“Retire?” My father tasted the word on his tongue for the first time. He hadn’t missed a day of work in fifty-five years. I doubted it ever crossed his mind. Working made him happy. He didn’t know himself outside the context of work. “You want me to retire?”
“Nobody wants you to retire,” I hissed, pinning Julian with a death glare. “You must’ve misheard. That’s what happens when people talk with a mouth full of shit.”
“Chase!” Mom gasped.
“He is struggling.” Julian straightened his back, jutting his chin out. “What if there’s a power outage in the building and he is in the elevator? What if he falls? What if he needs his meds and there’s no one to give them to him? So many things can go wrong.”
True. I can accidentally push you out the window, for instance.
“Julian, shut up,” I snapped.
“The shareholders are going to ask questions soon. It’s a two-point-three-billion-dollar company, and it is being run by someone who is not well. I’m sorry—I’m just saying what no one else is brave enough to.” Julian held his hands up in surrender. “It is ethically wrong to hide this kind of medical condition from the board. What if—”
“Shut up, Jul!” Katie barked, bursting into tears. It was not unlike my sister to cry. It was unlike my sister to be confrontational. Then again, Dad had gotten sick, and all of a sudden this family had turned into Lord of the Flies. And Julian, the classic middle management guy—good at nothing other than possessing a staggering amount of confidence—was the man who’d decided to replace him, no matter the fact the role had been promised to me. Katie stabbed me with a look. “I’ll take Mom and Dad home.”
“I’ll take them.” I picked up Dad’s medicine bag, hoisting it over my shoulder.
“No, they can stay here. I . . .” Julian put his hand on Dad’s arm. We both shut him up with a glare.
“I’ll handle this,” I assured my baby sister.
“C’mon, Chase. You came here by train. I have my car, and I wanted to crash at theirs, anyway. It’s close to the half-marathon starting point.”
I nodded, torn between joining them and getting Madison home. But I knew Dad didn’t want an entire production—it would only make him feel more vulnerable if we all escorted him back home—and besides, I wanted to wrap things up with Mad. It was probably the last time we were going to see each other.
She is too good to let go, my dad had said.
Too bad I couldn’t keep her.
I spent the ride back to Madison’s apartment counting the reasons why she shouldn’t be with Ethan Goodman in my head. I stopped at thirty when I realized that there were at least a hundred more in the pipeline and that I was too proud to say jack shit about it to her, anyway.
Madison alternated between glancing at me with concern and munching on her lower lip.
It was disgustingly hot and packed in the subway. Every single motherfucker inside was either sweating, holding a greasy takeout bag, or both. A baby whined. A teenage couple made out on the seat in front of us, partly masked by the backs of two men in suits who were standing and reading on their phones. I wanted to get out, take Madison with me, hail a cab—an Uber Copter if I could—and go back to my Park Avenue apartment, where I’d put Elliott Smith on blast and bury myself in my ex-girlfriend.
Which, there was no point denying at this stage, was what she was to me.
When we finally got out of the train and I walked her to her apartment, I realized it was probably the last time I was going to visit her street. Goodbye hung in the air, fat and looming and un-fucking-fair. But what could I do? She wanted marriage. She was obsessed with weddings—designed wedding dresses for a living, had flowers everywhere—and I thought marriage was the stupidest idea mankind had entertained. Never had I seen such a popular idea being utilized over and over again despite garnering such poor results. Fifty percent divorce rate average, anyone?
Nah, marriage was not for me. And yet . . .
The morning walks with horny Daisy.
Our arrangement.
Our banter.
Our Post-it Notes.
I’d grown to not completely hate all of that. Which was more than I could say about my interactions with most people.
“Are you okay?” Mad finally winced when we were at the stairway to her apartment building. The entire journey had been silent. Of course I was fucking okay. Everything was fine. The only thing that bothered me (remotely) was the idea of Ethan hopping up these stairs tomorrow after his half marathon. How he was going to fuck her. Bury himself in her sweet, warm body, which always smelled of freshly baked goods and flowers, and fuck. I started imagining her doing all the things she’d done with me. The vein in my forehead was ready to pop.
Mad surprised me by taking my hand, squeezing it in both her small palms.
“I want to tell you that it gets better, but it really doesn’t. The only good thing about this situation is that experiencing the death of someone close heightens your senses.”
“Heightens my senses?” I asked sardonically, feeling my nostrils flare. I’d once eaten an ortolan while covering my head with a napkin to heighten my senses. My senses were higher than the Empire State Building. They didn’t need a pick-me-up.
Madison brushed her thumb along my palm, making a shiver roll down my spine. “Death is no longer an obscure idea. It is real and it is waiting, so you grab life by the balls. When you go through the horror of seeing someone you love die and still manage to wake up the next day to tie your shoelaces, to shove a tasteless breakfast down your throat, to breathe, you realize survival trumps tragedy. Always. It’s a primal instinct.”
I watched our entwined fingers curiously, realizing we hadn’t held hands while we were together. Madison had tried. Once, a couple of weeks into our hookup. I swiftly untangled myself the first chance I got. She hadn’t tried since.
Her fingers were slim and tan. Mine long and white and comically large against hers. Yin and yang.
“How did you concentrate on anything other than your mother dying?” I asked gruffly.
She smiled up at me, her eyes shining with fat tears. “I didn’t. I faked it till I made it.”
I bowed my head down, plastering my forehead to hers, breathing her in. I closed my eyes. We both knew there was not an ounce of romance in that moment. It was a pure this-planet-is-crazy-and-the-human-condition-is-trash moment. It was an end-of-the-world moment, and there wasn’t anywhere else I’d rather be.
Our hairs touched, and I felt goose bumps on both our arms wherever we touched. I didn’t want to let her go but knew with every fiber of my body that I should.
For her.
For me.
I couldn’t pinpoint when, exactly, it turned into a hug, but before I knew what was happening, she was leaning into me, and I was leaning into her, and we were swaying in place like two drunks in a sea of summer lights.
She looked up, and her smile was so sad I wanted to wipe it off her face with a kiss.
“You’re brave,” she whispered. “I know you are.”
She knew I was? I didn’t know why, but that made me angry.
“I just wanted to . . . ,” I started, the words dying inside my throat.
Fuck you one last time? Know if you really are having sex with that idiot? Burn down a pediatric practice?