I force my eyes open and lie back onto a thin, sweat-stained towel, which has fallen, in inconvenient heaps, atop a thick sweat-stained mat. The time between the final vinyasa and the bong of the culturally appropriated bell by a white woman named Feather is always my least favorite part of the class. It’s when you’re meant to lie still, silent, attempting to empty your mind and focus on breathing in the dense air, thick with privilege and millennial body odor. It makes me feel sick. I refuse to be the first to leave so I lie in wait, falling into a sort of sleep paralysis, sweat worming down my neck, my eyes twitching with each unused moment as the to-do list in my head spins like a whirlpool, forever sucking me back in until I inevitably drown.
I truly hate yoga.
My Apple Watch vibrates on my professionally tanned wrist, no doubt reacting to my lowering heart rate, asking if I’m finished and want to see my results. We’re not supposed to bring technology into the yoga studios—there are offensively low-budget signs Scotch-taped to each heavy door, advising us to “gift” ourselves “screenless meditation”—but no one obliges. What’s the point of burning 359 calories if you don’t get an itemized receipt in return—if a tree falls in the forest and all that. There’s a vulnerability that comes from existing without awareness of what’s happening beyond these four purportedly calming off-white walls that for me is more distracting than a slick glance at a vibrating wrist during Downward Dog and choosing to actively ignore it. I’m the one throwing down three hundred and fifty dollars a month to be here. I can do what I want.
During the warm-up—why yoga needs a warm-up, I’ll never understand—I received two calls from an unknown number, which has been running circles in my mind ever since. Generally, I don’t answer unknown numbers; if it’s anything other than a spam call about insurance for my nonexistent car, they’ll leave a voice mail and I’ll have ample time to prepare before returning. No one likes a surprise. But it always provokes curiosity. Especially when I’ve been expecting a call, and I’m stuck in this dull room thinking about it.
There was also a text from Graham asking what I wanted to order for dinner. Sundays are his cheat days, and it will take everything in me to respond whatever you want, babe, instead of demanding a hulking, bloody Angus burger on greasy ciabatta bread with sweet potato fries and onion rings and a pickle so thick and juicy it will take more than two bites to shove down my throat. But I don’t get cheat days—and honestly, the weekend before your wedding should render the concept irrelevant to both parties—so I’ll order a salad, pick off anything even remotely resembling a carb, and ask for oil and vinegar on the side.
Nothing could seem less appetizing as I sit in a pool of my own sweat, running on only lemon water and a chocolate RXBAR.
I could feel Feather closing in on me like a dreadlocked panther in the way you can sense someone undressing you with their eyes from across a dimly lit bar.
“I’m going to move your leg,” she whispers in my ear, so close I can feel the baby hairs on her forehead scratching my eyelid. She likes to “perform stretches,” she calls it, gliding from person to person before she bongs the final bell, gently telling everyone to get the hell out. She’s not my favorite instructor, but I like that she course-corrects your poses and stretches you by telling, not asking. Touching without permission.
Ten fingers coil around my calf, gently folding my leg in half and bringing my knee to my nose. I want her to push harder, press the entire weight of her body on top of me until my hip dislocates. But to my disappointment, she relaxes, and I am able to take yet another breath.
The bun plastered to the top of my head forces my neck into an uncomfortable angle, so once Feather is optimally distracted stretching another self-proclaimed yogi, I shift to the right, resting my cheek on the damp towel, and sliver my eyes open. The woman two inches beside me has long brown hair threaded into a choppy braid and a small bicycle tattooed to the nape of her neck. I’d fixated on her a few times during class—the way her skin softened below her sports bra, how the excess pinched together on each side during Triangle Pose but held its shape in a plank. The way some coarse dark hair poked out from her shorts during Happy Baby. I never thought I’d be the kind of person to work out in a sports bra—or take part in any fad-based exercise cult in the first place—but here I am, just like her, in an overpriced Lululemon set picked fresh for the season like summer tomatoes in the Hamptons.
The woman’s eyes open and she smiles, idly, when she sees I’m looking at her. Her teeth are yellowed in that way everyone’s are, but her forehead holds not one wrinkle. She’s paid good money to look like she’s never worried about anything in her life. My first instinct is to avert my eyes, but instead I smile back. I’ve learned that’s what you’re supposed to do. Then she closes her eyes again, just as Feather tolls the last bell, finally relieving me from this compulsory calm.
Rather than follow the herd of half naked four-packs to the showers, I make my way down the mood-lit hallway to drop my damp towel into the linen collection basket. Then I move into the mat section, attempting to clean mine with an unidentifiable substance simply labeled “mat cleaner” in that half-assed way one cleans knowing someone else will come in and do a better job shortly.
A petite and stout woman in bleach-white scrubs appears from a room across the hall, like a ghost. I think it’s the laundry room, which we’re not supposed to know exists. All that stuff is meant to happen in the shadows, when classes are in session so they can maintain the secret that there are women who aren’t twenty-eight, five foot eleven, and a size two who exist in the world without paying hundreds of dollars to try and change themselves. There’s an image to uphold here, after all.
I watch her approach the dirty towels, replace the full basket with an empty one, and then wheel the full basket back down the hall, a crease in her too-tight scrubs forming on her underwear line as she walks away. She probably had to buy brand-new, crisp white panties for this job. I’m shocked management doesn’t require something a little more seamless.
In the lobby, I grab my sneakers from the cubby near the front desk. My black APLs beetle from the other swanky and vague “performance shoes” because of their pristine condition: stark white soles, untattered knit heel. The same shade of blackest black as my leggings and the fitted sweatshirt I pulled over my head when class ended. I’ve found the state of someone’s shoes in Manhattan implies the state of their bank account.
I peel my phone out of the shoe and scroll through the notifications as I slip them on: links from Lena with last-minute centerpiece ideas (as if the wedding hasn’t been planned to the last, tiniest detail for months, if not years); Graham’s dinner question; emails from Kiley, our office assistant, confirming my meetings tomorrow; and, of course, a voice mail from the unknown number.
As soon as I push through the glass studio doors and onto a particularly bustling Amsterdam Avenue, I feel a chill from my bones outward. It’s unseasonably cold for October, a time when New York City usually sees an additional week or two of summer and everyone walks around in sundresses and shorts, denouncing global warming skeptics while drinking rosé at tables set up on the sidewalks. But after burning calories in a ninety-two-degree room for sixty minutes, it feels like the tundra.
There are hot yoga studios on the Upper East Side, the closest just five blocks from his—well, our—72nd Street apartment. But two years ago, I chose this one, 2.2 miles across the Park. Initially, it was a way to encourage Graham to explore the neighborhood—“meet me for coffee after yoga and we can walk around”—so that maybe he’d want to look into apartments up there, in the buildings occupied by Tina Fey and Jerry Seinfeld and other new money New Yorkers. But his Upper East Side roots are dug too deep for swaying, so I gave up that battle and now use my studio’s location as an excuse to get an extra four-mile run in a few days a week. In anticipation of the size two gown (in traditional sizing, I refuse to acknowledge wedding sizes) that will be sewn onto my body in approximately one hundred and thirty-two hours, I’ve been gradually upping the ante, adding fifty calories to my daily active burn goal every few weeks, which has landed me now at a whopping eight hundred and fifty a day, a feat that’s forced me into two-or three-a-days to pull off.
I fix my AirPods into my ears and play the voice mail as I wait for the light on the corner to change, bouncing up and down on my toes in that performative way joggers do to ensure everyone knows we’re not just wearing pricey athleisure, we’re actual athletes, a step above the rest.
When the woman’s voice comes into my ear, friendly but firm, I stop.
“Hi, this is Sarah Keens with the New York Times’s Vows column, looking for Eliza Bennet. We received the submission for your upcoming wedding and would love to cover it. Please give me a call when you have a moment to talk about some details.”
Check.
I play the message two more times, listening carefully to each word and memorizing her phone number as I make my way closer to the Park. I had been confident when I submitted the form eight weeks ago that it would be enthusiastically accepted. Barring today, I’d read the Vows section every Sunday since our engagement, studying each entry like gospel, memorizing the quirky meet-cutes, the successful second attempts at love, the spontaneous elopements, until I knew exactly how to pitch us.
First, the cliché hook: my name lends itself to potboiler headlines without even trying. Eliza Bennet Marries Real-Life Darcy. People eat that shit up.
Second, the tragic line: everyone loves a Little Orphan Annie who got herself out and up.
Third, the aspirational sinker: I have worked very hard to be exactly how women envision themselves in their perfect lives. No matter how hard you try to fight it, the life you thought you’d have when you were eight is still what you want. Engaged to someone with a high-six-figure income; living in a prewar luxury building that’s exploding with natural light and professionally decorated with just enough accent pieces to claim a coherent “style”; and working a glossy job in public relations wearing heels and pencil skirts with the impressive (though entirely meaningless) title Director of Communications. I am what every woman hopes for, and every man wants. And look, she’s done it by thirty. Some people my age are still getting blackout drunk on a Friday night and hooking up with strangers who drop their condoms on the floor when they’re done, leaving you to scavenge for it in the morning like a rat in a Central Park garbage can.
Not me.
I glide across the Park, replaying the voice mail in my head as I push my fastest mile time in years. That was the last potential hitch in the wedding plans, the last box left unchecked. The last thing that could have potentially tainted the otherwise perfect day. Now there is very little left to do but return the call, and wait.
I make my way past the Mall and the Bethesda Terrace Arcade, where at least two couples are taking engagement photos at all times, until I land on the corner of 72nd Street and Fifth Avenue, satisfyingly out of breath, to start my cooldown. My version of a runner’s high is nearly indistinguishable from that of an addict’s. I’m fully addicted. To the alertness; to the acute feeling of your own cells shrinking exactly where you want them to; to the knowledge that, if I weren’t getting married next weekend, I’ve worked out so much today that I could come home and binge, standing in the cool light of the open fridge, clawing at leftovers until I could throw up, feeling absolutely nothing.
There’s also a power in seeing everyone watch as I pass: I’m too thin to be obviously running for weight loss, and too fast for this to merely be a two-mile jaunt to fill my government-suggested movement necessity for the day. I’m a runner now. I run.
“You’re going to run until you disappear,” Danny, our uniformed doorman, exclaims when he sees me approaching. My strongest appetite is for comments like this: you’re so thin, you’re going to disappear; if you turn to the side, you’ll disappear; you’re going to run until you disappear.
Sometimes I want nothing more than to do exactly that.
“T-minus six days,” I say as he holds the door open and follows me into the lobby. Normally I revel in walking in before men, knowing they’re scoping out my ass, the way my hips move in my jeans, hoping my dress blows just the right amount to see a little bit more. But not Danny. He’s either gay or superabundantly dedicated to whomever that gold ring on his left hand ties him to. Or both. Meanwhile, Graham’s eyes can’t stay away from a woman with grabbable hair or a girl with an innocent face.
When we first started dating I was the girl he looked at that way, but after a few months, when the honeymoon phase wore off, I could see his gaze escape mine and linger on other women for longer than a passing glance. Once, we’d played hooky from work, faking dentist appointments for an early fuck and breakfast at Bluestone Lane on 90th and Fifth. A group of girls from the Catholic high school nearby passed in their plaid skirts, made mini by rolling at the waist until you could practically see the virginity they all so desperately wanted to lose. I watched him watch them, stare at their pore-less faces, skin as tight as rubber bands, then look between their legs with a ferocity I’d never seen on him before. But I wasn’t bothered by it. I didn’t really think twice, if I’m being honest. I’ve spent entire yoga classes oscillating between the protruding crotch on the hot trainee and the bulbous tits waterfalling out of Feather’s sports bra. Attraction is a primal, biological instinct. Refusing that would be like refusing something as basic as hunger or thirst. Right?
But that confidence comes with knowing that Graham would never act on it. He loves me too much. I’m his perfect woman. I made sure of it.
Pressing the elevator button for the twenty-fourth floor has given me immense satisfaction since the day I moved in. We’re penthouse-adjacent: all the benefits of the top, without actually reaching the peak. I’m too young to be so high that there’s nowhere to go but down. Though it does serve as a constant reminder of how fragile this life is. And how far there is to fall if the bubble ever pops.
I can hear the television as soon as I step out of the elevator and into our small semiprivate lobby. There are two apartments this lobby serves, but the other has been vacant since I’ve lived here, so it’s basically just ours. Graham never locks the door and cites this as one of his reasons. I hate it. He argues that’s why we have a doorman and cameras, so we never have to worry about carrying around keys. But if someone wanted to get in to steal our laptops or hide under our beds and murder us, they’d find a way. And it would be made much easier if the door is unlocked.
“Out here,” he yells, as if I’d have trouble finding him in our twenty-three hundred square feet. That’s the point of an open living space, one of the things I loved about this apartment when I first saw it. That I can see him, or know where he is, from basically everywhere, indoors and out. People can’t surprise you that way—can’t sneak up on you when you’re pulling a French fry out of the garbage at three in the morning—if you always know where they are.
I dead-bolt the door behind me and walk through the foyer and into the living room, surprised to find it empty as the television is blasting, a woman in a tight dress pattering on about a football game to no audience. I reach for the remote and turn it off, though the white noise seems to linger. Through the glass double doors, I can spot Graham outside. First just his black-socked feet twisted on top of the glass coffee table. Then, as I move across the living room and closer to our terrace, the rest of him, slouched on the outdoor sectional, a late-afternoon O’Doul’s in his hand.
“Did I leave that on?” he asks, staring at the outdoor television mounted on the brick column in the corner, showing the same objectively hot woman describing a “play” with football terms she seems surprisingly versed in. I guess that’s the point.
He doesn’t care about the answer to his question, so I don’t give him one.
Graham looks exactly like you’d expect someone who rowed at Yale to look. He’s tall, broad, with thick brown hair that will, based on his maternal genes, stay that way until he’s at least sixty-five. He has striking blue eyes, the kind I used to admire on nameless teen stars in the Cosmo magazines I’d steal from the grocery store when I was a kid. He’s a Ken doll of a man, but with a high-power finance job and a wardrobe that consists of only business-to-business-casual, Under Armour running gear, and soft T-shirts from general stores and self-proclaimed “fine dining” restaurants in his hometown.
I don’t know how he can concentrate on the television out here. I always find myself too distracted by the views. Especially as the sun begins to set over the Park.
I perch on the edge of the coffee table and rest my hands on his calves.
“How was it?” he asks, not bothering to make eye contact to talk, but leaning forward to plant a kiss on my cheek.
I shrug. “Transformative.”
He generally laughs about yoga in a way I’d find condescending if I didn’t agree with him. But he’s learned to shut up about it considering I’d never be able to get my leg into that position he likes were it not for my yoga practice.
“Guess what,” I say, patting the top of his legs until I’ve stolen his attention from Ms. Blonde Quarterback Hustle. “The Times wants to cover the wedding. They just called me.”
He’s surprised, cocks his head to the side, raises his eyebrows. “That’s great,” he says, flatly. He was never as excited about the possibility of the Vows article as I was. He’s skeptical of a journalist and a photographer lurking in the shadows of our ceremony and reception. They’re always looking for an angle, he said when I first mentioned I’d applied, palaver taken straight from his conservative father’s mouth. They already have an angle, I told him. The wedding is the angle.
“I’m excited,” I say, a hint for him not to ruin it for me.
He finally smiles, his nose slightly unsymmetrical, apparently from a fight in college. “Have you told my mom?”
“Not yet. I want to call them back first. Make sure it’s official.”
“She’ll be happy.”
“I think so.” Truthfully, she’ll be thrilled. She might even let a smile escape those thin Hermès Red–stained lips. Only if her Botox allows it, of course. “You want another one?” I ask, nodding at the beer no longer sweating in his hand. He doesn’t drink. At least, not often. He’s only had a couple drinks the entire time I’ve known him. Partied too hard in college, he joked when I asked why. But he still likes the tradition of it.
“Sure,” he says. “You joining me?” I stand and make my way around the couch to the outdoor bar, always stocked regardless of season, weather, or the fact that he’s mostly sober and I’m mostly dieting.
“Maybe after my shower,” I say, pulling another bottle from the fridge. He knows that’s a noncommittal, non–wet blanket attempt to say no. I’m not even officially allowed croutons on this diet, so he’d never expect me to actually have a beer. Especially one that won’t get me drunk.
I do crave a glass of wine though, more than brie with figs or dark chocolate or a frothy latte. I have wet dreams about a smooth cabernet cascading down my throat, coating it in a thick purple paste that won’t go away no matter how many times I lean over the toilet and push the sharp side of my toothbrush into my tonsils.
I nearly start touching myself in the shower at the thought.
Until the bathroom door slides open with a squeak and Graham overtakes the doorway. If he were only a few inches taller, he’d have to bend at the neck to cross all the dramatic archways that give this apartment the character he pays so much for.
I press my hand against the glass, leaving a momentary handprint in the steam before wiping it away. He leans a shoulder on the doorway and smiles now that my face and my breasts are clear in his view.
“You’re so fucking beautiful,” he exhales. Every time he sees me naked, he reacts like it’s the first time. The awe, the amazement, the general excitement all straight men have when there’s a naked woman in front of them. But his comes with a kind of reverence; like I’m a statue carved only for him. Which isn’t entirely wrong.
“You come in here just to watch?” I ask, scratching shampoo into my scalp but moving my hips back and forth to make it sexy.
“An added benefit.” He laughs. “I was thinking the diner again?”
He’s sweet. We’ve ordered from the diner on Lexington every cheat day since I started outwardly acknowledging this wedding diet. All he ever wants is pad Thai and veggie spring rolls, but this man has pretended to crave a Reuben with potato wedges for the last eight weeks so that there’s some lettuce-based option on the menu for me.
“I’ll do the green salad again,” I say quickly, before I have a chance to change my mind. Just the thought of potato wedges makes my stomach ache for something so greasy I have to wash my hands and the corners of my mouth after eating.
He nods and then watches me for a long time as I wash out my hair and slip on the black exfoliating gloves that make me feel like an intruder in my own shower. I love scrubbing my skin with these. It’s like I can feel every single pore.
“I’m going to personally feed you seven cheeseburgers when we get back next week.”
I laugh, letting the warm water run into my mouth and then spitting it onto my toes. “I can’t wait,” I say, knowing it will never happen. Diets don’t end. They just get rebranded into “lifestyle changes” and “wellness” and “clean eating.” Whoever does their PR is a genius and a billionaire.
By the time I finish in the shower and stand in the center of the bathroom, my toes tangled in the white shag rug, meticulously moisturizing every inch of my skin with white goo proven to reduce the look of wrinkles, our buzzer goes off. Before Danny’s voice can materialize over the speaker system, Graham says, “Let him up,” and stomps to the door. He walks like he’s angry at our downstairs neighbors. Luckily, they’re nearly ninety and almost never turn on their hearing aids.
I throw on one of Graham’s sweatshirts and leggings and walk outside just as he appears with our plates—he insists on plating takeout, a flaw I’ve learned to accept—and places them on the coffee table.
Once the sun begins to fall behind the buildings across the Park, a timer automatically turns on the fairy lights drizzled onto the ivy-covered wrought iron banister that surrounds our terrace. I love knowing there are people my age, twenty-four floors below us, who look up from the sidewalk to see the lights and smoke from the custom brick fireplace and think: What a life it must be up there.
When Graham is sufficiently distracted by the football game, I finally pick up the phone and dial the number I’d been running through my head all afternoon. It’s been three hours since Sarah Keens left that chirpy message and, considering how desperately I’d been waiting for the call, even I’m shocked it’s taken me this long to return it.
But I like to tempt fate. You do it without realizing. Stand a little too close to the yellow edge of the subway platform, unaware of the mental state of the commuters around you. Shove a shoulder into a slow walker on the sidewalk without knowing whether there’s a weapon in his pocket and he’s been eager for an excuse to use it. Wait to call the Times back, knowing they could very well move onto the next, more interesting, more beautiful, wealthier couple anytime.
While this might seem like a low-stakes tempting, it’s not. This could be the most important piece of the wedding. What kind of elite event isn’t covered in an elite newspaper? And this, I can guarantee, will be an elite event. Between the location and the flowers, the dresses and the views, the attendees and the family I’m marrying into, my wedding will be talked about for years. And now it will be immortalized in the pages of the New York Times. An event for the entire world to read.
This is the last piece of my puzzle. The final lock in the chain between me and my life plan. The last thing I needed before I could take my first deep breath in five years, knowing very soon I’d be able to start the rest of my life. The post-five-year-plan life. Just one hundred and twenty-nine hours to go.