The Department of Lost & Found (31 page)

With the exception of the occasional times I went flat on my ass and belly-flopped into the ocean. After an hour, we gave up, and he returned to the room to nap, and I fell asleep on a beach chair with one hand grazing the sands below. The shouts of three teen-age boys tossing the football in the waves woke me up, so I rubbed my eyes, pulled on my cushy hotel robe, and made my way to our room. The air was so cold inside, I felt as if liquid nitrogen had been shot through my veins.

Jake was lying on top of the sheets in the dark, still in his bathing suit, his hands tucked behind his head. I flipped on the lights.

“Have a good nap? I checked out the seafood buffet menu. I think we should definitely hit it tonight.”

“Actually, I didn’t sleep.”

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“Is something wrong?” I felt my stomach drop.

“Sammy called.” Sammy, the Misbees manager. Jake didn’t even need to keep talking. I knew what was coming next. But I let him keep going anyway. He swung his legs up in the air and rolled himself upright. “The thing is, Nat. They need me in London.”

I blinked and started picking my cuticles.

“They need me in London,” he repeated. “And I don’t know what to do.”

“Of course you know what to do,” I said quietly. “You just don’t want to do it.” I stood in the doorway, unable to move.

“No, truly. I don’t know what to do.” He said it with enough conviction that I believed him. “I promised you something. I promised you that I’d be here not just for Sally’s wedding, but I’d be there for you. But London . . .” His voice trailed off. “We got a call from the Rolling Stones. The Rolling
fucking
Stones, Nat.

They want me to come and record a song with them. And then maybe have the band open up on their summer tour. I mean, the Rolling Stones for Christ’s sake.”

“I get it, Jake. It’s the Rolling Stones. You don’t have to say their name ten more times for me to get it.” I took a few steps forward.

“I haven’t said yes yet. I wanted to talk to you first.” He folded his hands in his lap and reminded me of a five-year-old who’s been caught pants-ing the girls in the playground.

“But you’re going to. Say yes,” I sniped, as a I dropped my robe and reached for dry clothes in my suitcase. “We both know that you’re going to, regardless of what I say. Because really, what could I say that would be enough? That I was counting on you to be here for this? You already know that’s true. That I was counting on you to live up to your promises? I think you already know that’s true, too.” I considered it for a moment. “You know, Jake,
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I didn’t ask you to come back. You came back on your own. I didn’t think things could be different, but you asked me to believe that.

So I did.”

“It’s just Sally’s wedding,” he said. “It’s not the end of the world. This is my fucking career, Natalie.”

My eyes flashed, and I threw his damp towel to the floor. “No, Jake,” I said. “That’s where you’re wrong. It’s not the end of
your
world. But that doesn’t mean that your world should be a part of mine.”

“Natalie, I love you.” He flopped his arms helplessly.

“That’s not enough.”

“What would be? Tell me what would be enough so that I can make this up to you.”

I thought about it. I really did. I zipped up my sweatshirt and moved to the window, staring out at the rhythm of the lapping waves, the kids darting in and out of them. I thought about Colin and about Brandon and about Dylan and about Ned. I thought about how what might have been enough six months ago wasn’t nearly enough anymore. I thought about second chances and how easy it is for them to get tossed aside like misplaced Post-it notes. I thought about how I once would have given anything to have Jake come back, but now I knew that what happened the first time wasn’t a mistake because it had already repeated itself. The first time out, in a relationship, on a baseball diamond, on the Senate floor, you can blame naïveté. You can say that you didn’t know how to do it any differently. But the second time around, there’s really no such excuse. You should know better now. And I hoped that I did.

“It’s not about making it up to me, Jake,” I said finally. “It’s about doing it right the first time so there’s no space in between you coming back and me asking you to leave.”

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“I don’t want to leave, Nat. I don’t. Please don’t ask me to leave.”

“But you do, Jake. You do. You just don’t want to admit it yet.

And besides, it’s not like I’m not asking. We’re both already gone.

You wanted to come back and rescue me. Fine. I wanted it, too.

But it turns out that no one can save anyone else, and you certainly can’t save me.”

He got up and moved to the window, curling himself around me, and for a few last lingering moments, we just looked out at the beach without words.

“I can hear your heart beating,” I said to break the silence, just like I used to when we were lying in bed, before cancer ever hit, before we came undone and then later tried to undo the damage.

“What’s it saying?” he said back, just like he always used to.

This was our thing.

“It’s saying ‘I love you.’ ”

“You know what they say—‘a heart can never lie.’ ” And then he pulled me tighter so that the thumping of his heart literally echoed in my ear. I don’t know how long we stood there, watching the sun go down on more than just the water, but all of the sudden, I felt claustrophobic, so I untangled myself from Jake and grabbed the room key to get some fresh air.

I was almost out the door when Jake called me back.

“Nat, what if I say no to the Stones? I’ll do it if it will make the difference.”

My eyes filled with tears because this was the moment, the one that you either seize or shy away from when you’re going to make your own fortune. I took mine and clutched on. And then I shook my head no to his plea.

“So what do you want from me then?” he said, desperation fill-ing his voice. “What is it that you want?”

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“It’s not about what I want
from
you, Jake. It’s what I want
for
me.”

“So who saves you then?”

“I do, Jake. I save myself.” And I closed the door behind me.

It wasn’t until after I got in the elevator that I realized that I’d never heard his song. The one he wrote for me. And then I realized that it didn’t even matter.

i d o n ’ t k n o w why they call them rehearsal dinners, when nothing much really gets rehearsed. Mostly, guests get tremendously shit-faced, the members of the wedding party give ob-scenely random toasts, and, inevitably, one, if not more, of the parents of the bride and groom breaks down and shares embarrassingly long speeches and intimate details of the bride’s or groom’s childhood.

Sally and Drew’s rehearsal dinner was no different. Since you have most likely sat through dozens of other similar events, I will spare you the painful details. But what I should probably fill you in on is the fact that as we poured into the rented restaurant in Old San Juan, a quintessentially perfect Caribbean restaurant, complete with open-air sides, stucco walls, and bright flowering trees that gave you the sense that you were still outside, I did not see Zach in sight. I suspected that Sally knew something about his absence, but she was a virtual tornado all day: part bridezilla, part Tasmanian Devil, so it didn’t seem fair to bring up my crush in the midst of her spiral. The only down-time we had was our manicures at the spa, and since Lila was a fellow bridesmaid, and since this was supposed to be girl-bonding time, I guessed that it wasn’t entirely appropriate for me to inquire about the status and location of her is-he-or-isn’t-he boyfriend. Especially since I didn’t really feel like explaining why mine was homeward bound.

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I knew that I had no right to be disappointed. I knew that Zach was coming as Lila’s date, and I further knew that this not only gave me no right to be disappointed, but made me a fairly lousy friend to boot. But I was disappointed all the same. My newly svelte figure afforded me the luxury of donning duds that I could not normally pull off, and to be honest, I thought I looked pretty damn fine that evening: my bright pseudo-Missoni crocheted dress clung to all the right places, and even though I didn’t grow them myself, even I had to admit that my breasts were one of my better accessories.

As these things tend to happen at rehearsal dinners, Lila had a wee bit too much to drink. It wasn’t so much her fault: The waiters were passing around rum-laden cocktails at such a clip that I feared that even Sally’s thirteen-year-old niece was a little tipsy from her virgin margarita. Osmosis and all. So when we pushed back our chairs from the buffet dinner and toasted our final toast to the happy couple, Lila nearly fell over. It was both fortuitous and regretful that I was the one to steady her before she toppled to the adobe-tiled floor.

“Fucking asshole,” she slurred, as I held her elbow and righted her.

“Excuse me?” I said. “I was just trying to help. What’s the problem?”

“Not you.” She waved her hand in front of her face, as we followed the crowd out through the door and onto the street. Jessica, a college friend, had suggested an after-party at a bar, the Blue Parrot, down the block, and I was considering retiring to my king-size bed and pile of
Cosmo
s, but Lila was dragging me with her at the moment. Literally almost dragging: She was half-bent over, pulling at my arm, and more or less stumbling over the cob-blestones as we walked.

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“Lila, slow down. You’re going to trip and break your neck.” I pulled back my arm, the one without which she truly might have fallen to her peril. Stilettos, 100-proof rum, and unpaved streets do not mix. When she stood upright, I asked her again, “What’s the problem?”

“Men. They’re the damn problem. Fucking men,” she said, as she plopped down on a concrete stair leading up to a storefront.

“Zach?” I asked. “Is something wrong with Zach?”
Oh please
let there be something wrong with Zach!
I secretly prayed.

“Asshole,” she muttered.

“What happened?”

“Dunno. Dunno, Natalie. Things were okay, not great. Okay though. A warm body and all of that. He said he’d been telling me how he felt for a long time but that I wasn’t listening. As if I don’t listen! I listen, Natalie, don’t I listen? That’s
crap
!”

I didn’t think it was the right time to point out that she was, in fact, among the worst listeners I’d ever encountered, so bad that I sometimes wondered if I were having conversations with myself when she and I were chatting, so I just nodded and kept my mouth shut.

“Anyway, we’re done.” She sighed. “Done. Split. Kaput. Over.

Finito. I think he’s already into someone else.” She kicked off her heels and started rubbing her feet, and I felt blood rise in my cheeks. He’d obviously never mentioned our trip to Los Angeles, nor my brush with fame on a game show.

“You’ll be okay, Lila. You will be. You didn’t love him.”

“True,” she said, as she wagged her pointer finger in the air.

“Very true, my brilliant friend, Natalie. But . . .” Her voice trailed off. “He was someone, you know? He was
someone
. He filled in the empty spaces.” And then she started to cry.

Crap. I am a terrible, conniving, underhanded person,
I thought as 292

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I rubbed her back. Though maybe I should have already known this, given that I aspired for a lifelong career in politics.

“Maybe Zach didn’t want to be someone who just filled in empty spaces,” I softly suggested, trying to erase my momentary lapse into self-hatred. “Maybe that wasn’t enough.”

“It’s true. I know. We didn’t love each other. Not anymore anyway.” She wiped the mascara from her eyes. “But still. It sucks. I hate fucking weddings where I’m single.”

“Well, have you checked out two of Drew’s groomsmen? Not bad, I’d say. Not bad at all.”

“Yeah, I noticed.” She laughed. “If I recover from the hang-over that this rum is going to leave, maybe I’ll hit that situation tomorrow night.”

“That’s the Lila I know and love,” I said, as I coaxed her shoes back on and pulled her to her feet.

“What about you, Nat? Now that you gave Jake the old heave-ho? I’ll take one, you take the other? You’re looking remarkably great these days.”

We started walking down the street toward the Blue Parrot, my second-best friend and me.

“No,” I said, thinking of Jake’s heartbeat, wondering if he’d already made it to London. “I think a warm body isn’t enough for me anymore. I think I’d rather hold out until something is so big, so encompassing, that I’ll have forgotten what just enough feels like in the first place.”

“You’re lucky, you know.”

“Not really.” I mulled over my past six months and figured that Lila was still too toasted to make much sense.

“No, I mean, I know that you haven’t been lucky and that your life recently has been relative shit, but when you say that—about finding someone, about getting more than enough—I hear it in your
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voice. The hope. The belief that you will. Maybe that’s what I’m missing: Once you make the decision to settle for anything less than that, it’s easy to lose sight of something better.”

I thought about my diary and of the paths that I’d stumbled down, bruising myself along the way. It dawned on me that I still had one entry left to write: one about Jake. And then I realized that I didn’t need to bother because I already knew what he’d given me, why we’d ended, and what was left to still chase down.

It was that hope. Because now that I’d caught wind of something better, there wasn’t a chance in hell that just enough would ever be just enough ever again.

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