Apron Anxiety (24 page)

How silly of me to forget the rules of being second. (And on these weekends, of being third or fourth.) It’s been a while since I felt that sense of insignificance, and I almost forgot how hideous it is. When I do hear from him, on his way back to D.C. at the end of the long weekend, he tries to explain something about a dead phone battery, a bad cold, and sheer mental agony as a result of missing me so much.
Right
. None of it makes a difference. Based on my behavior more than his, I finally know what to do.

When it’s time to “check out” of the El Royale and fly to Washington, I wake up early to buy Paisley a chocolate-covered doughnut with rainbow sprinkles. I leave it outside her bedroom door with a tulip and a note to open only after we say good-bye. She’s driving me to the airport in six hours. I grab Dara’s bike and ride a few miles to Runyon Canyon, locking it at the foot of the mountain. On my way up, I listen to my music, working up a good sweat, and when I reach the highest point, I sit on a rock quietly, surrounded by just a couple of little birds and the bluest sky.

I think of life and death, and heaven and earth, and the lightness of Shelley against the darkness of Paisley, and how I suppose I’m somewhere in between. But no matter how enlightened, or accepting, or attuned to life’s peaks and valleys I
think I might be, I can’t be with someone who hurts me. I won’t be with someone who hurts me.

On the way to the airport, along the Pacific Coast Highway, Paisley and I come back to our favorite conversation: Did Christopher Wagner stick us together as some sort of mutual awakening? Did he want me to step away from my boo-hoo breakup and get a glimpse of life’s real sorrow? Did he hope that Paisley could be ever so slightly distracted from her terrible pain with a walking, talking, and cooking episode of
Sex and the City
? As we get closer to the airport, I tell her about “the trick.” She likes it. So when she pulls up to my stop, I kiss her cheek for as long as possible and whisper in her ear, “See ya tomorrow.”

Under normal circumstances, I would have cried my eyes out the minute Paisley drove away. But today, my focus is on putting one foot in front of the other. After I go through security, I drift into a gift shop to buy a straw hat. My face is broken out again from the sleeplessness and stress of the past few nights. I buy a coffee and drink it black because I can’t find the inspiration to add milk and sugar. I fly the five hours across the country, staring out the window the whole time.

He is waiting for me outside the airport looking every bit the man I dreamed I’d raise a family, grow old, and die with. We kiss long and hard and it has never been so unnatural to keep my heart so cold. Driving home, he says that he’s cleaned the house, rented us movies, and stocked the fridge; that he wants to make me chocolate chip pancakes while I take my bath. My head pounds as I fight against all the waves of chemistry and connection. When we are good, transient as it is, there is no broken glass.

In all of our fighting and screaming, Chef swore that he’d never break up with me; that if we parted ways, it would only
be because I gave up. And by the end of the night, he will have been right.

I will announce that I’m leaving for good. He will get sick all over the bathroom floor. And the next morning, I will pack the car, drive to New York, and move in with my parents.

But first, he prepares the pancake batter, while I slowly remove my ring in the tub.