“And that was that. You guys got home, everybody went to bed, and we woke up this morning having no idea how we were supposed to behave in each other’s presence. We ended things okay, I think. He texted me when he landed, and then again to let me know he’d decided to rent a car and drive home, so we’re okay.” It was like I felt a compulsive need to try to speak our okayness into being.
We were sitting on the wicker sectional, and the lights were still strung, and the propane heater flames were once again dancing, and the moon was reflecting off the city, and I had just tried pho for the first time, but Brynn and Seb’s roof—and New York in general, really—had lost its magic. I had told them everything. And it was strange. I’d known Brynn since birth and Seb for almost a decade now. I’d talked to them both about lots of stuff. Personal things. Embarrassing things. Confidential things. Stupid, inconsequential things. And never once during those conversations had I thought of them as anything other than my dear friends whom I loved and trusted. But as I’d spilled my guts about the day Cole and I had had, the challenges I was facing with him, and the way it had all made me feel, I suddenly felt the full weight of them as a journalistic power duo. They were studying me so seriously and listening to everything I said so intently that I half expected the next question I heard to be a thinly veiled accusation that my failures of leadership had led to widespread corruption and a national crisis of confidence. (Or the Brynn equivalent of that—a confrontation about how I’d lip-synced during the Super Bowl halftime show or something.)
“So . . . that’s it,” I reiterated when neither of them took their eyes off me or opened their mouths to say anything.
“I’m really sorry, hon.”
Let’s be real, that hadn’t been the reaction I’d expected from Brynn. Seb, sure. A resistance to overreaction was pretty much a guarantee with Sebastian Sudworth. But I’d expected Brynn to squeal and swoon and brainstorm plans to make it all work out. I would have placed at least even odds on her jumping up, throwing my things into a bag, calling up Malik, and initiating a Notting Hill sequence at the end of which I asked Cole a question at a press conference. Maybe something to the effect of “If you’re determined to move away rather than stay with me forever, can you at least promise to never fall in love with some woman who, even if she lets us stay friends, I’ll always know you like more than me?” Because that was something the readers of Horse & Hound and I were all quite curious about.
My most recent nightmare scenario involved him falling in love with a gorgeous culinary genius (probably named Charly with a y or Rian with an i) and getting married and moving to Italy, where they would cook and eat and make love under cypress trees, and the next time I saw him he would have children named Giuseppe and Carlotta and I would have to pretend to like the kids, especially Carlotta, whose middle name would be Laila, of course—except with a circumflex over the first a because what else would you expect from a pretentious, man-stealing, life-ruining harpy like Charly Kimball?
“That’s it? You’re not going to jump in and try to fix this?” The question to Brynn hung in the air, but surprisingly I hadn’t been the one to ask it. “What happens next?”
We both faced Sebastian with wide eyes.
“I’m sorry?” Brynn asked him.
He scooted forward on the sofa, his head tilted toward her. “Look, you’re the one who’s been watching this thing play out since you were all on the playground together. They’re your closest friends, and you’ve shipped them harder than . . . I don’t know, Mulder and Scully.”
Laughter burst out of Brynn. “Wow. Thank you for that very special blast from the past.”
“Whatever. I’m just trying to speak your language.”
“Masterfully done, dear.” She peered over at me and raised her eyebrows. “And sure, no one wants this to happen more than I do. But I think Cole just needs some time to process everything. He knows how she feels now, and—”
“But does he?” Sebastian crossed over to the refrigerator to grab a bottle of water. He raised it questioningly, and I nodded, so he threw it behind his back and I caught it effortlessly—a little trick we’d mastered when I was waiting tables and he was working behind the bar at Cassidy’s. He grabbed another for himself, unscrewed the lid, and took a long, leisurely gulp before speaking again. “I think you’re forgetting the one common trait that all men share. All of us. Including the great Cole Kimball.”
I took the bait. “And what might that be?”
He sat back down beside Brynn and shrugged. “Men are dumb.”
Brynn guffawed as she leaned her head on Seb’s shoulder and rested her hand on his knee, but I wasn’t laughing. I was suddenly in studious scholar mode.
I leaned forward, across the patio table from them, and rested my elbows on my legs. “What do you mean?”
Seb stretched his arm around Brynn’s shoulders, and the two of them leaned back. “He’s confused, Laila. Everything that is happening between the two of you right now . . . You’ve already moved all the pieces around. If your relationship was a chess game, you’re Magnus Carlsen.”
I looked at Brynn, who looked as clueless as I felt. “Who?”
Seb exhaled and tried again. “Or what’s-her-name in The Queen’s Gambit. The one who saw all the chess moves on her ceiling.”
“Oh! Beth Harmon?”
He smiled at me and nodded. “Yes. You’re Beth Harmon. And Cole is some kid assuming he can play chess because he already knows how to play checkers. You know that if Cole makes this move, you’ll need to make that move. And you’ve been doing it for years. Most of your life, I would guess.”
“I don’t think I do that.” Even as I said the words, I thought of how I’d gotten us back into our comfort zone at Shake Shack. How I’d defused his panic after he almost kissed me in the kitchen. How I’d created a test tube for our emotions by suggesting the blind-date experiment. “I’ve never meant to do that,” I amended, somewhat horrified at myself.
“No, it’s not a bad thing.” He removed his arm from around Brynn and leaned forward to mirror me. “I didn’t mean it like you’re strategizing or manipulating or anything like that. It’s emotional intelligence. And obviously men as a whole aren’t dumb. Cole’s certainly not. But the fact is most of us run on a simpler operating system than most women. It’s like the old stereotype of men refusing to ask for directions. More often than not, it’s not because we’re stubborn. It’s because we don’t know we’re lost.”
Silence filled the air, apart from the sounds of horns honking and people shouting and sirens zooming closer and farther away. The soundtrack to a life-changing week and a perfect day. Sounds that I had found charming and atmospheric in Cole’s presence, but without him they were coarse and aggressive.
I reached across the table to grab Sebastian’s hand. He brought his other hand in to envelop mine. “Thanks.”
“Of course.” He lowered his eyes, compelling mine to lock with them. “So what do you think? What happens next?”
“What happens next,” I began, “is that I’m going home tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?!” Brynn nudged Seb out of the way and grabbed my hand in both of hers. “No! You can’t! We have you until Wednesday. I thought you could go to Sunup with me on Tuesday. George Clooney is going to be on. George Clooney! And there’s so much we still haven’t had a chance to do and see. I was going to take you to see Hamilton, and you need to have frozen hot chocolate at Serendipity, and—”
“Thank you.” I squeezed her hand, desperately needing her to stop talking before she mentioned any other things I wished I’d thought to do with Cole. “But I don’t want to be here anymore.” All day long I’d been fighting against the urge to give in to the sadness and misery by reminding myself I wasn’t actually losing anything. It was going to be difficult enough to convince myself of that in Adelaide Springs, without him there. In New York, I didn’t stand a chance. “The truth is, without him, I sort of hate it here.”
And why wouldn’t I? New York would always represent what could have been. At least in Adelaide Springs, I could start focusing on the future. There I could focus on what would always be. That was real. That was what mattered.