By the time the weekend rolls around, I’ve basically grown into the sofa. Grey’s Anatomy may hold the record for longest running TV drama, but that 300+ episode count is no match for this particular wallow. On the bright side, I could probably perform a successful emergency tracheotomy with a butter knife and a plastic straw, should the situation ever present itself.
Which is admittedly unlikely, since I’ve got no plans to leave the house anytime soon.
But April has other plans: “This is the last one,” she announces, handing me a pear-and-raspberry smoothie from the place down the block. “I’m officially cutting you off.”
“What?” I say, looking up at her with pitiful alarm. “But Mama needs her medicine!”
“So, haul your own self down to the juice place,” April instructs, not unkindly. “Or, better yet, try eating solids for a change.”
“Rude,” I say, but I haul myself upright. “I eat solids.” For example, just the other day I hoovered a party-size bag of Cheez Doodles. I’m pretty sure I’ve still got the orange dust on my fingers to prove it. Every morning, I tell myself that today is the day I get my act together, that I get up and get dressed and rejoin the world of the living. But then I remember the flat coldness in Justin’s eyes when he offered me that recommendation, how clipped his voice was when he told me goodbye, and all my resolve just poofs into the ether like Kyle Chandler exploding in that bomb-inside-the-patient episode of Grey’s Season 2.
Sorry, spoilers.
“Uh huh.” April looks wholly unconvinced. “Listen,” she says, perching on the edge of the sofa, maintaining a safe distance from me and my unwashed hair. “I need to go turn five thousand ranunculuses into a massive flower wall, and I could really use an extra set of hands. Please? Pretty please?”
I’m not in the mood, really—Meredith is about to operate on a pair of conjoined twins connected at the genitals, and frankly I am riveted—but April’s too good of a friend for me to leave her high and dry. “Sure,” I say, my knees cracking a little as I get up. The cat eyes me warily, clearly disoriented by the fact that I’m moving. “Just let me, um, shower really quick.”
“Probably a good idea,” April says brightly.
We’re on our way out when we run into Lucinda, who’s dressed in a cheetah-print jumpsuit and sky-high ankle booties—and hand in hand with Vanderfleet’s butler. Well. At least someone had a good time at that party.
“Ladies!” she calls, looking delighted to see me. Then her face clouds. “Darling, are you feeling ill?”
“Um, just getting over a bug,” I lie. “I hear there’s a nasty case of shingles going around.”
“Well, I’m sorry to hear it,” she says. “Now, I can’t dawdle—Clarke here is taking me for a carriage ride through Central Park—but you make sure you get that handsome man of yours to take care of you until you’re feeling tip-top again, all right?”
“Oh.” I shake my head. “That’s pretty much over, actually.”
“No!” Lucinda tsks, her permed hair bouncing as she shakes her head sadly. “Isn’t that a shame. Well, in that case, keep your chin up, darling,” she says, reaching out to pat me on the cheek with one manicured hand. “We never know quite what the stars have planned.”
I spend the afternoon helping assemble the world’s most gorgeous flower wall. Which, of course, everyone will just use as an Instagram backdrop. But still, April is right: I needed to get out, and by the time we’re done, I feel almost halfway human. Which is a good thing, because I have a dinner invite from my folks which I can’t miss.
“Wish me luck,” I tell April, grimly shoving the last stem in place. “Knowing my mom, I’m about to get a ten-point lecture on why mixing business and pleasure is bound to end in heartache. And the worst part is, she’s right.”
“Can you drink your way through it?” she offers helpfully.
“Good point,” I nod. “See you on the other side.”
I head over to Queens, bracing myself. All I want to do is get home and see what Meredith is up to, but I’ve been putting off an invite from my parents for the better part of a week, and at this point it’s turned into more of a demand. The house is already in full-on chaos when I arrive.
“He finally proposed!” Joanie squeals before I’ve even gotten my jacket off, waggling her left hand in my face—where, sure enough, a diamond winks. “We’re getting married!”
“What? Oh my gosh!” I turn to look at my brother, who looks a little green around the gills. “You guys, this is amazing!”
We spend the next half hour in a frenzy of celebrations. My mom breaks out a bottle of prosecco and my dad puts Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York,” on the stereo, which is his all-purpose good news song: he’s played it on every special occasion for as long as I can remember, from my First Holy Communion to the day Frankie Jr. joined the family business to—I kid you not—the night I got my first period. Still, I can’t shake the dark cloud I feel hanging around me like a shroud. I couldn’t be happier for Frankie and Joanie—they deserve each other, and I mean that sincerely—but watching the two of them head so confidently into their future just reminds me that I have no idea what mine holds, personally or professionally.
“What’s wrong?” my mom asks quietly, coming up beside me where I’m leaning against the kitchen doorway.
“What? Nothing,” I say with a shake of my head, mustering a game smile. The last thing I want to do is rain on anyone else’s parade. “I’m good.”
My mom makes a face. “Don’t you dare try to fib to me, Natalie Girl. I haven’t been your mother for twenty-six years not to know when something is up.”
I sigh. It’s useless to lie to my mom—it always has been, from the time I was six and trying to blame Frankie for eating all two dozen rainbow cookies out of the bakery box on the counter—so instead I give her the highlights reel, starting with Pearl’s disappearance and ending with the brush-off Justin gave me in his office the other day.
My mom listens carefully, ignoring Joanie’s one-woman kickline on the other side of the dining room. “Well,” she says when I’m finished, “maybe this is a good thing. I know it doesn’t seem like it, sweetheart, but just think: now you can focus on your work, right?” She smiles, reaching down and taking my hand in her free one. “You’re so young. You’ve got ages to find The One. For now, the only person you should be worrying about is yourself. Men may come and go, but a solid career? That’s something nobody can take away from you.”
I nod, mustering a smile. I know my mom means well—hell, she might even be right—and I want to share her enthusiasm, but as I watch Frankie take Joanie into his arms across the room and lower her into a goofy, dramatic dip, I can’t help but want what they have.
Well, I think, as Joanie shoves her tongue down his throat right there in front of both my parents and Frank Sinatra, maybe not exactly what they have. But you get the point.
I help my dad set the table for dinner, remembering April’s words of wisdom and gulping prosecco whenever I can. Then the doorbell rings.
“You didn’t,” I groan, looking at dad.
“Whatever do you mean?” he coughs, avoiding my gaze as he goes to answer it. “Howard!” my dad greets the newcomer, who, surprise, is a tall, single man. “So glad you could make it. Nat, honey, you remember Howard from around the neighborhood, don’t you?”
I blink at them for a moment. “Sure,” I say, unsure whether I want to laugh or cry, “the undertaker’s son?”
“Frank,” my mother whispers. “Seriously? Again?”
“What?” my father asks, all innocence. “I went by the funeral home to do some drain work this week and we got to talking. Howard here is doing some very interesting things in his field.”
“Well, that’s terrifying,” Frankie mutters, reaching into the salad bowl and popping a cherry tomato into his mouth.
I can’t help but snort. “Uh, yep,” I murmur, making a beeline for the liquor cabinet. “We’re going to need another bottle of wine.”
I spend the better part of dinner chugging pinot noir and getting progressively more lightheaded as Howard talks me gamely through the finer points of environmentally conscious embalming. “We’re the greenest funeral home in Brooklyn,” he tells me proudly. “Of course, the truly eco-friendly thing to do would be to just plunk the bodies straight into the earth and let them compost naturally, but people get oddly squeamish when—”
“Is that the door?” I ask, almost upending my chair as the bell chimes one more time. With my luck, it’ll be our friendly local panhandler invited by my father to vie for my hand in marriage, but still I nearly trip over myself in my hurry to get the hell out of the dining room. I head into the foyer and swing the door open, then gasp.
Because standing on the other side of it, holding the biggest box of Krispy Kreme donuts I’ve ever seen—
Is Justin.