As soon as Blue met her gaze, Renee looked down as if she realized she’d exposed something.
Blue didn’t know what to say, what she was supposed to do with this. Act happy? Pop some champagne? Or sparkling cider? It shouldn’t have taken Renee twelve years and a pregnancy test to realize that she mattered. “Well...like I said, congrats. I’m happy for you.”
Renee blinked. Then stood abruptly. The mask of perfection back on her face. “Yeah, thanks. I’d appreciate it if that stayed between us. At least for now. Anyway. It’s almost nine. Should I call the cab?”
“I guess,” Blue said. She opened the second wine cooler, then realized she needed something stronger. Why did Renee have to put this on her right now when she was already freaking out? It was too much to take in. She grabbed the bottle of vodka from the freezer and OJ from the fridge, made a screwdriver you could see through.
Renee recited their address into the phone. Blue downed half the glass, visited the hall mirror for one last hopeless fix of her hair, smiled a practice smile into it.
Jesus Christ.
Why am I doing this?
I can’t do this.
By the time the cab announced itself with a kick of pebbles in the driveway, she was pregnant herself—only with dread—an inch shy of her own run to the toilet. They climbed in and Renee told the driver their destination.
“Maybe we should skip the bar and go to the fair,” Blue said, as they turned onto Montauk Highway. The drinks hadn’t helped. Her nervous system was like an anxious dog recognizing landmarks en route to the vet. She rolled down the window, let the black Montauk night fly in.
“Why do we do this to ourselves?” she said. “Why do we bother with men?” She wasn’t really talking to Renee so much as thinking out loud, expelling her anxiety into the air. So many women she knew were cheated on or abused or simply in the wrong relationship. When she was younger, she could never understand why women stayed with men like that. But now she could see how easy it would be to sink into an offering of love, no matter how inadequate. Just for the relief of not having to look for it anymore. Of not having to hope for love only to be disappointed over and over. But of course, Renee wouldn’t understand. Renee had found one of the good ones right away. The only thing that had saved Blue from the heartache of men was that she’d learned early on how to withstand the wet weight of loneliness that sat on her chest until she almost stopped noticing it there. Only now she was noticing it. Now it was heavy, so heavy. Now she wanted. But it was terrifying—the possibility of wanting and not getting. Of opening your heart only to be knifed with rejection. Such sharp, precise pain. It took her breath away to even imagine it. “I’m sure Jack’s a womanizer. Or a commit-phobe. Or can’t love.”
“Can’t love?” Renee said. “Or can’t love you? Because it sounds like you’re preemptively rejecting him.”
Blue shrugged. “Both. Probably. No one ever stays.” The alcohol was making her too loose. And too loose to care that she was.
“That’s not true.”
“Seems like it.”
“People stay,” Renee said. “Some of them anyway. Some leave and come back.”
How can you tell which from which though? How do you stop from getting too broken before you find them? For a moment Blue wished they were still friends so she could ask that.
“I don’t know,” Renee said as if Blue had asked the question. She leaned her head against the window, staring impassively out at the passing world. “You just have to find a way to trust.”
“Trust who?” Blue said.
Renee shrugged. It was like they were having two different but matching conversations. “Maybe just yourself. That you’ll be okay no matter what other people do.”
The thought was a comfort. Renee was a comfort. Like returning to an old beloved book, remembering its solace, its happy if complicated ending, the way it spoke to something true. She hated it. She should be strong enough to resist Renee’s pull. But she didn’t have the will right now. For a moment she even wanted to confess the whole truth, that she hadn’t been on any other dates, never had sex, that Jack was the last boy she’d kissed. She longed for Renee’s advice. Or at least for the safety net of love she’d once had with her.
But all that did was remind her—to be known and loved and then left as Renee had done to her. It was so gutting—speared a person in all their old wounds, unearthed that primal internal wail that sometimes lived in deep silences. Why don’t you love me? How could you do this? You had to drown out the noise of it with so much stuff, cell phones and social media and TV and movies and music and work and still it came lurching up when you least expected, when you were just trying to have a relaxing weekend or a quiet moment on the subway.
How could she risk her heart again? With Jack? With anyone?
The cab pulled up in front of the restaurant.
The nervous pit in Blue’s stomach grew.
“Ready?” Renee said.
“Yep,” Blue said, but did not move.
They sat.
“This is where you wanted to go, right?” the cab driver asked.
“She’s nervous. It’s a date.”
“I’m not nervous,” Blue said.
The cab driver hooked his arm around the back of his seat, turned to her. “You want my advice?”
“No thanks.”
“The thing I learned after four marriages,” he said, “is it either works or it doesn’t. There are people in life who get you and people who don’t. You can’t make someone be in your ‘psychic clan’—I trademarked that, by the way—who’s not in your psychic clan. So if he doesn’t like you, not in your PC. On the flip side, if he is in your PC, there’s not a whole lot you can do to screw it up.”
“Good stuff,” Blue said, though her dread was so loud in her head she could barely hear herself.
“Thanks,” he said proudly. “I wrote a book on it. You can buy it off my website...hold on...let me give you my card. There’s a discount code on the back.”
Renee hustled her out of the cab. “Okay, let’s do this.”
Blue handed the driver a wad of cash through the front window, and she and Renee headed toward the Surf Lodge. Her heart was hammering, blood roaring in her ears. She was swept off in it, half-blinded by it, everything rushing at her in a loud blur. She’d imagined a night like this so many times. Long before she’d even heard from Jack again. For twelve years it had lived in her as a hope that someday they would find each other, that she would bump into him on a street corner in Manhattan, or at the wedding of one of her summer friends or somewhere truly unexpected, like an African safari. And now here she was. And here he would be.