Lost in Love

  “Nothing.”

  “I’m making pasta. Do you want some?”

  “That would be awesome. Thank you.”

  “No problem. It’ll be ready in ten.”

  My phone rings again.

  “Why don’t you turn it off?” Darcy asks. She sits at the breakfast bar, peering down at the phone on the counter. “Or we could record a fun outgoing message just for Austin. Please don’t call again, eff you very much.”

  “Then he’ll know I care.”

  “Do you?”

  “Why is Austin calling you?” Rosanna asks. She was on her way to her room, but her head snapped around when she heard Darcy.

  “He left his wife,” Darcy tells Rosanna. Darcy gives her big drama eyes, one elbow propped up on the counter, chin in hand.

  “What?”

  “I know, right? When does that ever happen?”

  “When someone’s really in love.”

  Rosanna looks at me. Darcy flicks her big drama eyes my way.

  “Can we all kindly remember that this is the same man who lied to me? Over and over? How am I supposed to trust anything he says?”

  “Why would he lie about leaving his wife?” Rosanna asks.

  “For the same reason he lied about having a wife in the first place. He’s a lying liar.”

  “Boys lie,” Darcy confirms.

  Sing it, sister.

  After dinner, I hang out by myself in my room. Rosanna insisted on doing the dishes. Darcy did not protest. I’d turned off my phone when dinner was ready. Now I turn it back on.

  Twenty-three messages. All from Austin.

  So he’s frantic to get in touch with me because he finally left his wife. I get it. But that doesn’t mean I’m required to let him manipulate me. Whether or not Austin takes over my entire life again is up to me. And I say I’ve had enough.

  There’s no way I’m listening to these. I am not remotely interested in what he has to say.

  But that’s a crazy lot of messages. I wonder if he said the same thing in all of them. Maybe I should listen to the first one? Or two? Just to see what they sound like?

  Stay strong, Sadie. Do not get pulled back in.

  I come detached from time for a while. Lying on my bed, listening to Adele, my earbuds drowning out voices in the living room, floating in a bubble of nostalgia. Will I ever forget how good it felt to be with Austin? Will I ever find that intense connection and chemistry with someone else?

  My phone rings. I glance at the screen.

  It’s Trey. Austin’s friend.

  Austin and I went to a party on Trey’s rooftop in Brooklyn. Trey’s parents’ rooftop, actually. Austin and Trey have been good friends since high school.

  I shouldn’t pick up. But if I talk to Trey, I can tell him to tell Austin to stop calling me. I don’t want to communicate directly with Austin. I can’t trust him, but I’m not completely sure I can trust myself, either.

  “Hello?” I answer.

  “Sadie? It’s Trey. Austin’s friend?”

  “Hi, Trey.”

  “We met at my rooftop party?”

  “Yeah, I remember you.”

  “Oh, cool. Well . . . um. Austin wanted me to call you. He’s not doing too well. There’s—is this a good time for you to talk? Are you busy?”

  “I can talk for a minute.”

  “Austin is destroyed, Sadie. He can’t believe he messed things up with you. The way he talks about you, the things he told me when you guys met . . . he loves you.”

  “He’s married.”

  “He’s separated. He moved out.”

  “Where is he staying?”

  “With me. Until he finds a place. The dude’s a wreck. He couldn’t get out of bed for like a week.”

  Austin was miserable like I was? Did he call out sick, too?

  “He needs to talk to you,” Trey says.

  “I don’t want to talk to him.”

  “Five minutes. That’s all he’s asking for.”

  “That’s five more minutes than I want to give him.”

  “Look. I know you’re pissed. I get it. But Austin wants to make things right with you. Can you please just let him apologize? He owes you at least that much.”

  Trey is right about that. Austin owes me a huge apology. Not that it would change anything. What’s done is done.

  “Sorry, Trey,” I tell him. “I have to go.” I hang up before Trey can say anything else.

  I am completely drained. I want to go to bed early. Lose the rest of this day to sleep. Wake up tomorrow on a fresh new day with no Austin in it. I decide to brush my teeth, wash my face, and drift away under the covers. When I open my door to go to the bathroom, Rosanna is still doing the dishes while Darcy is picking up mugs she left around the living room. She never cleans up. She usually leaves her dirty mugs around until we run out of mugs. Then Rosanna or I end up washing them. She must really feel bad for me.

  I’m almost asleep when the doorbell buzzes. A minute later, someone knocks lightly on my door.

  “Yeah?” I say.

  Rosanna opens my door slowly. “Sadie? Are you awake?”

  “Sort of.”

  “I hate to tell you this, but Austin’s downstairs.”

  I sit up in bed. “Seriously?”

  “He wants to talk to you.”

  This is ridiculous. This will never end unless I make it end. To his face.

  “I’ll be right out,” I tell Rosanna.

  “Are you sure? I can tell him to go away.”

  “No. It’s okay.”

  I put on my glasses, slip into some flip-flops, and throw my robe over my tank-and-shorts pajama set. They’re the ones that say YOU’RE MY TYPE all over them. How ironic that I’m wearing these. But good. Let Austin feel my pain.

  He’s waiting outside on the stoop.

  I stand in the open doorway, one hand on the door handle, the other on my hip.

  “What do you want?” I ask.

  “To be with you,” Austin says quickly. “That’s all I want. If I could have only one thing in the whole world, being with you would be it. You’re all I need.”

  “You had me.”

  “I know—”

  “And then you destroyed us.”

  “I know I messed up. More than messed up. I made the biggest mistake of my life. I am so sorry I hurt you. I’ll do anything to get you back.”

  “You had plenty of chances to tell me the truth. You chose not to. You made the wrong choice.”

  “But now I’m trying to make the right ones. That’s why I moved out. We’re separated, Sadie. It’s over.”

  “Does she know about me?”

  “Yes. I told her everything.”

  “Everything? Like how . . . we were soul mates?”

  “She knows.”

  “What did she say?”

  “Why does it matter?”

  “Because I was responsible for ruining her life! I feel horrible!”

  “You didn’t ruin her life.”

  “I broke up her marriage.”

  “That’s not true. We would have gotten separated anyway. I can’t tell you how sorry I am that I didn’t tell you I was married. But everything else I said to you was true. I never thought about things like soul mates or the total package before I met you.” A pack of twentysomething girls strides by on the sidewalk. One of them is laughing so hard she’s screaming. Austin waits for them to pass by. “Before we met, I had been regretting that I got married so young,” he continues. “I thought that’s why I was feeling a void with her. But you showed me what it’s like to be in love for real. I thought I was in love before. Until I found you, I had no idea what real love felt like. Now I’m in love for the first time in my life, and I can’t believe how amazing it is.”

  Maybe it’s a trick of the streetlights. But it looks like Austin has tears in his eyes.

  “Now I understand why I felt that void,” he says. “The kind of love you and I have is what was missing. There’s no way I
can go back from that. How can anyone feel the way we did about each other and settle for less with someone else? What we have happens once in a lifetime. If that. Do you really want to throw us away just because I was stupid?”

  My throat constricts. A car passes by slowly, its headlights making minerals in the sidewalk sparkle. I keep my eyes down.

  “You’re the love of my life, Sadie,” Austin says. “You don’t give up on the love of your life.”

  I look at Austin closely for the first time since I opened the door. He’s all sweaty. His white T-shirt and navy basketball shorts are rumpled, like he pulled them out of the hamper and yanked them on. The shoelace on his right sneaker is untied. His face is scruffy. It looks like he hasn’t shaved in a few days. Why didn’t I notice that this morning?

  “There is one thing I want to know,” I say.

  “Anything.”

  “How did you pull off spending the whole weekend with me?”

  “My wife was away for the weekend. I might have talked her into visiting her mom. She’d been talking about visiting her for a while. She knew things between us weren’t good. They hadn’t been good for a long time. She didn’t need much convincing to leave.”

  My wife.

  Not me. Someone else.

  I remember the huge fireworks non-coincidence. I thought it was a sign that the Universe had brought us together at the exact right time.

  Then I remember that I asked Darcy and Rosanna if Austin could stay at our place for the weekend the same night we watched Unfaithful. There was no way for me to know that was a huge non-coincidence at the time. Huge. A glaring sign right in front of my face and I didn’t even see it.

  “There’s one more thing I want to know,” I say.

  “You can ask me anything. No more secrets, I swear. I’m going to be one hundred percent honest with you from now on.”

  “Honesty doesn’t have percentages.”

  Austin runs his hand through his hair, smiling ruefully. “I realize that now. I thought I was saving you at the time. Protecting you. I thought as long as we didn’t have sex, it wasn’t really an affair. But an emotional affair can be much more serious than a physical one. What we have . . . this is the kind of love people hope to find. Some people search their whole lives for what we have and never find it.”

  “Did you tell your wife that? Did you tell her I’m the love of your life?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’ve already hurt her enough. But I will tell her. I just want to give it some time.”

  “I thought you wanted to be one hundred percent honest?”

  “Do you want me to tell her now? Or can it wait until she’s not going to be glued to the floor crying, like she was when I first told her about you?”

  I need her to know that I’m not some random person who destroyed her marriage. I need her to know I didn’t know.

  “She knows I didn’t know you were married, right?”

  Austin nods. “I told her.”

  “And that if I knew you were married, there’s no way I would have been with you, right?”

  “I don’t remember if I used those exact words, but I’m sure she knows.”

  Not good enough. His wife deserves to know the truth.

  Wait. What am I even talking about? I can’t be with him anyway. But she still needs to know the truth. Without percentages.

  “Let me know when you’ve told her everything,” I say.

  “And then you’ll come back to me?”

  I don’t bother to answer him. I just close the door.

  SEVENTEEN

  DARCY

  THERE’S THIS APARTMENT AROUND THE corner from our place that is so freaking beautiful I can’t even. It always gives me a rush when I look in the window. Every time I pass by, I have to stop and stare in the enormous picture window as if the glass has hypnotic powers. My attraction is not just about the high-end pieces like the cow-print Eames sofa or the Bang & Olufsen floor speakers. There’s something about the apartment that just gets me. I could totally picture myself living there. I’d have to replace the cow-print sofa with a zebra-print, but still. Everything down to the last detail—the big arc lamp swooping over the sofa, the color-block area rug, the Paul Klee print—are things I would have selected for my own place. The living room looks so cozy at night with the warm glow of the lamplight and candles lit on the coffee table and fresh flowers in a blown-glass vase. Darcy Stewart is not a homebody, but that home could be mine.

  Standing at the gate in front of the picture window in the bright morning sunlight, separated from the building by an enclosed area with perfectly landscaped plants and potted flowers, I envision myself on the other side of the glass. How cool would it be to live there? You can tell the apartment goes all the way back. It probably opens into a back garden.

  What about the man on the other side of the glass? I wonder what he’s like. I’ve never seen anyone inside, but a man obviously lives here. The only thing that saved his apartment from looking like a bachelor pad was the expensive interior designer he clearly hired. How old is he? Where does he work? Is he in a relationship? He could be like me. A free agent who got sucked back into the past.

  I’ve walked around with Sadie a few times at night. She’s always looking in people’s windows and pointing out beautiful things in their apartments. I get why she’s always so mesmerized. Stopping to look into this apartment the way Sadie does has become a thing. The hypnotic powers of this place force me to be still and enjoy the Now. I only stop for a minute or two. But with the frenetic activity of New York City incessantly vibrating around me, it feels like much longer. I love being able to control time this way. To have the power to stretch one minute into five, five into ten. The power to choose how I want to spend each of those minutes, adding up to days and weeks and months, small units of time building up to become my entire life. That’s how powerful the Now is. It defines you every second, whether you are aware of it or not.

  You know those days when everything clicks perfectly into place? Today has been one of those days. Like ribbons from every thread of my life swirling together in a Technicolor starburst of happiness. After my voyeuristic apartment therapy, I have a really good Social Foundations class where the professor is firing on all cylinders, sparking our interest in that way you always hope a class will. Revved up on intellectual stimulation, I treat myself to some shopping before my next class. There’s a cute retro fit-and-flare dress at a boutique near campus that I must possess. I go in to try it on. The dress clings to my curves in all the right places. We were made for each other. And we all know you can’t fight destiny.

  I stroll back to campus with my glossy boutique bag. There’s something about carrying an upscale store bag around downtown Manhattan that makes me happy. I smile at everyone I pass. Some people smile back.

  My next class is Communications. It only meets once a week for three hours. We get a twenty-minute break in the middle. People usually grab a snack or coffee or just sit outside during the break. I usually sit outside with a cluster of people from class. But today I break away to meet up with Logan. He’s waiting for me at Washington Square Park, sitting on the edge of the fountain. My nerves tingle as I glance around for Jude’s crowd, but I don’t see him performing anywhere. I wonder if he was out here earlier this morning or if he’ll be starting soon. Or maybe he’s working on his start-up company. It feels weird not knowing even the simplest things about his life anymore.

  I sneak up behind Logan and put my hands over his eyes.

  “Guess who?” I ask.

  “The sexiest girl in New York?”

  “Good guess.” I sit down next to Logan. I remember sitting in almost this same place at the fountain a few weeks ago, hostile over the boy drama I left behind. Now I’m right here next to the boy who caused that drama. The boy I never thought I’d see again for the rest of my life.

  “How’s your day going?” he asks.

  “Perfectly. W
hat about yours?”

  “Just got better.” Logan kisses me. He puts his arms around me and kisses me harder. That’s another thing I love about New York. You can totally make out in the street or wherever and no one cares.

  “I wish I didn’t have to go back to class,” I say when we stop kissing. “We could go to your place.”

  “Tempting. But I have a job interview in half an hour.”

  “Where?”

  “This bike shop on Charles Street.”

  Logan has been looking for a job, but he’s only had two other interviews. One place didn’t work out. The other place did, but Logan said he wasn’t feeling it. This bike shop sounds more like his speed. He was working at an electrical repair shop back in Santa Monica and living in a beat-up condo near the beach. He didn’t love the work. It was one of those jobs you do to get by. But that’s how Logan rolls.

  Logan splays his hands behind him, leaning back in the afternoon sun. His hair falls over his face as he turns to me with those big dark smoldering eyes. “You don’t have to go back to class if you don’t want to,” he says.

  I want to tell him about my decision to go into public relations. How I was checking out the course schedule for fall and found some cool classes I could take. I found out that my major would be Media, Culture, and Communication, which even sounds cool. Except that’s not who we are. Logan has no interest in college and he probably never will. We just don’t talk about things like career goals and future plans that would limit us to a singular path. We live in the Now. Later will work itself out.

  But maybe the Now is more complex. Choosing how to spend the minutes that add up to the hours and days and weeks of my life might be more powerful than I realize.

  “Yeah, well, I want my diploma, so . . .” I stand and stretch. “I kind of do have to take this class.”

  Logan gets up and wraps his arms around me. “When did you get so responsible?” he asks.

  “When did you get so romantic?”

  “I’ve always been romantic.”

  “Not like this. Not like crossing the country to win me back or re-creating our first three dates. You’ve taken things to a whole new level.”

  “There’s more tricks up my sleeve where those came from.”

  “Oh? Like what?”