I was thinking about whether I wanted to slice the watermelon or bust out the melon baller when Austin fell into step beside me.
“Hey,” he said. “Can we talk?”
“Depends on what you want to talk about.”
“Us, Sadie. What else is there?”
The way he said it, the mix of desperation and passion in his voice, made me stop walking. He looked like he was willing to do anything to get me back. He was the Austin I remembered.
“Can you meet up with me tomorrow night?” he asked. “There are some things I have to tell you. Things I think you’ll want to hear.”
Butterflies flapped wildly in my stomach. That same rush I felt the first time I saw him came flooding back. There was no way I could deny that I wanted to hear those things.
So I said yes. He told me to meet him on the southwest corner of 55th and 5th. The butterflies are back as I stand on the corner waiting for him. I’m trying to figure out why we are meeting on this random corner in Midtown. Tiffany’s is two blocks away. For a second I think Austin might be taking me to Tiffany’s to pick out an engagement ring. Then I get a grip.
I look up and notice exquisite etching on the building across the street. There’s an elaborate ivy pattern etched below each row of windows. A light suddenly blinks on in one of the windows. I love this time of day when city lights start to blink on. When the city wakes up for the night and every wish you ever had about summer city nights could come true.
Austin strides up to me. He must have seen me spacing out from across the street. I was so deep in city love I didn’t even notice him.
“Hey,” he says. “Thanks for coming.”
“Where are we going?”
“This way.”
We start walking toward 6th Avenue. Nobody says anything. Our silence is making everything else sound louder: the snap of my flip-flops, a police siren in the distance, and the tourist couple in front of us speaking a language that might be Hungarian. Walking with Austin used to be one of the most romantic experiences of my life. We would hold hands the whole time, talking nonstop. We couldn’t take our eyes off each other. Every few blocks we would stop and kiss up against a building or even right in the middle of the sidewalk. But walking with Austin now is painfully different. It’s weird not to be holding hands. It’s weird that nobody has said anything for ten seconds. Or that he’s not pulling me over to the side because he has to kiss me.
Is it weird that part of me wants all of that back? After everything that’s happened?
There’s a replica of the LOVE sculpture at 55th and 6th. I totally forgot that’s where it was. The second I see it when we turn the corner, I know this is where we are going. We walk right up to it like Austin knows I know.
“You once told me you’re in love with love,” Austin says. “You are the most romantic person I’ve ever met. So I wanted to bring you here to tell you what I want to say. I wanted it to mean more than just words.”
My heart pounds. I’m having an epic feeling that what he is about to say will be monumental.
“I told her all about you,” he says. “My wife. Shirley. I told her that you’re my soul mate. I told her that I’ve never felt the way I feel about you for anyone else. Including her.”
“That must have been really hard to hear.”
“It was. She said she wants a divorce.”
“What do you want?”
“The same thing. She was served with divorce papers yesterday. That’s why I waited until yesterday to talk to you again. I wanted to wait until the papers were served.”
He actually did it. He actually left his wife for real. They are not only separated. They are getting divorced.
“So this is happening,” I say.
“This is happening.”
“You’re getting divorced.”
“Correct.”
“How do you feel about that?”
“Relieved. Like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. Like I can breathe again.” Austin tentatively reaches out to hold my hand. His touch feels too good to break. His eyes lock into mine. He says, “Like I can be with the person I’m meant to be with.”
Why does this have to be so freaking complicated? We were meant to be together. Anyone who saw us together before could tell that from a mile away. But people can be soul mates and still screw it up. People can be oblivious to their issues or have no interest in working them out. People can lie and cheat and deceive. When you find true love, it doesn’t always look the way you thought it would. Should the forces keeping us apart be forgiven just because the forces that brought us together were stronger? Forces that had been bringing us together for much longer than we were aware, in ways we will never know?
“There’s something else I didn’t tell you,” Austin says.
My stomach clenches. I take my hand back. Then I mentally prepare myself to make a run for it after hearing whatever other horrendous thing he kept from me.
Austin takes a deep breath.
“Shirley cheated on me,” he says. “We had only been married for five months when it happened. She reconnected with some old boyfriend from high school. They got together a few times. They didn’t sleep together—or so she said, but I’m not sure I believe her. I had no idea what was going on until he called one night.”
The irony is not lost on me. Austin found out his wife was cheating the same way I found out he was married. I’ll never forget how devastating it was when his wife told me who she was over the phone.
“Why didn’t you tell me before?” I ask.
“I was embarrassed. I thought it was my fault somehow, like I was lacking in a way she needed. No guy wants to admit his wife cheated on him. It sounds lame, but I thought you would think less of me if you knew.”
“It wasn’t your fault. That was all her. Not you.”
“What she did doesn’t excuse my behavior in any way. I just wanted you to know there was more to why I was planning on separating from Shirley before I even met you. Looking back on everything . . . I should have gotten the marriage annulled. But I felt obligated to make it work.”
“You should have told me you were married. You lied to me. Being honest now doesn’t excuse lying to me then.”
“I know.”
An older couple approaches us. They have that comfortable vibe of people who have been married forever. At first it seems like they are going to ask us something, like to take a picture of them in front of the sculpture. But when the woman takes a closer look at us, she gives me a kind smile and gently pulls her husband away. She obviously could tell Austin and I are in the middle of something.
“I can’t tell you how sorry I am,” Austin says. “All I can tell you is the truth. From now on, that’s all you will get from me. The truth is, every other time I thought I was in love before seems ridiculous now. I love you more than the person I was married to. I love you for all the right reasons. Not just because I’m attracted to you or you live nearby or we have the same internship. The love I feel for you is the ultimate kind of love. The kind of love that makes you want to be a better person. The kind of love that fills up every empty space in your soul. There’s no doubt how I feel about you. I don’t have to wonder if you’re the one. I know you are.”
When you meet the right person, there’s no doubt in your heart that the search is over. That’s how I felt about Austin. How could I have a Knowing about something so right that turned out to be so wrong?
I couldn’t. I was right all along. We both know what this is.
Austin messed up. He majorly, historically, catastrophically messed up. The thing is, he knows it. He feels horrible about it. And he’s doing everything he can to make up for it. So it comes down to trust. Can I ever trust Austin again?
I know no relationship is perfect. Everyone has challenges to overcome. Maybe our biggest challenge came right away. If that’s true, won’t everything work out in the end? We have the kind of love people search for their whole lives and sometime
s never find. What if I decide we’re over and I end up walking away from the love of my life?
“Remember that sunset on Trey’s roof?” Austin asks. “I already felt so close to you. We’d only known each other for what, one day? How can you explain a feeling that strong unless we’re meant to be?”
His eyes look into me. Searching. Hoping.
“Will you give me a second chance?” he asks.
“I have to think about it.”
“Take your time. Whatever you need.”
Austin reaches under the middle line of the E in the LOVE sculpture. He peels off a square envelope that was taped there. He hands the envelope to me. The color of the envelope is almost an exact matching shade of LOVE red. There are rainbow heart stickers around my name printed in black on the front.
“I made you a warm fuzzy,” he says.
Oh my god. How can I be mad at a boy who made me a warm fuzzy? And came here early to hide it on the LOVE sculpture? Austin is too adorable.
I don’t trust myself to stick around and get swept up in Austin’s magnetic aura. I’m not totally sure I can let him in again, even with his warm fuzzy. So I tell him I have to go. We’re both going downtown, but taking the subway together would be awkward.
“I’m going to walk for a while,” I say.
“Okay. Well . . . talk to you later?”
I nod, restraining myself from throwing my arms around him and kissing him like crazy. Being impulsive won’t help either one of us. I have to think about this.
Austin crosses the street to walk west. I walk east back to 5th Avenue, then start walking downtown. The lions can help me decide what to do. They are outside the New York Public Library on 42nd Street. When I was little, my mom would bring me to that NYPL branch for story hour. One of the books was about the lion statues outside the library on the grand staircase. The story said that the lions’ names were Patience and Fortitude. The lions and I became friends that day. I said goodbye to each of them on our way out, petting their stone paws. These days they remind me that most problems can be solved with patience and fortitude. Both of which I could really use right now.
The traffic light across from the library turns green as I reach the curb. It’s a good sign. The lions draw me into their protective fold as I approach the staircase. I pick a spot in the middle to let their collective energy envelop me. I focus on being in the Now like Darcy says, not thinking about Austin, not thinking about anything. Clearing my mind to make room for patience and fortitude.
Austin’s warm fuzzy pokes out of my bag. I lift the bright red envelope out and open it. Inside is a card with a glossy photo of the LOVE sculpture on the front. The card is blank on the inside with this note from Austin:
Dear Sadie,
You are the love of my life.
You are the woman of my dreams.
You are my soul mate.
I will never stop loving you.
Love,
Austin
I’m not sure how long I have been sitting here when my phone rings. It’s my mom. She’s probably going to give me a hard time for not staying longer when I stopped by last week. But my mom doesn’t understand that I needed to move on. Part of moving forward means not looking back.
“Guess where I am?” I say when I answer.
“Where?”
“Sitting between Patience and Fortitude.”
“You and those lions always were inseparable.”
“Sorry I didn’t stay longer last weekend, but—”
“I’m not calling about that.”
“You’re not?”
“Sadie.” Mom clears her throat. “I have something to tell you. About your brother.”
“What is it?”
“He’s coming home for the rest of the summer.”
“No way.” Marnix never comes home except for Christmas. He always complains about the humid summers here. Arizona’s dry heat works for him. “He loves Arizona in the summer.”
“He’s not in Arizona. He’s upstate.”
“What?”
“Marnix . . . was in a rehab facility for a while. Getting better.” Mom’s voice breaks. “He . . . tried to commit suicide.”
I am completely shocked. I didn’t know anything about this.
“When?” I ask.
“Near the end of last semester. Your father and I found a good facility for him upstate so we could visit him once a week.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Marnix made us promise not to tell you until he was better. Now he’s ready to come home.”
How could something this drastic have happened to my brother without me knowing anything about it? How could I have been figuring out what to knit him for Christmas instead of how to help him when he needed help the most? True, we don’t talk that much. We just don’t have that much to say. But I should have been better about reaching out to him. Did he really try to kill himself? That doesn’t sound like the Marnix I know.
It’s more obvious than ever that I don’t know my brother.
Marnix isn’t someone I ever really knew. He couldn’t wait to leave for college, either. I guess he had his own reasons to move on and not look back. Except now he has to look back. He has to stay at home for the rest of the summer so my parents can monitor him. He might even have to miss next semester.
My brother is coming home. That shouldn’t make me so nervous. Brothers and sisters seeing each other should be a normal thing. But with us, nothing was ever normal.
I guess I’ll have to try getting to know him all over again. But this time, I want to know the real him.
Even if he scares me.
THIRTY-FIVE
DARCY
I FOUND SOMETHING AT LOGAN’S last night.
A necklace. That wasn’t mine.
Logan was not supposed to be a part of last night. Not at all. When he called me before the Jude stalking and asked about getting together, I knew I needed to go out by myself. I went to a few clubs, met some new people, danced harder than I ever have. I might have gotten drunk. And I might have shown up at Logan’s place. Then I sort of ended up spending the night. Which is how I found the necklace.
The necklace was under his bed. The only reason I noticed it was that light was glinting off a couple strands of crystals sticking out from under the bed where I dropped my shoes. I snatched the necklace up and stashed it in my bag before Logan came into the bedroom with beers.
Was it possible that the necklace had been under the bed since before Logan came to New York?
Yes.
Was it possible that the necklace belonged to a girl Logan did not know?
Yes.
Did I think either of those scenarios was true?
No.
Call it women’s intuition. Call it a sixth sense. Hey, it could have been that Knowing thing Sadie is always yammering about. Whatever it was, my stomach clenched at the sight of that necklace. My heart stopped beating. I knew why I had been feeling like something was off between Logan and me. Logan knew exactly who that necklace belonged to. And she had been there with him, right in that same bed, not too long before I was.
We drank our beers. We watched TV. I pretended to fall asleep so Logan wouldn’t touch me. If he had tried to touch me, I would have screamed.
While Logan was in the shower this morning, I yelled into the bathroom that I was going out for bagels. I picked up his apartment keys on the way out. Then I made copies of his keys at the hardware store across the street like a ninja. We ate bagels when I came back, like nothing was wrong. We left the apartment together. Logan said he was doing something with the boys for a few hours. I pretended I was going home. I told him to text me when he was ready to bounce and I would come meet him.
I waited around the corner for ten minutes. Then I used my new keys to get back into Logan’s place.
A girl going through her boyfriend’s things is so cliché. And so wrong. But I don’t care. I’m on a mission to find that one incriminatin
g piece of evidence that will validate this disgusting feeling I’ve had ever since the necklace glinted at me. I start with Logan’s bag. He tossed his duffel in the corner of the bedroom. I dig through clothes and various boy gear. Nothing. I inspect every drawer, every scrap of paper on the dresser, every shelf. I check under the bed for more girl accessories. Still nothing.
I go out to the desk in the living room. Logan’s laptop is sitting there. He assumes I would never touch it. Plus he’s too lazy to password protect it. Even his email is open.
It doesn’t take me long to find out who she is. The slut is your typical SoCal beach bimbo. Bleached blond hair. Impossibly blue eyes. Completely unrealistic body measurements.
There are naked pictures of her.
Logan sent some naked pictures of himself back.
They wrote long emails to each other. Emails like people used to write love letters back in the day. One of Logan’s messages says how much he misses her. That he can’t stop thinking about her. That he will be home soon. One of them from her says some frantic guy came looking for him.
But an email chain with Randall wins the prize for Most Magnificent Display of Asshat Ineptitude. Randall is Logan’s friend back home. They work in the same electrical repair shop. These are the top five highlights I discover from their communication:
1.Logan has a buttload of gambling debt.
2.Logan skipped town on a loan shark.
3.Logan is maxing out his credit cards to be here this summer.
4.Logan intends to scam me out of enough money to pay his debt back.
5.Logan is planning to break up with me—again—after he’s back in California.
From what I can tell, SoCal Beach Bimbo doesn’t know about Logan’s gambling debt. All she knows is that he’s running a scam. Against me. A scam that has her full support. In one email, Logan told her this about me:
Lifted $200 in total over a few nights while she was sleeping. She doesn’t suspect anything. Plenty more where that came from. She doesn’t need the money. Daddy pays her bills. She’ll never miss what she can get more of.