Love and Miss Communication (29 page)

“I can’t believe we saw your ex-boyfriend last night. At the restaurant I chose. What are the chances?” Edward swung his legs over the side of the bed and reached for his clothes. She didn’t take that as a great sign.

“It was crazy,” Evie said, touching his back lightly before he put on his shirt. “But we just won’t go back there. Like you said, we have eighteen thousand restaurants to choose from.”

“Actually, Jack said that,” Edward said, twisting around to face her. “Listen, Evie, I’m sorry if I’m speaking out of turn, but I think you may have some unfinished business with him.” He put his arms through the sleeves of his button-down and rose to get his pants.

She wanted to protest. To tell Edward that she was over Jack and totally ready to move forward with their relationship. But she found it hard to do so convincingly when she was replaying every line exchanged between her and Jack over and over, searching for signs of his longing for her, and asking herself why he called her back to his office. She made up a new business to impress him; invented a story about having another party to go to. Edward witnessed this behavior. How could he not accuse her of having unresolved feelings? The question was where she and Edward would go from this fucked-up place.

“I’m really sorry about all that.” It was the best she could do in the moment.

“It was an interesting night.” Edward leaned over and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Good luck with your electricity situation.” Evie wondered what happened to “We’ll deal with this in the morning.”

“Thanks. So we’ll talk soon?” Evie said, hating that her voice climbed about eight octaves.

“Of course,” Edward said, waving from the door to her bedroom.

When she heard the front door close, she let out a guttural “Arghhh.” It was a hell of a way to start the new year.

After tearing apart every cabinet and drawer looking for correspondence from Con Ed, she finally found a letter confirming
activation of a new account buried deep in her night table. After a torturous ten minutes on hold listening to Donna Summer’s “Bad Girls” on repeat, the customer service representative explained that their system had been hacked and everyone’s stored credit card information lost. Her power was shut off because she hadn’t paid a bill in three months.

“Why didn’t you call me to get my payment information? I deserved a warning,” Evie demanded.

“Ma’am, it says in your file you specifically refused to give us your phone number. You asked to be contacted only via e-mail.”

“I see,” Evie said, shrinking on her end of the phone.

“And, ma’am, did you not receive the letters we sent you in the mail?”

Letters? She must have dumped them along with her junk mail. She’d never needed to open anything before to have light in her apartment. Maybe she didn’t have Internet service either. She had no idea. Just six months earlier, an Internet outage would have sent her scaling rooftops in search of a signal. Now she was truly unaffected.

“My neighbor steals my mail. Can you turn my power back on?”

The lights flickered moments after she gave the representative her credit card number. Relieved, Evie went to the kitchen in search of carbs to soak up the alcohol residue. Luckily she found a box of English muffins on the counter. As she chewed her way through the nooks and crannies, she thought back to the day she moved into her apartment.

Paul was there. He was helping move her stuff out of her Columbia Law School dorm and into a new rental apartment, the place she still called home today. After three long years hitting the books in Morningside Heights, Evie was moving to the Upper West Side, arriving in the “real” Manhattan a single girl with a J.D. on the wall, a sophisticated job, great friends, and membership
in the twenty-something club. The threshold of her new abode lay rife with possibilities, and Paul was there to help move her into the next chapter. It was a quid pro quo for Evie setting him up with Marco, who at that point Paul was still calling “the guy with the hottest body I’ve ever met.” Nowadays Paul referred to his husband as “Mr. Love Handles,” even though Marco was at most three pounds overweight. In some ways that day seemed light-years away from her current station, but in other ways it was very much the same—she was, again, finding herself at a crossroads.

Move-in day had been exhausting. She remembered sprawling out on her new couch with a dish towel spread over her eyes. Paul was still bustling around, shelving her plates and hanging her clothes (the latter with ample commentary). It was a boiling hot summer day and both of them were drenched in sweat. The strong AC promised by the building’s in-house real estate broker was not showing its best self.

“Now we need to set up your cable, Internet, and electric, okay?” Paul said.

Evie had just groaned and passed Paul some paper that had come inside her lease package.

“You want me to do this?” Paul asked, incredulous.

“Marco,” was all Evie said, to remind him of what brought him to her apartment in the first place.

“Fine,” he grumbled and got to work. “But not because of Marco. Because you are a great friend and I love you.”

The memory hurt.

She suddenly needed to see Paul at once, to wrap her arms around him and offer a heartfelt apology for her lukewarm reaction to his baby news. She still hadn’t met Maya. The Edward situation may have gone haywire, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t right another wrong today. She reached for her phone.

“Paul, it’s Evie. I know you’re pissed at me, but I really miss you and want to meet the baby. I’m coming over,” she said to his voicemail. Sending a contrite e-mail would have been a million times easier, but a one-way conversation would have been a cop-out. Whether Paul would have accepted it was beside the point. He deserved an apology face-to-face.

She grabbed her coat and headed downtown in a cab. The streets of New York City on January first were the perfect tableau of heartbreak. Singles walked with heads hung low, dressed in their party attire from the night before, cursing themselves for already breaking their top New Year’s resolutions: (1) cut back on drinking; (2) no more one-night stands; (3) get eight hours of sleep a night; and (4) exercise every morning. Couples too looked out of sorts—fighting about where to have brunch or gossiping about the other guests at the New Year’s Eve party they attended out of obligation. Almost everything was closed on New Year’s Day except for restaurants, and the city dwellers didn’t know what to do with their free time except gorge themselves and overthink their lives.

When she arrived, Marco answered the door of their third-floor walk-up carrying a swaddled infant in his arms. She was more blanket than baby at this point.

“Hi, Evie,” he said. “Happy new year. Meet Maya.”

She melted at the vision of the newborn baby girl wrapped in her pink cashmere cocoon, eyes closed and rosy cheeks puffed out, crimson lips in the shape of a rosebud.

“She’s gorgeous,” Evie gasped, and threw her arms around Marco.

“Thank you,” he said through a big smile and motioned her inside.

“My God, I haven’t been here in a while,” she said. Their apartment had been transformed from a sleek and modern oasis into
a shrine to Buy Buy Baby. Everywhere she looked, she saw baby swings, bouncy seats, playmats, blankets, toys, and books all in the brightest shades of pink, purple, and yellow.

“We went a little overboard,” Marco said, registering Evie’s look of horror.

“No, no, it’s great. It’s just a big change.”

“Let me show you the baby’s room,” Marco said. “Paul went to the hardware store to bribe someone to help put the crib together. He won’t be back for another hour at least. Transitioning Maya from her Moses basket to a proper crib was our New Year’s resolution.”

Maya’s room was bright and cheerful, the walls painted in Pepto-Bismol pink. But bags of unopened toys and adornments lay everywhere, including a lamp shaped like a lamb and a tall stack of animal decals still in their shrink-wrap. Evie never understood why jungle animals were a part of every baby’s early education. How often in real life were most kids going to encounter a giraffe? The large pieces of furniture, a changing table, a sweet love seat in crushed ivory velvet, and a rocking chair in chocolate brown suede, were situated oddly in the center of the room.

“You said he’ll be gone for an hour?” Evie asked, looking at Marco as he adjusted the blanket to cover Maya’s exposed toes.

“At least. He didn’t even know where to find a hardware store. Come to think of it, I doubt they’re open on New Year’s Day anyway.”

“Take Maya for a walk, okay? I’ve got some stuff to do here,” Evie said, gently pushing Marco out of the room and toward the stroller.

“You sure?” Marco asked.

Evie nodded.

“One hundred percent. I owe this to Paul,” she said. “Let me do this for him. And for you.”

Marco just whispered thank you and set off with a well-bundled Maya.

Closing her eyes in the style of Julianne Holmes-Matthews, she took a moment to visualize the room taking shape. Behind closed lids, she saw the glider gravitate to the window and the crib migrate to the west wall. The stuffed animals took their positions, the oversize giraffe standing sentry by the door. The toy chest found its way into the closet. Opening her eyes with a plan in mind, she got to work. Evie resituated the furniture and hung the decals around the room in a thoughtful, but not overly stylized, fashion. She assembled the lamp and rolled out the area rug and put the tiny toys and board books out on the shelves. It was like doing exactly what Paul had done for her move years earlier, but with miniatures.

The work proved to be an effective distraction from her New Year’s date with Edward (and her hangover) until she recognized an oversize plush Minnie Mouse similar to one in Olivia’s room. It had been over a week since their horse and carriage ride. She longed to cool Olivia’s hot chocolate with her breath and ride next to her at the carousel in Central Park. She found a precious princess clock in one of the shopping bags from Toys “R” Us that she was sure Olivia would adore and vowed to pick one up for her later that day. When, and if, she’d be able to deliver it to her was another story.

When she heard the key in the door, Evie felt sufficiently pleased with her progress.

“Oh my God,” Paul gasped when he saw the transformation. “Evie, this is unreal.” He went over and swept her into a big hug. “Marco texted me that you were here and that I shouldn’t come home for another hour. I knew you’d work magic in here.”

“You’re welcome,” she said. “I’ve been an ass. I’m really, really sorry for being so selfish. But with my grandma sick and my
job situation sucking and my love life having been nonexistent until recently and Jack getting married . . . You know what? I shouldn’t make any ex—”

Paul stopped her by putting his finger to her mouth.

“Evie, it’s okay. Maya’s room looks incredible. Let’s just call it even, okay?” Only in the context of a really old friendship could schadenfreude be forgiven in exchange for a freshly decorated baby room. Eight years ago she and Paul had bartered a New York City apartment move-in for a setup.

“I appreciate that,” Evie said, but Paul didn’t seem to hear. He was inspecting his daughter’s new room with an ear-to-ear grin.

“All right, but for the record, I am sorry,” Evie continued, unwilling to let her expert placement of a rocking chair wholly absolve her wrongdoing.

“I get it, Evie. Here, let me show you some Maya pictures. We’ve gone a little camera-crazy.” He pulled his iPad out from his messenger bag and starting scrolling through pictures.

Watching Paul at work, she craved feeling the smooth metal of her own Mac notebook. She missed being a touch away from her pictures. She longed to hear the rhythm of her fingertips tapping the keyboard. But more than anything, she wanted to check her e-mail. Jack said he was going to contact her about designing his restaurant. She wondered if he actually would, and if he did, would it even matter to her? What really mattered was that she had messed things up with her actual boyfriend. So why was she thinking more about Jack? It didn’t make much sense.

But really, few things did anymore.

In the first weeks of January, during a freeze that weathermen were describing as the “Big Apple Chill,” Evie could palpably feel the distance Edward was putting between them. He called to follow up on her electricity situation, but when he didn’t suggest getting together, she was crestfallen.

It was hard not to wonder if Edward had diverted their relationship from the path to something serious to a fun interlude on the dating superhighway. The only stumbling block so far (at least in her mind) had been the macabre New Year’s Eve dinner at JAK. Though she
tried to suppress it, and even rewrite the course of the evening in her mind (especially the parts that were fuzzy from the alcohol), she knew all too well the way she had come across. Like a girl who wasn’t over her ex. Who still got flustered in his presence. Who cared a little too much what he thought of her. Who had something to prove. Now she felt compelled to show Edward that she was wholly ready to commit to him, even if inside she was coming to wonder if Jack might always occupy at least a slice of her heart.

She surprised him at the hospital a few days later and took him to lunch at Spice on Second Avenue. Over coconut-curry soup and veggie dumplings, they talked about anything but Jack and New Year’s Eve, and by the end of lunch, they seemed to have gotten back into their familiar rhythm. Back in his office, she produced a gift from her pocketbook.

“I have something for you.” Evie paused before handing over the silver-wrapped package.

Edward looked at the small box curiously.

He peeled apart the silver paper, at first trying not to tear it but then getting impatient. His face glowed when he saw the present, a newspaper article framed in antique silver. To the corner of the frame Evie had affixed a sticky note that said, “Mine certainly did when we first held hands. xx, Evie.”

“I really wanted to read some of your old science articles, but since I don’t use the Internet, I couldn’t find them. So I decided to go to the library and I tracked them down in the stacks. It was harder than it sounds. Anyway, I photocopied the one you wrote about whether hearts actually skip beats when people get excited.” She tried to stifle her smile.

“Arrhythmic palpitations,” Edward said, with a scholarly head bob.

“Exactly.” Evie smiled. “The medical jargon is really hot.” He
could spout the most esoteric medical knowledge without being pedantic, unlike Jack, who spoke about reducing a sauce like it was designing a rocket ship.

“So I’ve been told. Seriously, though. This is amazing, Evie. I love it.” He embraced her.

“I really hope you like it,” Evie said, watching as he set up the frame next to Olivia’s picture. She still felt anxious, though, and didn’t want to wait for him to ask her out again.

“Are you free to see a movie this weekend?” she asked while his back was still turned.

“Definitely,” he responded, and Evie could feel her fingers tingle.

“Oh, and guess what? If you had any doubt how much I respect your opinion, I have news for you.”

“Really? What kind of news?”

“I’m going back to school. One day after visiting Bette, I dropped by the New York School of Interior Design to ask about their classes. It’s right on Seventieth Street on the East Side. It turns out they have a one-year certification program and Bette offered to pay part of my tuition. Apparently her washing out Ziploc bags all those years led to some amount of savings. Edward—walking into the building, seeing the designers walking around with portfolio books, discussing their projects, I felt like I was finally in the right place. It was electrifying.”

“That’s wonderful! I’m so happy for you.” He hugged her again.

“It was weird, just enrolling like that. The registrar was a little surprised when I asked if she needed to see my SAT score.”

“Not everything has to be difficult,” Edward said.

She was coming to learn that.

“And to be clear, this has absolutely nothing to do with redesigning JAK. I have no intention of doing that. I need you to know that.”

“I trust you,” Edward said, with a gentle squeeze of both of her shoulders and a peck on her forehead. “The design school is right near the hospital. We can meet for lunch.”

She exhaled a deep breath of relief hearing his forward thinking. “Thanks. I start in September. Caroline ended up telling Jerome that I designed his office and he insisted on paying me for the work. He even hired me to remodel their guesthouse in the Hamptons. So with that and Bette’s contribution I won’t have trouble covering the tuition.”

“And you balked the first time I suggested this to you,” he said playfully. “Listen, I have to deliver grand rounds in twenty minutes. But I’m excited to hear more about this.”

It was after seeing another romantic comedy, this one about a doctor falling in love with a hypochondriac so she keeps inventing things that might be wrong with him, that they did finally sleep together. Before the date, Evie had taken painstaking care to look great, splurging on a new minidress and ankle boots and having her hair professionally blown out. She waxed, plucked, shaved, combed, trimmed, and polished everything that needed attention. It felt a bit like going through a human car wash, but when Edward picked her up looking especially adorable in faded gray corduroys and a gray zip-up sweater, she was glad she had gone to the trouble.

Within minutes of returning home from their quick bite of pasta after the movie, her new dress and boots lay in a careless pile in her living room, her lace bra and panties resting on top like the cherry on a sundae. The sex was even better than she expected it would be, the wait they had to endure to get to that moment only heightening the intensity. The first round was fast and ferocious, both of them desperate to explore the other’s body, maybe even make sure they were as compatible sexually as they were otherwise. Once that box was checked,
they slowed down a bit, taking time to kiss and speak softly to each other in between passionate embraces and rounds of lovemaking. She found their bodies fit like lock and key. Her head rested perfectly in the dip between his shoulder and chest. His feet reached just the right length under hers so he could tickle her toes with his. Each climax felt like putting in the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle.

Life was good.

# # #

The registrar at the New York School of Interior Design had said Evie was welcome any time to visit and collect materials for the upcoming semester. She could barely wait. With the syllabus and recommended reading list in hand, Evie walked home from the school in a happy fog. When she got to West Sixty-Sixth Street, she detoured left unexpectedly. Before she knew it, she was on the other side of the revolving door of The Hamilton, the building that housed the one-bedroom the broker Emmeline Fields had tried to entice her to see.

“Can I help you?” the doorman asked. He was dressed in a maroon and black uniform with gold tassels, as elegantly clad as a Buckingham Palace guard.

“Yes, in fact you can,” Evie said. “There’s a one-bedroom apartment for sale here. Or there was. Represented by Allman-White. I was wondering if I could see it. I don’t remember the open house schedule.”

“Sorry, ma’am. That apartment sold at the end of January. A couple with a new baby purchased it.”

“Okay, thank you,” she said, more disappointed than she thought she’d be.

“There is another apartment on the market,” the doorman said, putting his hand on the door to keep her inside. “It’s a two-bedroom.
A great family apartment with river views. It’s another Emmeline Field exclusive. I can ask the super to call up and see if anyone is home to show it to you.”

Evie pictured Olivia’s toile cocoon in Edward’s town house. How she’d love to create something even more beautiful for her here, in this family apartment.

“Well, I don’t have a family. Or a husband. Yet,” Evie added, inexplicably confessing her personal life to the doorman. “I hope I will soon. And when I do, I’m coming here to look first.”

“Good luck with that, miss.”

“Thank you, sir. You can let Emmeline know I stopped by. Tell her I’m the one whose bag she found near the Brighton school. And that I’ll be back.”

“Will do. The building has a gym, a playroom, and a—”

“I’m so sorry,” Evie said, ringing cell in hand. “I’ve got to take this.”

She rushed out of the building, staring at the screen of her phone. Those ten digits. It had been a long time since she had seen them. But she’d never forget them.

“Jack,” she said. “How are you?”

“I’ve been better, truthfully. I’m perplexed as to why you haven’t returned any of my e-mails. I must have sent you half a dozen since I saw you on New Year’s Eve. I’ve been checking my account constantly.”

“Well, I’m sorry about that. I’ve been very busy with work,” Evie said, proud that she didn’t blame it on quitting the Internet. It was far more delicious to let Jack think she saw his e-mails and chose not to respond.

“No matter. Have you given thought to whether you’d like to help me with a remodel? It’d also be just nice to catch up. Our conversation was cut short at the restaurant—I didn’t want to keep you away for too long from what’s-his-name.”

“Edward. His name is Edward.”

“He seemed like a decent guy. You deserve it. Too bad you didn’t meet Zeynup. She arrived just before midnight.”

Was it too bad? Did he really want her to meet his wife? It didn’t seem likely, if he was calling her now. Unless he sadistically wanted to rub it in her face, which didn’t seem like Jack.

“Too bad. Listen Jack, what’s going on?”

“Evie, we have a history together. I wanted to hear your voice. I won’t bother you again if you don’t want me to.”

There was a long, pin-dropping pause.

“The food was delicious. On New Year’s Eve,” she said finally. “I have to admit that I missed it. You’re really talented, Jack.”

“Evie, it feels really nice to hear you say that. I always respected your opinion. You looked so beautiful that night. You missed my food, but I missed your face.”

“Jack, I need to hang up now, okay? I think it’s better that you find someone else to work on your restaurant.”

“I understand, Evie. I hope you’re happy. You’re happy, aren’t you?”

“I’m hanging up, Jack. Good-bye.”

She was trembling when she put the phone back in her purse.

In her heart of hearts, she knew Jack was only calling her because she was unattainable. The question was whether she could fault him for it when she had been guilty of the same. Hadn’t she been fixated on him in part because he refused to get married? These issues danced in her head like an unrelenting tap routine, supplanting any of the joy she’d been feeling about design school moments earlier.

“Miss?” the doorman at the Hamilton poked his head outside. “Emmeline Fields just came through the back entrance of the building. Do you want me to ask her to show you the two-bedroom?”

“Not now,” she said, and took off down the street without looking back.

# # #

Evie wasn’t totally shocked when Edward asked if they could get together to talk a few weeks after Jack called. They had been out twice more but she was preoccupied on the dates, fidgeting when she should have been still, silent when she should have been conversing. Even during sex she felt like she was floating up above it, looking down at their coupling through a haze. The worst was when Olivia bounded into Edward’s living room dressed as Peppa Pig. “It’s my favorite show,” Olivia said, diving for Evie’s lap. Finally Evie understood the provenance of her British accent. “That’s nice,” she replied, with about a quarter of her typical effusiveness. When she looked up from her magazine moments later, she found Edward whispering something into a forlorn Olivia’s ear.

She met Edward in Central Park on a Sunday morning. She arrived early, admired the glistening snow on the treetops from a park bench, and tried to let the cold wind flush her mind. The park was the place where Evie found peace after she went off-line, where long walks eased her Internet addiction and helped her digest the reality of Jack’s marriage. But it wasn’t a panacea, and when Edward arrived right on time, she wasn’t at all calm about what he would say or prepared for what she herself would tell him.

“Evie, you know I’m crazy about you,” Edward started off. “I don’t play games or pretend otherwise.”

“But . . .” Evie heard him continue in her head, waiting for the thud of the proverbial other shoe.

“And I’m going to keep being truthful with you. I want a future with you. But I feel like something is holding you back,”
he said. The wind was blowing his sandy hair, and the flap of his overcoat was beating up and down. Evie noticed that he left almost a foot between them on the bench, like he was pulling away physically as well as emotionally from her. “I love you. I haven’t said it formally yet, though I hope you already knew it. But I need to hear how you feel. And where you see this going. I need to know Jack is out of the equation.”

In the dark days following her breakup with Jack, she might have toyed with exploiting her sense of power over a man with coy and ambivalent answers. But a full year had passed and she had changed. Edward had changed her. Being with Edward, or Jack for that matter, wasn’t about shifting her Facebook status from “single” to “in a relationship” or never having to go on another blind date. It was about finding happiness and discovering what real love is—building a merger unlike any she had been a part of at Baker Smith, where she always felt at arm’s length from the outcome. If she and Edward were going to move forward, it would need to be with a full investment and the results would really matter—to them. And now he was asking her what she wanted for the long term, maybe even forever.

Edward Gold was the most thoughtful, sincere, earnest, and caring man she’d ever dated. And he had the other stuff too—the looks and the job and the pedigree she used to fixate on, and probably always would to some extent. But something about getting what she had always wanted was making her question if it would be enough for her. Maybe that was the pull of Jack all along. He never made her settle on a long-term plan. By always making her think marriage was out of the question, she’d automatically decided it was something she desired because she never had to see the consequences through. Or perhaps it was something else, something darker keeping her from forging a life with Edward. Maybe she wasn’t sure she deserved the best. Clearly Edward was
picking up on her issues, which scared her. She didn’t want to lose him because of her own craziness.