Expiration Dates: A Novel (11 page)

So, how was it?”

Hugo and I are at brunch at Toast, a trendy eatery on Third Street in West Hollywood that Hugo loves and I think is fine.

“How did you even know?”

Hugo laughs. “Do you really want me to answer that?”

I take my sunglasses off and stare at him. “Because we were once in bed together?”

Hugo grins. He picks up his coffee. “I talk to you about what's going on in my life, I just want you to feel free to have the same privileges.”

“You're so generous.”

“I know,” he says. “I'm going to buy you breakfast, too.”

I take another sip of coffee. Hugo looks at me thoughtfully.

“But seriously, Daph. What's the deal?”

The deal is that I spent the night with Jake; he woke me up
with coffee and immediately asked if he could see me the following night. The deal is that he texts me throughout the day, asking how I'm doing and sending funny memes or jokes. The deal is that he might be the best person I've ever dated.

“I like him,” I say. “I really like him. He's thoughtful and sincere. I've never met a person who just says what he means like that.”

Hugo runs a hand over the bottom of his face. “Yeah,” he says. “Admirable.”

“That's actually a really great way to describe him.”

“So you're having admirable sex.”

I laugh. “ ‘Thoughtful sex' maybe is better.”

Hugo considers this. “Can I ask you something?”

“Yes,” I say. “You were thoughtful. It's just different.”

Hugo shakes his head. “No. I'm just wondering if you ever really saw me as someone you could be with.”

I feel my shoulders tighten. I roll my neck from side to side. “What do you mean?”

Hugo sticks a hand back on his chin and massages the skin there. He doesn't look at me. “I just mean, was there ever a point where you thought, I don't know, it could go longer than three months?”

We never talk about this. What happened happened. We became friends. Our friendship is predicated on treading lightly on the past and staying firmly in the present.

“Hugo,” I say. “You know this already. Our paper said three months.”

“Right,” he says. “Of course.” But his tone sounds bitter all of a sudden, even a little angry around the edges.

“What's with you? Did you and Natalie break up or something?”

“No,” he says. “No, I mean, I don't know. We can't break up—we're not together.”

“Right,” I say. “Then what?”

He turns his gaze back to me, dead center. “I think about it,” he says. “Sometimes. I know I'm not supposed to say that, but I do.”

I inhale slightly. I can feel the sweat on my back. It's a hot day, and there doesn't seem to be any air-conditioning in here. My cotton T-shirt is suctioned to me like Saran Wrap.

“You don't,” I say. “Not really. You just think you do because I'm with someone now and we're talking about it.”

“Don't say that,” he says. “I hate being a cliché.”

“It's true. Hugo, we've been broken up for five years. You have never once wished for things to be different.”

Hugo shakes his head. “How do you know?”

I think about how Hugo and I became friends, after our breakup. How it felt seamless, almost—like he was meant to be in my life. I liked that I didn't have to lose him like I had everyone else. I didn't think I could bear to, honestly.

We met for coffee, a month after, and then ran into each other in line at Erewhon three weeks after that. Hugo suggested lunch, and then we just started spending time together.

One lunch turned into five years. Five years of drunken nights and hungover mornings and girlfriends and boyfriends and birthday parties and New Year's Eves at midnight. There have been times I've thought about it—of course I have. But my time with Hugo was up. We never backslid.

“Hugo, come on.”

He shakes his head and picks up his water glass. “You're right. Maybe I'm more fucked up about Natalie than I think I am.”

I feel something sharp pinch my stomach and then a deflation. Disappointment and relief, all in one. Because Hugo doesn't miss me. He's just having some crisis of identity, and I'm the closest thing he has to a therapist right now.

“Listen,” I say. “Maybe you want a relationship.”

Hugo laughs. “Ha. Right. Home sweet home.”

“I'm serious. When was the last time you've even been monogamous?”

He peers at me, and I swallow, because of course. It was five years ago.

“So have you told him?” Hugo asks.

I glance down at my plate—a half-eaten bagel with scallion cream cheese, tomatoes, and capers—and then back up at him. “No,” I say.

Hugo nods. “I guess I'm still special, then.”

I raise my eyebrows at him, and he looks back at me. But he does not appear triumphant. There is something even sad about the way he says what he does next: “I'm still the only one who knows your secret.”

Three months go by, and then two more. Jake and I keep seeing each other. Our relationship progresses slowly and easily—like an open road with no traffic. We just keep moving forward.

I start spending the night regularly, and then entire weekends dissolve in his apartment—pizza boxes and old movie rentals. I bring Murphy. He and Saber get along like Craigslist roommates. They don't go out of their way to engage, but they don't seem to have a problem with each other, either.

Jake gets me an electric toothbrush. The whole thing—its own base and cord.

And then, in late winter, Jake asks me if I'd like to move in with him.

He is sitting on the couch, and I'm on the floor, a box of SUGARFISH sushi on the coffee table in front of us—tuna and cucumber rolls and salmon sashimi—when he just out and says it.

“Do you want to live here?”

I pick up a roll with my chopsticks. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, do you want to move in with me and have this be your home, too?” He dunks a piece of salmon into the soy sauce. “Could save on toilet paper and apples. I buy a lot of apples.”

I put down my chopsticks and arch around to look at him. He is smiling—a big, goofy grin.

“You're serious?”

“I am,” he says. “I've been thinking about it a lot lately. You're here all the time, and I think we like being together.” He peers at me. “We do, right? The place is big enough for us, and Murphy and Saber.”

It's true—in the last six weeks I've spent more time in Wilshire Corridor than I have in West Hollywood. I've even become friends with Jake's neighbors, Mrs. Madden especially. She bakes me almond crescent cookies for Shabbat. Every Friday there's a tin outside Jake's door.

“Of course we do. I love being here.”

But I also love my place. It's funky and likely molding. There are cracks in the kitchen floor and peeling paint in the closets. But it's been my home for seven years. I know all the corners, the way the floor bows in the bedroom by the dresser, and how the bathroom tiles always get loose and you have to put them back like puzzle pieces. I have no idea if I'm ready to give it up.

“Is that a yes?”

“That's a big step.”

Jake nods slowly. “I know. I'm not scared of it, though. Feels right to me.”

I turn back to our sushi. In the past five months we have
gotten to know each other in small and big ways—areas I've never crossed into with anyone else. Jake has met my family, and seen me hangry and knows, now, I need to get my hair colored every three weeks otherwise I have a ton of premature gray. But he does not know the thing I keep trying to tell him. He does not know about the pieces of paper, what they mean.

I feel Jake's hands on my shoulders. He begins to knead them, and as soon as he does I can feel the tension leaving my body. I feel the way I always do around him—calm and good.

“This is a lot at once, I know,” he says. “Especially for the commitment-phobe.” I can hear the play in his voice, that easy chuckle that is so very Jake.

“Not anymore.”

He smiles. He cups my shoulder with his palm. “All I'm asking is that you think about it.”

I turn to face him, and he leans his lips down to meet mine. He tastes like pickled ginger and beer. Delicious.

“OK,” I say. “I'll think about it.”

“It would be fun,” he says. “We could stay up late and eat tons of sugar.”

“We're not twelve.”

“We're not?” He clears his throat. “Well, that explains the sex.”

He puts both of his hands on either side of my rib cage. I peel away in laugher.

“It would just be nice,” he says. He holds me gently, now. “Murphy likes it here, too.”

“Murphy is afraid of heights,” I say. “He still hasn't made up his mind.”

“We'll work it out. I'll put up a silk screen of a dog park.” He pauses. “I want you to be here.”

I kiss him. “I want to be here, too.”

I think about all that intimacy, the impossibility of secrets. How do you hide anything in eight hundred square feet?

“You don't,” Kendra says when I tell her. We are in Irina's kitchen the following night. Kendra is perched on a counter stool, nursing a Starbucks mint tea, and I'm going through Irina's mail.

“I love my place. You know that.”

Kendra shrugs. “Change is the only constant in life, babe. Bless it. You had five great years there.”

“Seven.”

“Even better. Jake is an amazing guy, and he cares about you, and he wants to make a life with you. And I think you feel that way, too. Things could be a lot worse.”

“I know,” I say. “Obviously. But isn't it a little bit soon? We haven't even been dating for half a year.”

“When it's right you just know,” Kendra says. “Joel and I got married after six weeks.”

“That was an unusual situation.”

“Yeah, only in that it took me four days to go from hating the idea of marriage to not being able to conceive of my life without him.”

“I don't know,” I say. “I like the idea of marriage.”

I think about Jake—the safety and calm I get at being in his presence. But I've spent my life knowing everything would end. That nothing was forever. It's hard to transition to the inverse.

“You're not me,” Kendra says. She picks her cup up and sips. “Love is not only one thing, you know. Love is just the thing you need. For me it was an instant change of heart. For you it's something else.”

I drop some junk mail into the trash. “How romantic.”

Kendra rolls her eyes. “Give me a break,” she says. “What do you want to do? Play cat and mouse with someone like Hugo forever?”

As soon as she says it I feel immediately sad. Hugo and I have seen less of each other lately. He's been traveling a ton, always on the weekends, and I've been at Wilshire Corridor more nights than I'm not. Last Saturday Jake and I ordered Pizzana, watched some
Bachelorette
knockoff, and fell asleep before ten.

There's a warmth to this relationship with Jake, a comfort that I've never really felt or known before. But sometimes I'm afraid it means I'm somehow fading—that all the bright and brilliant aspects of myself are diminishing in this cocoon. That I will not have the sparkle I once had—that all my edges are being worn down in this intimacy.

“Obviously not,” I say.

“What are we discussing?” Irina appears in the kitchen, a Bluetooth headpiece in her ear, and her cell phone in another. She's wearing leather pants and a tight black turtleneck, even though it's unseasonably warm for February.

“Are you talking to us?” Kendra asks in a low voice.

“Of course!” Irina snaps. She looks at Kendra. “You are here too often. Don't you have a new job?”

“I do; I just miss you,” Kendra says. She smiles, and Irina pats her playfully on the back. “We're remote half-time anyway, now.”

“Yes,” Irina says. Her tone is deadpan. “You seem hard at work.”

“We're discussing the fact that Jake asked Daphne to move in with him.”

Irina whirls to face me. “You're kidding.”

“Oh, wow, thanks. I feel so cherished here.”

Irina shoots me a look. “That's not what I meant, and you know it. Don't be obvious.”

“It's soon,” I say. “Living together is a big step.”

“A giant one,” she says. “Make sure you feel the same way about nontoxic cleaning products and how to get rid of squirrels.”

“Specific,” Kendra says.

“I'm more worried about that kind of access,” I say.

Irina looks at me. “His to you or yours to him?”

“There are things he doesn't know.”

“Like what?” Kendra says. “That sometimes you don't recycle? Who cares?”

Irina comes over and touches my arm. She's rarely this affectionate, but when she is, I know how much she means it. “You do what you're comfortable with, baby. And if you move in and you don't like it, move out. You can always change it. And change it again. And again. The stakes do not have to be that high.”

“Isn't that a Tony Robbins saying?” Kendra asks. “If something isn't working, change it. Keep changing it until it works?”

“It's a Penelope saying,” she says, somewhat wearily. “So, honestly, probably.”

“I'm just not sure what's stopping you,” Kendra says. And then she squints at me. “Unless I am.”

I wave her off. “I've never lived with a guy before.”

“But he's Jake,” Kendra says. “He's like the best one.”

I smile. “He is.”

“So, problem solved.”

I get home to my apartment a little after nine. I drop my sweater on the couch and pad into the bedroom. I sit down on the floor and reach under the bed. My fingers find it quickly. It's not big, maybe two feet by two feet—a box. My box. Filled with paper. There are postcards and fortunes from inside cookies, and the corner of a rolled-up newspaper.

Peter, five weeks.

Josh, six months.

Stuart, one night.

They mark out my life in units of time. Days, weeks, months, years. I take the last piece of paper out of my bag, the one I've been carrying around since I met Jake, five months ago, now.

I place it inside.