Authors: Chris Van Hakes
I took the stairs two at a time and sniffed my scrub shirt as I got to the third floor landing, hoping I didn’t smell like hospital before knocking on Delaney’s door. I’d been anxiously practicing asking if she wanted to go out on a date, ditching the private relationship, the whole way back from the hospital. I had a feeling she’d been avoiding me because she wanted the same thing. I could tell she wanted more, but didn’t want to be the one to ask first.
I took a deep breath, told myself,
This will be good,
and knocked on the door. Except when the door swung open, Delaney wasn’t standing in front of me. Mia was.
“Hey,” she said, stepping out into the hallway and closing the door behind her, giving me a tiny smile. There was sleep in the corners of her eyes and her hair was rumpled, and yet she was still a fine-boned beauty, loo
king up at me with big blue pools for eyes.
“Hi. Where’s Delaney?”
“Asleep. We were up pretty late, talking.”
“Talking?” I swallowed.
“About you. About you and her. She explained everything, convinced me to stay and talk to you.”
“Talk to me?”
“Yeah. We have some talking to do. But first, I need to apologize.” She tucked her head down, threw her arms around me and hugged my middle, hard.
I held my arms up, completely surprised. “Mia.” But after a minute of her holding me, my arms dropped and I hugged her back, and I buried my head in her hair. My eyes darted up when I heard Delaney’s apartment door creak open again, and saw her tip-toe, fully dressed, out of her apartment. When our eyes met, she gave me a puffy-eyed, watery smile, mouthed, “Bye,” and walked down the stairwell. I didn’t get the chance to say anything to her before she was gone.
When Mia was wrapped in a blanket on my sofa, knees hugged to her chest and a cup of coffee in her hands, she said, “Delaney explained everything to me last night.”
“What did she explain?” I sat forward in the r
ecliner.
“She explained how you feel about me, that it’s not just a phase. She told me about all the other women you’d see, how they weren’t enough, and she told me about you and her.”
I inched forward. “What did she say about me and her?”
“That what you had with her wasn’t important, that it didn’t change your feelings for me. That she wasn’t going to ever be me.”
“She told you all that?” I said, setting my mug down on the coffee table hard.
She nodded into her knees.
“Mia, I need to tell you some things.”
“You’re sure you don’t mind me crashing here?” I said as I tucked a sheet into the sofa cushion, Jenny sitting regally on top of the pillow and licking her paws.
“Oh honey, I’m sure. You and Jenny can stay here as long as you want,” Emily said with big, symp
athetic eyes.
“Don’t worry. I promise I’ll stay out of the way when Sam comes back.”
“Sam’s hardly ever back. He’s like a ghost.”
“Like Bruce Willis in
The Sixth Sense.”
“What?”
“Nothing. It should just be a few days that I’m here. Plus,” I said, trying on a cheery voice, “I have some good news.”
“Oh?”
“I have a job interview for a special collections position!”
“No way!”
Emily hugged me tight. “Tell me all about the job.”
“Well, it doesn’t pay as well, but if I get the job, I’ll be working in the archives, and maybe that will get me a leg up when there’s an opening working with the Jenny E
dmonton archives.”
She patted my knee and beamed at me. “That’s so great! It sounds perfect. But I don’t understand. Does the university have separate special collections d
epartments?”
I bit my lip and said, “Actually, it’s not at the univers
ity. They’re not hiring at PGU right now.”
“Oh?” She lowered her eyebrows. “I don’t know any other academic libraries around here. Where is it?”
“San Diego.”
“I hope that’s a town in Illinois,” Emily said. I shook my head and she exploded. “Laney! You ca
nnot go back to LA!”
“It’s not LA. It’s an hour south of LA.
Completely different.”
She closed her eyes and buried her head in her lap. “Tell me you’re not doing this because of O
liver.”
“Okay. I’m not doing this because of Oliver.”
“Now tell me the truth.”
“It’s just…it would be easier.
Fresh start. That kind of thing.”
“Sure, like this was a fresh start.
Like moving across the country with Cliff was a fresh start in college. Like college was a fresh start. Maybe what you need isn’t a fresh start but an old one.”
“You don’t understand. I can’t live across the hall from Oliver, knowing he’s happily ever after in love with
Mia, getting everything he wants, being perfect,” I said, hiccupping, trying to stop encroaching tears.
“I do understand.”
“You don’t. You’ve had Sam forever! You get everything you want!”
“Not true,” she said.
“Like?”
“You, staying in college.
Staying here, as one example.”
“That’s different,” I said through a clogged voice. “But,” I said, and then my voice broke.
“Because you’re you. You’re beautiful and loveable. And I’m the opposite.”
Emily wrapped her arms around my shoulders and pulled me close as I started to really cry. “Oh honey. No. No. That’s not true.”
“It is!” I said between sobs. “It is true.”
“I’m sorry Oliver broke your heart, but if he can’t see what he’s missing, that doesn’t mean someone else won’t. You don’t have to run away and hide all the time. You can find everything you want right here.”
“I know. In theory. It’s just—I have all these emotions that I don’t want inside of me, that I’m running away from, too.”
“The bad news is that the emotions will still be there when you stop running.”
“Annoying of them.”
“Yes. Is there anything else you’re looking for?
Maybe love or happiness or joy?”
“Myself, I guess,” I said with another sniffle.
“Well, good news. You’re right there.”
“Under all these emotions I refuse to feel?”
“Yep. And just think, after you feel them, they’ll go away.”
“Personally, I kind of like eating them.”
“What do they taste like today?”
“Right now my emotions feel like a Cadbury Fruit and Nut bar,” I said, and Emily squeezed me once more b
efore letting go. “Good news,” she said. “I happen to have that emotion in my cupboard.”
“Hey,
Urs,” I said, pulling at my tie. My feet were pinched into black wingtips, I couldn’t stretch my arms in my suit jacket, and I was already sweating underneath my shirt collar. I sat down at the dinner table as people filed in for Michael and Ursula’s rehearsal dinner. “When’s Delaney getting here?”
Ever since I’d talked with Mia and told her that Delaney was absolutely wrong about ever
ything she’d told her, I’d been desperate to talk to Delaney. But Delaney wasn’t answering her door or her phone or her email. And Ursula and Emily weren’t either.
Michael feigned ignorance on Delaney’s whereabouts, but I was suspicious. I was desperate to straighten ever
ything out with her, but no one would help me, no matter how much I begged and pleaded. “You don’t understand,” I told Ursula. “I really care about her.”
She glared at me and then pressed a finger into my sternum. “I care about her
more.
And so I’m telling you now. Stay. Away.”
“I can’t,” I said miserably. That had been days ago, and there was no word from her. I didn’t really sleep, or eat. I didn’t want to work, because I hated getting out of bed, but at least it passed the hours.
I was pathetic. I filled up her voice mailbox one day with increasingly sad pleas, and still she wouldn’t talk to me. I’d even croaked, “I love you, Laney,” into the phone, but there was no response. The only thing keeping me sane was the wedding. I’d see Delaney tonight at the rehearsal dinner and explain everything.
“Delaney’s not coming.” Ursula sat across from me at the long table. “You blew it.” She had an a
ngry edge to her voice telling me to stay back, but I didn’t have any other choice.
“What do you mean?”
“She’s in California right now, on a job interview.”
I fisted my hands under the table. “California?” Cliff. Cliff was getting her back? “Where’s Jenny?”
“Emily’s.”
“Is there any chance you could tell her to call me back? I’d really like to talk with her.” Not that it mattered.
Ursula shook her head.
I spoke through my teeth. “I already told Michael. I want to be with Delaney. I want her.”
“Oliver, honestly. Do you think that’s enough?” I nodded miserably and she raged on. “But so what?” Ursula said, sitting back in her chair and smiling at guests filing into the restaurant.
“What do you mean, so what? I want her!”
Ursula stood and walked past me, hugging Michael’s parents. I followed her in a huff, and said, “Ursula, this is important.”
She turned on her heel and fixed me with a stare. “Li
sten, you. You don’t get to play with my best friend’s heart like it’s a cat toy and you’re the big paw of destiny, swatting it around. She already had that, and she deserves better than you. So that’s
what
,” she said, practically spitting the words out at me. I stepped backwards, and Michael’s parents looked ashen.
“Ursula, dear, would you like some water?” Mrs. Wild said, patting Ursula on the shoulder. “Maybe you’ve had a little too much wine?” Mr. Wild smiled patronizingly at me over Ursula’s head, and I said, “Sorry. You’re right,” and retreated to a corner table to drink myself into a st
upor.
Three hours and seven drinks later, my arms were around Emily and someone named Sam’s shou
lders as they lugged me to their apartment, where I collapsed onto their couch next to a fur ball I realized was Jenny, growling at me until I rearranged myself on the sofa.
“
Saaaaaam?” I said as I collapsed onto the sofa. Sam had stood in the corner by the bar, saying almost nothing, holding on to Emily’s waist throughout the entire dinner, looking skillfully bored in his suit and skinny tie. Sam was the consummate cool guy. “Sam,” I muttered. “Where have you been all my life?”
“On an airplane,” he said.
“Hm. Delaney told me you always said the exact right thing,” I said.
Emily said, “That’s Sam for you.”
I buried my face in a cushion and groaned, inhaling the smell of something that was distinctly Delaney. I put my nose in the cushion to smell it again. Pathetic. I was pathetic.
“He’s pathetic,” Sam said to Emily. I said, “That was
not
the exact right thing to say.”
“I have no idea what’s wrong with him,” Emily said, “but don’t let Laney know he’s here, okay?”
At the sound of her name, my head popped up. “Laney? Is she here?”
“She’s in California, buddy. And she doesn’t want to talk to you.” Emily patted my head and I settled my face back down in the cushions, mise
rable and alone.
I was awoken by someone shoving an elbow into my head. “Sit up,” a soft voice said, and I complied miserably, because it soun
ded just like Laney. I was hallucinating her everywhere.
I rubbed my eyes and stretched, and when I blinked, I saw Laney sitting next to me, looking drawn and pale and holding a cup of co
ffee out to me, Jenny curled up in her lap. My hands fell and started to shake. My stomach caved in. Was this love? Being near her felt awful. Love was terrible. “Hi,” I managed.
“Hi,” she said.
“You’re in California.”
“I was. Now I’m here.”
“Now you’re here. Why are you here?”
“For Ursula’s wedding.
Also, you’re sleeping on my apartment.”
I looked down at the sofa, confused.
“
On
it? This is your apartment? Your apartment is across from my apartment.”
She tilted her head. “I moved.”
“You moved,” I said tightly. “You moved and you didn’t tell me, and you didn’t answer my phone calls, and you’re going back to LA.”
“Oliver—”
“You know I’m not with Mia, if that’s what you think. If that’s why you were running away, you shouldn’t. I’m not with her.”
“Good to know,” she said, just as her phone buzzed with a new text. “That would be Ursula, frea
king out. I have to go.” She gingerly put the dog on the floor, and when I reached out my arm to stop her from going further, she said, “It’s her wedding day, Oliver. I don’t want to be sad on her wedding day.”
“I don’t want you to be sad ever.”
“It’s inevitable.”
“Is it?” She nodded and held out the hot cup of coffee to me with an NPR logo. “I made this for you. Emily and Sam are still asleep.”
“You made me an NPR mug?”
“Yes, also the
coffee, and I volunteered you for the pledge drive. I hope you’re good with phones.”
“We need to talk. Before you go to LA,” I said.
She wasn’t smiling. “No.”
“Please? Just…are you with Cliff? Wait, don’t answer that,” I said.
She shook her head. “I’m not with Cliff.”
I tried to feel something besides complete and total elation, but I couldn’t. It was overwhelming. Any minute I was going to explode into a rainbow. “Oh.” I attemp
ted a facial expression that wasn’t a smile, but it was like my mouth was having a smile seizure, and my heart was having a happiness fit. “So we can talk? I just want to explain things. Again. Not in a voicemail.”
“Fine,” she said tightly, but there was
a dimness in her eyes that didn’t match my elation. How could she not feel what I was feeling? “We can talk. After the wedding.”
I nodded like a maniac, watching her walk out
the door. “After the wedding.”