After I Do (23 page)

I
come into the office and head right to Mila’s desk.

“I wrote to her, the advice columnist.”

Mila looks up at me, smiling. “Well, I guess I have to take back all that stuff I said about it making you a loony.”

“You don’t think it means I’m crazy?” I say.

Mila laughs. “I find it easier to define ‘crazy’ by what rational people do rather than my own preconceived ideas. You did it. You’re a rational person. Thus, it is not crazy.”

My head cocks to the side. “Thank you,” I say. I really did think she was going to think I was crazy. I’m glad I was wrong.

“So show me this woman, this
Ask Allie,” she says. “I want to read up on her. See what you’ve gotten yourself into.”

I take over her computer and type in the Web address. The page pops up. The question at the top is the one I read last night. It’s about a man who has been cheating on his wife for years and feels he finally needs to tell her. Ask Allie isn’t very nice to him.

“Don’t read that one,” I say. “Or, I mean, you can, but read this one first.”

I pull up the letter she wrote to a woman who gave her daughter up for adoption years ago and now wants to find her but doesn’t know if she should. I really like the part where she tells her,
Make yourself available, make yourself easily found, should someone try to find you. Be open, be generous, be humble. You are in a unique position in which you cannot require love and acceptance, but you must give it if your daughter seeks it from you. It may seem hard, almost impossible, to love without the expectation of love in return, but once you have figured out how to do it, you will find that you really are a parent.

“Let me know what you think,” I tell Mila, and then I head back to my office.

Twenty minutes later, Mila is at my desk. “How have I spent my whole life not reading these letters?” she says. “Did you read the one about the gay son? I lost it right at my desk. I was tearing up!” Her voice changes as she sits down. “So what if she reads your letter? What if she answers it?”

“She’s not gonna answer it,” I tell her. “She’s probably not even going to read it.”

“She could, though,” Mila says. “She might.”

“I very much doubt it.”

“You wrote to her about Ryan?” she asks.

“Yeah,” I say.

“Did you mention the year-apart thing? That could be a good hook.”

“You sound like my grandmother!” I say. “I asked her if she thought it made sense to start a marriage over or if . . .”

“If what?”

“If I shouldn’t just start over on my own.”

“Whoa,” Mila says. “That’s even an option? You’re thinking about that?”

“I don’t know what I’m thinking! That’s why I wrote her.”

“How did you sign it?”

“Oh, come on, that’s the most embarrassing part,” I say.

“Give it up, Cooper. How did you sign it?”

I sigh and resign myself to admitting it. “Lost in Los Angeles.”

Mila nods her head in approval. “Not bad!” she says. “Not bad at all.”

“Get out of my office,” I say, smiling at her. “Are you free for lunch tomorrow? I need a second set of eyes on a dress fitting.”

“What kind of dress?” Mila asks, her hand on the doorframe.

“Bridesmaid.”

Mila raises her eyebrow. “What are the wedding colors?”

“Um,” I say, trying to remember what Natalie told me. “Coral and pale yellow, I think.”

“Sort of like persimmon and poppy?”

“I don’t even know what you just said.”

“Like grapefruit and lemon?”

“Sure,” I say. “That sounds about right.” Whatever happened to primary colors?

Mila nods her head approvingly. “Your sister-in-law’s got style.”

For some reason, I am personally flattered by her compliment. Natalie
does
have style. And she’s going to be
my
sister-in-law. I get to have another sister. Maybe one day, we’ll be so close that I forget that she was once new and unfamiliar. Maybe one day, I’ll love her so much that I momentarily forget she’s Charlie’s wife or my nephew’s mom. She’ll just be my sister.

R
achel, Thumper, and I are supposed to go hiking this morning, but for the first time, we truly cannot find a parking space. We circle around the area for about thirty minutes before we all lose our patience.

“Brunch instead?” Rachel asks.

“Sure,” I say. Eating brunch is exactly the opposite of hiking, and yet it feels like the natural move. “Where to?”

Rachel pulls up a list in her phone. “Are you up for checking out a bakery?” In her off time, Rachel has been going to every bakery she can find in Los Angeles, trying to figure out what she likes and what she doesn’t. Slowly but surely, this bakery idea has become a real thing in her mind. It’s something that is going to happen, sooner or later. The sooner or later depending on a small-business loan.

“Absolutely,” I say. “Am I headed right or left?”

“Left,” she says. “I want to check out this place in Hollywood I heard about. I read about it on a blog, like, a year ago and never made my way over to check it out. Apparently, they serve high-end waffles.”

“High-end waffles? Like luxury waffles?”

Rachel laughs, pointing to her right to indicate that I need to turn here. “Like cream cheese waffles, peanut butter banana waffles, bacon waffles. You know, trendy waffles.”

“That sounds like a dumb idea for a restaurant,” I say. “Because what if I want eggs with my waffles?”

“Look, I just heard that the space was really cool, and I want to see it. We don’t even have to eat there. We can eat farther down the block. Just take this until you hit Melrose, and take a left, and then we’re gonna take a right.”

“Aye-aye, Captain.”

“Don’t say that,” Rachel says. She turns to Thumper, who is waiting patiently in the backseat. “Why does she talk like that, Thumper?” He has no answer.

When we get to Larchmont Boulevard, I park the car along the street, and Rachel, Thumper, and I head toward the storefront, but we can’t find it.

“What number did you say it was?” I ask her.

“I don’t remember,” she says, trying to find it in her phone. She looks down at the screen and frowns, and then she looks straight ahead. We’re standing in front of a glass storefront with a sign, “FOR LEASE,” written across it in big red capital letters.

“This is it,” she says, disappointed.

“It closed?”

“I guess so,” she says. She stares into the storefront for a moment and then says, “If Waffle Time can’t stay in business, how am I going to stay in business?”

“Well, you’re not going to name your place Waffle Time, that’s number one.”

Rachel drops her arms and looks at me. “Seriously, Lauren. Look at all this place had going for it. Look at the foot traffic here. Everyone stops and walks around Larchmont. Parking is fairly easy. There’s a parking lot right there for seventy-five cents. Where else is there a lot for seventy-five cents?”

“Well, it’s seventy-five cents for a half hour,” I say. “But I see your point.”

Rachel puts her head to the glass and peers in, cupping her hands around her eyes to better her vision. She sighs. “Look at this place!”

I do the same, right beside her. There is an exposed brick wall on one side. A long L-shaped counter, a cash register on the small end of the L, built-in stools on the long side. There is a white, faded display case on the back wall. It looks adorable. With a couple of tables and chairs, I imagine it was a really nice place to get a luxury waffle.

“I could do it here,” she says. “Right? I could try to lease this place.”

“Absolutely,” I say. “Does it seem like something in your price range?”

“I barely even know my price range,” she says. “But no, not really.”

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen her this drawn to something.

I pull out my phone and take down the number on the sign. “You can call,” I say, a hopeful tone in my voice. “It never hurts to call.”

“No,” she says. “You’re right. It doesn’t hurt to call.”

There are two types of people in this world. There is the type of person who, when faced with this predicament, takes down the number but never calls, already assuming the answer is no. And there is the type of person who takes down the number and calls anyway, hoping for a miracle. Sometimes those people end up in the same place. Sometimes the person who calls ends up ahead.

Rachel will call. That is the type of person Rachel is. And that’s how I know that her bakery has a real shot. That, and I think she will corner the baby shower market with those fondant duckies.

F
riday afternoon, David calls me at work and asks if I’m free that night. “I have a surprise that has landed in my lap, and I’d love to take you,” he says.

“Oh?” I’m intrigued.

“The Lakers are playing the Clippers in the playoffs,” he says, excited.

“Oh, interesting,” I say. Dammit. He wants to go to a basketball game? “I didn’t know you were into basketball.”

“I’m not, really. But Lakers versus Clippers? Two L.A. teams against each other on their way to the finals? That seems epic. And not the way people use that word now. I mean, an actual epic struggle for the heart of Los Angeles sports fans. Plus, these are great seats.”

“OK,” I say. “Cool. Go, Lakers!”

“Or Clippers,” David says. “We’ll have to decide.”

I laugh. “I suppose we should be on the same team for this.”

“Might make things easier,” he says. “So I’ll pick you up at your place around six?”

“Sounds good.”

When he shows up at my door at ten of six, the sun is out and is only now considering the idea of setting. The heat, which in only a month or two will become as oppressive as a straitjacket, is merely mild and soothing, like a sweatshirt.

We get into the car, and David starts careening through the streets. He navigates with confidence. I am tempted, when he turns onto Pico, to suggest he take Olympic. I stop myself. It’s not polite.

And yet Pico gets us there much, much more slowly than Olympic would have. The traffic is aggressive and bumper-to-bumper. People are cutting people off, sneaking into lanes they aren’t supposed to, and in general acting like jerks. By the time we are downtown, circling around the Staples Center, I am remembering why I don’t go to the Staples Center. I hate crowds of people. I hate congested parking lots. I don’t really care about sports.

David pulls into a private lot charging twenty-five dollars to park.

“Are you serious?” I ask. I can’t believe it. “Twenty-five dollars?”

“Well, I’m certainly not dealing with the bullshit of trying to get into one of those lots.” He points down the street to men with bright flashing batons and flags, offering parking for fifteen. Cars are backed up for blocks to get in.

I nod my head.

We get out of the car. It takes us ten minutes just to cross the street to get to the Staples Center. A sea of people, some in yellow and purple jerseys, some in red and blue, swarms past us.

David takes my hand, which is good, because I have no idea where I am. We make our way into the stadium, entering through what look like the main doors. We hand over our tickets.

The ticket taker, a humorless forty-something man, frowns at us and tells us we are at the wrong door. He says we need to go to the left, around the building.

David is losing his patience now, too. “We can’t get in this way?”

“Left and around the building,” the man says.

So we go.

We finally find the right door.

We walk in. We are told that our seats are in section 119, which is nowhere near the door we came in. By the time we find our seats, they are inhabited by two teenage boys in Clippers jerseys. We have to ask them to leave, which makes me feel like pretty much the worst person in this stadium, since these boys actually care about this game and I don’t care in the slightest.

But regardless, we sit down.

We watch the ball go back and forth.

David turns to me, the stress finally leaving his face. “OK,” he says. “Let’s root for the Clippers.”

“Sounds good. Why Clippers?”

David shrugs. “They seem like the underdog.”

It’s as good a reason as any. When they score, David and I jump up. When a foul is called against them, we boo. We cheer for the guy trying to make the halftime shot. We pretend to be impressed by the Laker Girls. We stomp our feet in rapid-fire motion when the announcer tells us to make some noise. But my heart is not in it. I don’t care.

The Clippers lose, 107 to 102.

David and I leave with the flow of the rest of the stands. We are pushed into the people in front of us. I trip on a stair. We break away from the crowd. We leave the stadium.

The sun set some time ago. I should have brought a sweater.

“Do you remember which way we came in?” David says. “It was this way, right? After we came around the building?”

“Oh, I thought you were paying attention.”

“No,” he says, his voice strained. “I thought you were.”

I realize then that between parking in a random lot and walking all around the stadium to get in, neither of us has any idea where we parked.

And that’s when I think,
Jesus Christ. I’ve done all of this, I’ve spent all of this time, done all of this work, just to end up back here?

Because while it may not look the same as trying to find your car in Lot C of Dodger Stadium, it sure as hell feels exactly like it.

And then I look at David, and I think that if all roads eventually lead here anyway, I’d rather it was with Ryan.

May 14

Dear Lauren,

I broke up with Emily. It wasn’t really a serious thing, but I thought it was better to be honest. I’ve been thinking about you and me so much that it feels wrong to have another woman in my bed. And it felt wrong to do that to her, too. So I broke it off.

I’ve been thinking about our future. I’ve been thinking about what life holds for us. I’ve been thinking of ways I can be a better husband. I made a whole list! Good stuff, I think. Stuff that is actionable. Not just things like “Be nicer” but actual ideas.

I was thinking one of them could be that we have one night a week where we eat some weird international food you like. For instance, every Wednesday, we go out to dinner for Vietnamese, Greek, Persian, Ethiopian, whatever you want. And I’ll never complain. Because the rest of the week, we will compromise. But one day a week, we eat together at some crazy place you love. Because I want you to be happy, and you deserve to have tahdig or pho or a bahn mi sandwich or any of those other weird things. Also, I’ll only make you go to the Chinese place on Beverly once a month. I know you hate it. There is no sense in going there all the time just because I like the orange chicken.

See, honey? Compromise! We can do this!

Love,

Ryan