peaceful in that picture. His smile was wide and unself-conscious. He had a backpack slung over one shoulder, a cone of gelato in his other hand. The vividness of that afternoon: raising the camera to look through the plastic viewfinder and pausing for a moment. Evan was backlit by the lowering sun, his sandy hair sprayed with golden light. “What is it?” he called over the noise of the motorboats puttering out to sea. A family walked between us, parents trying to corral their children, and I paused for a moment, letting the frame clear. He smiled at me—the smile of someone who knew exactly how lucky he was, in this postcard village more than four thousand miles from home. Finally I pressed the button, and the shutter snapped with a satisfying pop, and I returned the camera to my purse.

The music kept playing, filling the apartment with its mellow swells. I took out the photos again and spread them across the carpet in the living room. I was surprised to find that I remembered almost every single one of them: dinner on the terrace of our B and B in Monterosso; our sunburned faces after a hike one blistering afternoon; on the steps of the Duomo on our last night in Florence. It was Evan’s first time abroad. He was a boy from the middle of nowhere who had decided he wanted more. Who wasn’t satisfied with the path laid before him. I saw, for the first time, the bravery it had taken for him to do all of this.

I had obsessed over it all through the spring, that awful night, the idea of taking back what I had done. But maybe it was time to let that go. Maybe I was seeking an answer to a question that didn’t matter, because it had already happened, because the undoing was impossible. Sara was right. It was a messy, difficult, shitty process—growing up, figuring out what you wanted. Some were lucky enough to figure it out on their own. I could see Elizabeth doing it already. Others were lucky enough to find a partner in the process, someone to expand their narrow views of the world. Abby and Jake, as unlikely as it seemed, were doing just that. But maybe there would always be people like me. Those for whom figuring it out came with a steep cost. I could feel it happening, slowly, in the smallest of steps. The future getting brighter. Where I was that day was in fact better than where I had been a year earlier. But the painful part was admitting what had happened to get me there. The implosion of two lives so that I might one day rebuild mine.

I saw it before I felt it, the darkened spots on the carpet, the drops of water on the glossy surface of the photos. I was crying, but this was different. It wasn’t like the helpless spasms of guilt that had followed the breakup or the crushing anger I’d felt after learning the truth about the Fletchers. I wasn’t crying for Evan or for what I had done to him. I was crying for the person I had been before. That night, the music on the speakers, the night air through the window, the prickle of the carpet against the back of my legs: what washed over me was the realization that I was finally letting go of that girl. The girl who clung desperately to a hope that it would all work out, that everything would make sense if she just waited a little longer, if she just tried a little harder. I let myself cry for a long time. Until, gradually, the spotlight faded to black. The curtain lowered slowly, a silent pooling of fabric against the floor. The hush that followed. The stillness that felt as long as a eulogy.

And then the house lights coming up. The room blinking back to life. And me, alone, surrounded by a sea of empty seats. I stood up and opened the door.

*  *  *

The next morning, I had an e-mail from Sara. We had promised to stay in touch after our lunch.

Julia—so great to see you on Wednesday. A friend of mine is looking to hire an intern for her gallery. It’s part-time, doesn’t pay much, but she needs someone to start ASAP. I told her she should hire you. Can you call her today at the number below? I think you will hit it off. Yours, S.

I left a message for her friend, one of the associate directors at an art gallery in Chelsea. She returned my call an hour later, while I was trying to focus on the crossword puzzle and not stare at my phone too obsessively. Sara’s friend seemed impressed by the Fletcher Foundation on my résumé—“They do really important work. I’m a big admirer of their president, Laurie Silver” (who knew?)—and five minutes later, I was hired. “You can start on Monday?” she asked, and I said yes. “Great. I have your e-mail from Sara. I’ll send you all the details.”

We hung up. I was gratified by how quickly it had happened, but my reaction was more tempered than it had been when Laurie had hired me a year ago. This wasn’t going to be the only answer. The internship didn’t pay much, and I’d have to find another part-time job, or maybe two, to make a livable wage. The gallery didn’t offer health insurance. I’d have to work nights and weekends on occasion. But interns sometimes turned into full-time employees. It was hard work, a fast-paced and demanding job, but if I liked it and could prove myself, there was room to move up. And if I didn’t, if it wasn’t for me, then I could leave with no hard feelings.

It was another beautiful June day. A blue, cloudless sky. I’d e-mail Sara to thank her. I’d tell Elizabeth the good news, and Abby, and my parents—but later. I wanted to be alone with it for a while. I wanted to let the idea sink in. It was past noon when I left the apartment. I bought an ice cream cone for lunch. Eventually I found myself walking through the western edge of Central Park, looping around the edge of the reservoir, down toward the Great Lawn. I lay down on the grass, pulling out the book I’d brought along. I read for a while, then closed my eyes against the brightness. Friday afternoon sounds. People talking into their cell phones as they walked home. A girl reading aloud a magazine quiz to her friend. A couple debating what to have for dinner. I dozed off, and when I woke up the sun had moved toward the Upper West Side. My watch said it was close to 4:00 p.m. As I brushed the blades of grass from my shorts, I found that I had crossed into the eastern half of the park. Past the invisible midline that I’d always been careful not to violate. When I started walking again, I was walking east. I let my feet lead me without focusing on the destination.

They had taken down the scaffolding at the corner of 3rd Avenue. The approach to our block looked different, bare and vulnerable. But our building was the same—the glass door tattooed with handprints, a FedEx slip taped at eye level. I sat down on a stoop on the other side of the street, facing our old entrance. I didn’t really have a plan. I just wanted to look, for a while, at the place I used to call home.

The foot traffic on the street thickened as the hour passed, people coming home from work, their arms laden with dry cleaning or groceries or gym bags. I wondered if Evan was on the train right then, riding back from Westchester. I had talked to Abby on Skype that week. She and Jake had moved on to Morocco, her tan deepening. She asked me whether I had been in touch with Evan. “No,” I said. “I will, eventually. I’m just waiting for the right time.”

“What do you mean? Just do it, Jules. It’s not going to get any easier. Rip the Band-Aid off.”

“I don’t know. I just don’t think he wants to hear from me.”

“Do you want to see him? Do you miss him?”

I nodded. “Yeah. Kind of. I do.”

“Then call him! It’s not that complicated. I’m telling you, I saw him, and he’s okay. Jules, he’s fine. Better, in fact. He hated his old job. You know that.”

The afternoon was slipping into evening. Evan was probably going to be home soon. Maybe Abby didn’t know the full truth of why I was so nervous about calling him, but I could see she had a point, no matter what. It wasn’t going to get easier. If I wanted to see him, if I wanted a chance to stand before him and let him look at me, let myself look at him, I just had to do it. I had to live with whatever the consequences might be.

The light changed on 3rd Avenue. A stream of pedestrians crossed the intersection. Some turned up the avenue, and some turned down. As the crowd thinned, I saw him emerge, like an image sliding into focus. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, the old baseball hat he’d often worn in college. He held a bag of groceries in one hand. I remembered the morning he’d returned from Las Vegas, the eeriness of seeing him down the block. How unfamiliar he had seemed, contorted by his situation into a person I didn’t recognize. I sat on the stoop, perfectly still, and watched Evan walk down the block toward our old apartment—toward his apartment. He still lived there, I reminded myself. I saw what Abby meant. He seemed okay. Happy, even. It was evident, something in the way he slung the grocery bag from one hand to the next with an easy gesture, digging for his keys in his pocket. Evan had a new life, a life he managed to rebuild without me. This was nothing like the morning he’d returned from Las Vegas. The Evan I was watching was the Evan I had always known. The person I had fallen in love with years ago.

He was standing outside the door. He dug deeper into his pocket and wrinkled his brow. Set down his grocery bag and swung his backpack from his shoulders. He unzipped the front pocket, and after a moment of blind groping, he pulled out his keys. He slung his backpack over his shoulder again, and picked up his grocery bag. He must have learned how to cook. I found myself overwhelmed with so much curiosity that I almost shouted his name. There was so much I wanted to know. What he was going to have for dinner that night. What his new job was like. How his day had been. Whether he ever thought about me. Every tiny, mundane detail of his life, every glittering grain of sand that made up the person he had become.

I stood up and started to make my way down the stairs, but Evan had already opened the front door. I had waited too long. He was about to disappear. I was at the curb, about to hurry across, when a cab blasted past, roaring down the block. It slammed on its brakes with a sharp squeal. The driver, stopped, continued to blast his horn at the cars ahead of him. I noticed that Evan, too, had paused because of the noise. One foot propping open the door, the other still outside.

And then he turned, surveying the street. Maybe he was curious whether this minor rip in the neighborhood fabric had been noticed by anyone else. Whether it would be remarked on, acknowledged by a shared shrug with a neighbor. Or whether it was just another passing mishap of city life, fading into oblivion almost as soon as it happened, a tree falling in a forest with no listeners. That’s when he saw me.

“Julia?” he called, raising one hand to shield his eyes from the sun. This was the Evan I had always known, and I could see it on his face already—the recognition of who I was. The understanding of everything that had come before and everything that would come after.

I didn’t know what to say. Not yet. It would take a while, I knew. Maybe a long time. But I crossed the street and climbed the steps. What he said next made me realize that we would get there, eventually.

“Julia,” he said. His steady, light-colored eyes, the eyes that had managed to see the parts of me that I hadn’t known existed. “You came back.”