On one such night, when I was sitting at the bar with Nicholas after my day shift had just ended, my phone buzzed four times in one hour from four different debt collectors. In hindsight, I should have just turned it off, but I was hesitant to miss a call from Hollis, who’d had a meeting with a potential literary agent that afternoon. I was desperate to hear how it went, and therefore suffered through the constant barrage of creditor harassment. But when my phone rang for the fifth time, however, I couldn’t take it anymore. The tears that had been building behind the scenes all night broke free, and when that happened, it was like a dam had burst. Through vision so blurry it felt like the night had been doused by an apocalyptic flood, I watched as Nicholas picked up my phone and answered it. He was calm but stern as he informed the caller that he would be taking care of not only the minimum due, but the remainder of the balance.
This blatant breach of my privacy should have offended me, should have caused me to leap up and rip the phone right out of his hand.
But…I didn’t.
I sat there, cheeks tear-stained and sniffling back snot bubbles while he fed the collector his banking information. Nicholas’s voice seemed to be coming from the other end of a long tunnel, and I did nothing but listen as he requested a letter stating that the card was paid in full along with a statement showing a zero balance. He followed the demand with a curt That will be all, his tone implying that he was in charge of the conversation, and not the other way around.
When he slid the phone back to me, I was at a loss for words. I had no idea what debt he’d just paid off, or how much he forked over to do so. I was embarrassed, sure, but also wildly impressed. He was an adult, a man, a fucking man, sitting there in his designer suit, blonde hair cropped close and wearing a five o’clock scruff that, for the first time ever, I itched to touch. He was broad shoulders and thick thighs while Hollis as all string bean lean. The way he took control of the situation without even asking me was hot, so damn hot. And perhaps it was because he didn’t ask for my permission, just did what needed to be done, strongly and without faltering, that made me finally admit what I’d known for a while – I didn’t want to be with Hollis anymore.
I suddenly saw Hollis’s desire for nonconformity as childish avoidance, his brooding nature as nothing more than moody apathy. He’d never swooped in and rescued me before, not in the way Nicholas just had, so easily and without thought.
Nicholas could take care of me, something that no one had ever, ever done before. Not even Hollis.
And I was so fucking tired of taking care of not only myself, but everyone else in my life.
That night, I didn’t even have it in me to utter a thank you or stammer an apology. I felt torn up inside, all these new realizations about the person I thought I’d spend the rest of my life with taking seed in my heart, sprouting in my mind. Life as I’d known it was ending. Sitting there with Nicholas, I could feel the pull of a new tomorrow so strongly that the skin on the back of my neck prickled with anticipation.
As it turned out, I didn’t need to speak. Nicholas just laid one hand over mine and, with his other, gently tilted my chin until I had no choice but to look at him. “You’re better than this, Rebecca. Better than him.”
I left Hollis the next day.
“I’m a chump, Marla. You know that? A fucking chump.”
She stares at me but doesn’t replay, so I continue.
“I listened to a man who I thought had my best interests at heart, gave up love for security, turned my back on the only person in the world who’s ever truly known me….and look where it’s gotten me.”
She still says nothing, though if I tilt my head just right, her smile does seem a bit more sympathetic.
I huff, not buying the sincerity in her grin, and scroll to the next photo on her Instagram page, a selfie with her and Hollis and the kid. Scowling, I take a sip of my gin and study the image. They’re on a beach along Lake Superior’s North Shore, a lighthouse distant in the background. Marla and the kid are smiling into the camera, but Hollis is staring at them, his eyes soft and liquid, as if he can’t bear to take his attention off the two for even a moment. “But I guess my loss is your gain, isn’t it?”
I’m still at our lake house in Duluth, even though Nicholas thinks I’m home in Minneapolis by now. But he’s not there, so why should I have to be? If I were to rationalize it – and believe me, I don’t need to – there’s way more for me here than back there. Which is kind of depressing when you think about it, considering that what I do have here isn’t much.
Yet.
I take another sip of my drink, but even the feeling of being pleasantly tipsy isn’t enough to take the edge off my…pain? Anger? Bitterness, jealousy, resentment?
Pick one. Any one. I feel them all.
My thumb works on its own accord, as if hellbent on making me feel worse. I’m at a loss to stop it, and its jerky movement takes me on a self-guided tour of Marla’s life, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, going all the way back to when she started the account almost four years ago. By the time I get to the first picture, the one that shows a newborn baby wrapped in a white blanket with pink trim, my head is pounding like my brain is trying to break free of my skull.
The room starts to tilt, swaying like the bow of a ship on rough seas. Suddenly nauseous, I press my palm to my forehead, surprised to find it slick with sweat. I swallow down bile, lean back against the pillows of my king-sized bed, and take a few deep, cleansing breaths. But the bed’s broad dimensions only add to my unease, emphasizing my loneliness, and chills followed by a hot flash followed by more chills course through my body. The comforter and sheets are white, so white, eye-burning white, and all this empty space around me – this empty, negative space – throws me into a panic, makes my heart flutter and my blood rush and my teeth clench.
And then I laugh. I laugh and cough and sputter because the bottle of gin I had for dinner is doing its best to come back up for a second act. I hiccup and snort hot bile through my nose, which makes me laugh harder, and it’s only when I taste the tears on my lips that I realize I’m crying.
Another laugh, a phantom laugh, trills lightly through the room, as if someone from somewhere, spying through a portal in a hidden reality, thinks that whatever breakdown I’m having is so funny, so outright hilarious, that it’s pulled up a chair to watch the one-woman show.
But when an image of her and Hollis floats ghost-like before my eyes, appearing the way they were that day at the café, when she leaned against him while reading his morning’s work and he kissed her forehead while she did, making her giggle, I realize the laugh is simply an echo stirred from memory.
Not that it matters. Because figment of my imagination or not, it’s still there, right in front of me, as if I’m sitting in the café and witnessing the entire scene all over again.
If I could crack open my head and claw that memory right out of my brain, digging my fingernails in as deep as I could, I would.
I howl and throw my phone across the room.
My life is dull.
This is something I’m aware of, yet never something that’s been an issue.
Until now.
Most people think that being filthy rich would lead to exciting things, like exotic trips and fabulous parties and unending access to all the newest gadgets and gizmos that are being pumped into society’s hands more and more as the years go by.