June 3, 1999
Dear Maddie,
Fun fact of the day: The poppy has astonishingly flourished on battlefields, smashed by boots, tanks, and the first industrial war the world had ever seen. It is a token of remembrance in Britain.
Poppies are strong, stubborn, and impossible to break. Be a poppy. Always.
Love,
Mom. x
Objectively speaking, as far as mornings went, today’s was a particularly glorious one. The type Cat Stevens wrote songs about. I woke up at eight thirty without the help of my alarm. Layla had let Chase in at dawn, while I’d been fast asleep and she’d been bidding one of her many flings goodbye. I managed to bring my best friend up to speed about my little arrangement with Chase via text messages. Chase took Daisy on a lengthy walk. I was still dead to the world when he brought her back. I woke to him pushing the door open, cursing under his breath, complaining about Daisy not wining and dining his leg before humping it, pouring food into her dish, and scolding her for drinking vigorously from the toilet bowl. (“You’re really not winning any seduction points right now, Daze.”) I smiled as I stretched lazily in my bed, thinking about the inconvenience the journey to my neighborhood had caused him. When I opened my fridge to take some orange juice out, I found a note plastered to the door.
M,
Not everything alive is worth saving. My cousin-brother, Julian, is a prime example of that (don’t ask me what he is to me, it changes from day to day).
Also: Let’s pretend I cheated. You weren’t exactly honest either. You gave me a watered-down personality, leading me to believe you were sane. WHICH YOU ARE NOT.
Also 2: Yes, the capitals were necessary.
Also 3: Addressed the Julian issue above.
PS (technically Also 4—too much counting for you?): attached is a picture of me on a horse, age six, adorable as all fuck.
PPS:
Noticed Nathan didn’t sleep at your place. I take it he’s still a virgin?
—C
Something fell from the sticky note. A picture. I picked it up and flipped it over. It was the kid version of Chase smiling to the camera—two front teeth nowhere to be found—sitting on a pony. He had carefully trimmed tar-black bangs and a smile so jarring that the vividness of it jumped out of the picture. Begrudgingly, and only to myself, I could admit that he was right. He did look good on a horse. Not like the Old Spice dude but sufficiently adorable.
And what did he mean—Let’s pretend I cheated? He had cheated. I’d seen him with my own eyes. Kind of. Well, there was little room for interpretation. Anyway, I wasn’t opening that can of worms. I was with Ethan now. Sweet, wonderful, reliable Ethan.
The sensation of something cold and liquid on my toes broke me out of my musing, and I looked down to realize I’d been pouring orange juice into an overflowing glass for a full minute. I jumped back. Recovering, I dabbed at the pulpy stain at my feet with one hand as the other reached to write Chase a note back.
C,
Flowers symbolize life. I would never trust someone who doesn’t take care of their flowers.
Also, I will allow the statement that you were cute on a horse. Once upon a (very long) time.
PS:
Please do not touch my things again (pens, sticky notes, SUITCASE, etc.).
PPS:
It’s Ethan, not Nathan. And actually, we had wild sex all night. He had to leave for an emergency.
—M
So I lied. It wasn’t that much of a big deal. Only in Manhattan was it expected that anyone twenty-two and above should have sex after three dates. In that sense, I missed Pennsylvania.
I was going to do Chase this solid, give him his ring back, and say goodbye.
This time for good.
No more negotiations.
No more bargains.
No more heartache.
I met Ethan at a new Italian restaurant the same evening. He was twenty minutes late. For all Chase’s faults (and there were many; I could write a War and Peace–length book about all of them), he valued people’s time and never left me hanging. He wasn’t late, and on the rare times he was, he always texted with a reasonable explanation.
Chase also isn’t saving children for a living, I scolded myself inwardly. Cut a guy some slack.
I spent the time waiting reading an article about a woman who had made a dress for her upcoming wedding out of toilet paper and recycled material because she didn’t have the money to buy or rent anything fancy. I found her Facebook page, wrote her a message, and asked her for her address and dress size. I had a few dresses lying around my apartment from when I’d been a design student I could get rid of, and my Martyr Maddie instincts kicked in. I also shot Layla a quick message thanking her for letting Chase in this morning and forwarded her a picture of the Italian restaurant I was in, with the caption Maybe the perfect moment will be tonight? along with a winking emoji. It wasn’t necessarily a possibility I was excited about, but I tried to hype myself up for it. Layla’s response came after seconds.
Layla: Nothing more romantic than garlic bread and a man who is twenty minutes late.
Maddie: Be happy for me.
Layla: I’m being honest with you. That’s so much more important in a good friend.
Maddie: He could be the one.
Layla: Keeping my fingers crossed for you. But honey, don’t date him just because you’re afraid of the Chases of the world.
It bothered me that Chase and Layla were singing the same tune, but I shoved this worry to the bottom drawer of my brain.
Ethan arrived disheveled and a little sweaty, his hair sticking up everywhere. He wore casual clothes—a pair of jeans and a faded tee—not his usual doctor clothes. He kissed me on the cheek, his breath smelling uncharacteristically sweet, and took a seat in front of me, patting himself like he’d forgotten something.
“Well? How was it?” He cut straight to the Chase. Literally. He’d come to say hi to me the previous night, but that was just to lend me a book I’d pretended I wanted to read about managing infectious diseases in preschools. It occurred to me that I was making the same mistake I had with Chase back when we were dating. I was pretending to be someone who wasn’t completely me to try to appear more appealing to the person I was dating. It wasn’t so much that I was a completely different person, but I rounded the edges a little.
What Chase had told me after we’d gotten back from the Hamptons had struck a chord with me this morning, when I’d realized I had no intention or will to read a medical book just to make Ethan happy. Chase felt fooled, and as much as I wasn’t #TeamChase, I could still see where he was coming from. I decided to be completely honest with Ethan to avoid that. To show my absolute true self.
“What, the Hamptons?” I picked up my water and chugged it down to buy time. “It was understandably weird. I got trashed at the family dinner. Chase slept on the floor. We fought every waking moment his family wasn’t watching. Overall, we looked more on the brink of a bitter divorce than a blissful engagement.”
Ethan grabbed a breadstick from a basket and nibbled at it as he cooed, “Poor baby.”
“And then his cousin-brother—I’m not sure what they are to each other; biologically they are cousins, but they were raised as brothers—invited us . . . no, more like challenged us to go to dinner at his place to celebrate our engagement. He and Chase have this weird rivalry going on. So I kind of had to agree to that.”
I blinked at Ethan from across the table, eagerly awaiting his reaction. He put his breadstick down, frowned, and then looked back at me with his good-natured smile intact.
“Sure. I mean, we’re still casual, right?”
“Right.” I nodded. “Of course. Casual. Is that what you see us as?”
“For now. Yeah.”
I was beginning to hate the word with a passion. Then something occurred to me.
“You didn’t come from work, did you?”
Ethan shook his head, helping himself to another breadstick. Now it was his turn to stall. My eyes didn’t waver from his face until he was forced to add words to his lackluster explanation. “Nope. I was at a . . . friend’s house.” He looked uncertain, rubbing the back of his neck.
“You take showers at your friends’?” I raised an eyebrow.
“A special friend?” he offered, tucking his chin down and blushing.
My brain short-circuited for a second. He was sleeping with someone else?
“I see.” Frankly, I didn’t see anything. I was blindsided and annoyed but surprisingly unemotional about the discovery.
“It’s nothing serious. I just want to be up front and honest with you since your last boyfriend wasn’t. This thing with Natalie stops as soon as you and I are more established. But I figured since we’re not intimate yet, and you are doing this fake-engagement thing . . .” Ethan trailed off, the tips of his ears so red they practically glowed.
I decided to take it in stride. Ethan wasn’t Chase. He’d never let me think we were exclusive, then gone and slept with someone else. He hadn’t given me a key to his apartment or invited me to parties or gifted me a living thing. It was still early days. We’d only kissed a couple of times. Anyway, what business did I have getting riled up about it? I’d spent the weekend wearing my ex-boyfriend’s engagement ring and Yale sweatshirt. True, we hadn’t done anything together, but it was hardly behavior worthy of a girlfriend-of-the-year award.
Also, again: the fact Ethan had slept with someone else this evening simply didn’t bother me enough to give him grief about it, no matter how much I felt like I should.
A waitress came to take our order. Once she disappeared, I sat back, watching him with a weird mixture of awe and confusion.
“Where do you want to live when you grow up?” I blurted out. It was such a weird thing to ask, three weeks into seeing a guy. But I worried Chase might have been right about Ethan being everything I thought I wanted but not what I actually did want. I didn’t want to hurt Ethan’s feelings or drag both of us into something that was doomed from the beginning.
“I am grown up.” Ethan looked perplexed, helping himself to some more breadsticks.
“You know what I mean. When you have a family.”
“Oh,” he said, looking around us distractedly like I’d just asked him if he was willing to change my adult diaper.
Say Brooklyn. Say Hempstead. Hell, say Long Island for all I care.
“Westchester, I suppose. Great school districts, clean, safe . . .”
Boring. Then again, so what? Lots of young professionals who lived in New York ended up in Westchester once they started reproducing. Monica and Chandler from Friends had.
Yes, but you’re a Rachel, not a Monica, I heard Layla saying in my head.
And it’s also a sitcom, not real life. Now it was Chase’s voice that teased me.
“Can I ask you another question?” I peeled off the sticker holding the napkin together. Ethan took a sip of his wine, nodding. He didn’t understand this game much. Neither did I. I was just trying to figure out whether Chase had really read Ethan so well or not.
“Anything, milady.”
“What did you have for breakfast?”
“Eggs on toast,” he said without missing a beat. I sighed in relief, as if this were all the evidence I needed that Chase had it wrong. It wasn’t oats. Ethan probably hated oats.
“My turn,” Ethan said. “Best way to start the day?”
‘Coffee, doughnuts, and talking to Dad on the phone. Mostly listening to the small-town gossip he had to offer.’ I was about to answer, Jogging, a granola bar, and listening to podcasts about climate change, before remembering I’d promised myself to be honest this time. So I gave him my real answer. Ethan scrunched his nose.
“What?” I winced, bracing myself for his disappointment.
“Nothing. Just . . . I don’t do gossip. I also don’t drink caffeine. It gives me terrible tremors.”
“Right,” I said. At this point, between Diet Coke, coffee, and energy drinks, caffeine had surely embedded itself into my blood type. Not that it mattered. Ethan and I didn’t have to be compatible in every single way.
“Favorite TV channel?” I smiled sunnily. “On a count of three.”
“Three . . .”
“Two . . .”
“One . . .”
“HBO,” I piped up at the same time he said, “National Geographic.” We laughed, shaking our heads.
“Favorite smell?”
His eyes lit up, just when his pasta and my pizza arrived. His was loaded with vegetables, seafood, and exotic mushrooms. Mine consisted of pepperoni, bacon, and extra cheese. We counted to three again. I said puppies. He said vanilla.
I repeat—vanilla. Just like the sex Chase had promised we’d have.
Ethan and I continued this tango for the rest of the evening, amused by how morbidly different we were. It was actually a kick-ass icebreaker. If it weren’t for the fact I knew he’d slept with someone else mere hours ago, not to mention that I was going on a second date with my ex-boyfriend come Friday, I’d actually say the evening brought us closer.
Ethan walked me back home and had the good sense not to kiss me on the mouth when we parted ways. He kissed my cheek again, smiling shyly as he cast his gaze downward.
“I’d invite you to come up, but—” I started at the same time he opened his mouth.
“That thing with Natalie—”
We both stopped.
“You go.” I felt my cheeks heating.
“She just broke up with someone, it was long term, and she and I have this thing when we’re both single. I’m really interested in you. I’m not the sleeping-around type of guy. Honestly, I wanted to show myself that I was okay with you going out with your ex.” He rubbed at his temple. “And for the most part, I am.”
“I understand,” I said quietly. Although a part of me didn’t. I wished Ethan would have just told me the truth before we’d both compromised the beginning of our relationship. But there was no going back from what it was right now. A messy shot in the dark made by a blind, intoxicated cupid.
“Maybe it’s best if we don’t have sex until everything with Chase is over. It obviously makes you feel weird. Like I’m not fully committed to this,” I suggested.
Ethan nodded. “That’s fair. And I promise to end things with Natalie after your last date with him. You’re seeing him Friday, right?”
“For the second and last time,” I confirmed.
I pushed the door open to my building and closed it, plastering my back against it with a heavy sigh. My phone pinged in my purse. I plucked it out, thinking it might be Ethan, wanting to soften the blow of our goodbye by saying something sweet or playful.
Unknown: Don’t forget the banana bread on Friday. It’s Chase, btw.
Maddie: How do you know I deleted your number?
Unknown: When the nights get cold, the memory of your ex burns hotter. You seem like the type to self-preserve.
Maddie: You seem like a conceited idiot.
Unknown: That may be true, but you just admitted to deleting my number.
Maddie: Can I ask you something?
Unknown: Seven inches.
Maddie: Har. Har.
Maddie: Where do you want to live when you’re “settled down”?
Unknown: I will never “settle down.”
Maddie: Humor me, jerk.
Unknown: Fine. I’ll stay in Manhattan. You?
I pushed the door to my apartment open. Daisy jumped on my legs excitedly, nuzzling her wet tennis ball into my hand. I glanced at the overhead clock above my fridge. Almost eleven. Chase was going to be here to take her out in seven hours. The thought of him in my apartment made my head swim. I added him to my contacts, purely for logistical purposes. I’d delete him again on Saturday morning, post our fake-engagement dinner.
Maddie: I don’t know. Maybe Brooklyn. What did you have for breakfast?
Chase: I think her name was Tiffany.
Maddie: Dear God, you’re stabbable to a fault.
Chase: Relax. A protein pack.
Chase: Do NOT make a jizz joke.
Maddie: Favorite channel?
Chase: Is that a real question? Is there a right answer other than HBO?
Maddie: Best way to start the day?
Chase: You sitting on my face.
Maddie: Thank you.
Chase: For the riveting visual?
Maddie: For reminding me why we broke up.
Chase: Any-fucking-time.
Maddie: (Fuck you sign)
I shouldn’t have gone to bed with a smile on my face, yet I did.
Chase Black was the devil. A sinister, cold creature that somehow managed to scorch his way into my veins. But whatever he was . . . being next to him made me feel alive.
On Tuesday, I woke up to zero sticky notes from Chase. Considering I’d specifically asked him not to touch my things, I should have felt a lot more cheerful than I did when I glanced at the shelf of my fridge, offended by its stark emptiness.
Not that it mattered. No Post-it Notes from Chase meant I didn’t have to clean up all his mess when I got back to my apartment. It gave me a good chance to bake something and bring it to Ethan’s office. (This was not retaliation against Chase for not leaving me any notes. No sirree. Just me trying to be nice to Ethan.)
Wednesday, however, was a game changer. Two days away from the festive engagement dinner, I found a slew of black sticky notes stuck to my fridge. Not the same color as my turquoise ones with the leopard print that I kept on my counter to make supermarket lists. Bastard had brought his own notes. That was why he hadn’t written anything on Tuesday. He’d probably asked his assistant to provide him with the stationery he required to continue our written beef. There was no way his Royal Highness had descended down from Olympus himself and visited Office Depot. The pen he’d used was gold. He had a lot to say, so he’d spread it over a few notes, sticking them one below the other in succession.
M,
What are you wearing Friday night? We need to coordinate, although I doubt I own anything purple and green with patterned smiling pigs. Or sequined, feathery hats with pom-poms and bow ties.
Or anything else completely grotesque, for that matter.
Daisy seems to be obsessed with the same squirrel. I am afraid they will create a subspecies. Squog. Squirrel dogs.
PPS:
Bull. Shit. What was Pediatric Boy’s emergency? Testosterone transplant?
—C
Frantic, I scrambled to the trash can to retrieve the last notes we’d written to each other to see what he was referring to in the second PS. The trash can was full to the brim. I looked down at it, aghast, before flipping it over, squeezing my eyes shut while breathing through my mouth.
Garbage rained down on the floor. I sifted through it as Daisy sniffed around banana peels and string cheese wrappers, tail wagging, until I found our last notes. I smoothed them on the floor, reading them over. Chase had taunted me that Ethan was still a virgin. I’d told him we’d had crazy sex the night he’d dropped me off from the Hamptons. Obviously, he wasn’t buying it.
I scowled at Daisy, who was licking the inside of a chicken-salad can, making slurping sounds.
“No one can know about this, Daisy. No one.”
She replied with half a bark. I picked up my pen and wrote, pressing it against the paper so hard the words dented the rest of the pages.
C,
Haven’t thought about my attire for the evening. But now that you’re asking, why, yes, I will go for the sequined purple dress with the green jacket (velvet) paired with brown heels. No smiling pigs, but I think I have something with Michael Scott on it.
PS:
Ethan is more of a man than you’d never be. He is honest and loyal and NICE.
PPS:
Yes, the squirrel’s name is Frank. Let them be. They’re dysfunctional but good together.
PPPS:
I’m suspiciously low on orange juice. Please do not help yourself to anything while fulfilling your side of the Daisy bargain.
—M
On Thursday, there was radio silence. I did not analyze the lack of notes while riding the train on my way to work. I didn’t care. Truly, I didn’t. But if I had given it some thought (which, again, I hadn’t), the natural assumption would be that Chase had forgotten to bring his black notes or golden pen or both.
Which meant that continuing this conversation wasn’t something he thought about regularly.
Which, again, was completely okay with me.
The day slogged by painfully slowly. I texted with Ethan back and forth. We weren’t able to see each other for the rest of the week because he was training for a half marathon—the same charity marathon Katie had told me in the Hamptons she was going to do—and had to wake up super early. Sven said I was surprisingly useless that day. I wanted to believe it was because I wasn’t going to be seeing Ethan, but realistically speaking, it was Chase that made my mind drift away from work. When Sven was out of sight, Nina helpfully added I was turning into one of my plants. “A burst of color and inefficiency.” She click-click-clicked her mouth, her eyes glued to her Apple monitor. I had to take the sketch I was currently working on home to finish since it was due the next day.
Then, on Friday, another note waited for me on the fridge:
M,
Daisy doesn’t like her food. I brought her something new. The guy at the store said it’s the dog equivalent of caviar. Left it on the counter.
She also tried to hump Frank this morning. Are you projecting on the poor dog?
PS:
I cannot believe we pay you to design clothes. You do know not every fashion statement needs to be screamed?
PPS:
Re: orange juice. I admit I did help myself to some, but only because I was thirsty and you only drink tap around here. Very poor hospitality to point it out. How unbecoming for a southern girl.
I picked up my phone and texted him a response. Normally, I was firmly against any communication with him, but my body was simmering with unrestrained rage. How dare he?
Maddie: I’m from Pennsylvania, NOT the South, Satan McDevil.
Chase: Pennsylvania = South. South of New York. Know your geography, Goldbloom. Knowledge is power.
Maddie: WHY ARE YOU SO INFURIATING???
Chase: All caps. This pent-up sexual frustration is going to kill you one day.
Maddie: Good! Being dead would beat spending time with you today.
Chase: If you’re trying to get my feelings hurt, it’s working.
Maddie: Really?
Chase: No.
Maddie: You know, when I saw you on my stairway, I thought you were going to apologize as a part of your postrecovery steps for your sex addiction treatment.
Chase: If I were a sex addict, I’d hardly treat it.
Maddie: Remind me why I’m helping you again?
Chase: Because you are a good person.
Maddie: And why are you accepting?
Chase: Because I’m not.
Chase: Don’t forget the banana bread.
Chase: Have you slept with him yet?
Chase: That’s a no. Thought so. See you in the evening.
I resisted the urge to hurl my phone against the wall. I had a feeling if I adopted the habit of smashing things every time Chase pissed me off, nothing in my apartment would stay intact, walls included. Instead, I stomped to the counter, grabbed Daisy’s new bag of food, and poured a cup into her bowl. She wolfed it down so fast she nearly took my hand in the process.
I told myself it’d all be over in less than twenty-four hours.
I told myself I didn’t care.
Most of all, I thought Chase might be a little right. Maybe I did need sex to calm me down. It had been six months, after all. I texted Ethan.
Maddie: Let’s meet at my place on Saturday after your marathon. Unless you think you’ll be too exhausted?
Ethan: *half marathon.
Seriously? That was what he took from my message? My phone glowed to life with a second message a few seconds later.
Ethan: And I will adequately perform, even post–half marathon. It’s a date. x
