Overdue - 11

I met Gareth for lunch the next day at Tommy Chickens, a Nashville hot chicken restaurant that was popular both because of its cuisine and how much fun it was to say the name out loud.

“Hot-air balloon, British telephone booth—Tommy Chickens felt suitably absurd,” Gareth said.

Tommy Chickens was the perfect amount of absurd. It was tricky to maintain a sauce-free face, but I did my best and so did he, and we laughed whenever it escaped the bounds of our mouth and required a napkin. Afterward, we strolled along the river to keep the conversation flowing. I wanted to hold his hand but felt too shy to reach for it, yet I didn’t feel shy at all when we came upon an unpopulated area and made out again.

Strange how holding hands now seemed like the more intimate act.

We spent the whole afternoon together, and I lost track of the time. “Shit. I need to go feed my coworker’s cat. He’s out of town.”

“The guy who sits beside you?”

I laughed. “Oh, right. Yeah. Macon. Of course you already know who he is.”

“He’s kind of a serious guy, isn’t he? He never really smiles.”

I squirmed, realizing I didn’t want to talk about Macon with Gareth. “He is serious, but he’s fun when you get to know him.”

“I work with some guys like that.” Gareth snatched the end of my coat sleeve and swung it a bit. Almost my hand. “I could go with you, if you’d like. To feed the cat.”

My shoulders tensed. Macon wouldn’t appreciate me bringing Gareth into his house, but it wasn’t something I desired either. I didn’t want to discourage Gareth, though, so I switched to flirtation. “Ah, but then that would bring us to dinner. And this was lunch.”

His eyes twinkled. “I’ll have to think of something good for dinner, then.”

A playful escalation was happening, and it seemed like we both understood that dinner would equal sex. The subject was still on my mind when I entered Macon’s house alone and his scent bombarded me. I forced myself to push away the illicit thoughts.

Edmond must have heard my car arrive because he was waiting for me. I extended my hand to pet him, but he still wasn’t ready, which was frustrating because I’d thought we’d made decent progress that morning. He had sniffed my hand but had backed away when I’d tried to touch him. I was hoping he might be up for it now.

“Fine, be withholding,” I muttered. “Like father, like son.”

Eager to get to my own dinner, I fed him briskly. I hadn’t forgotten about the leftovers waiting for me. As I opened the fridge, my eyes snagged on a huge mason jar sitting on top of it. I let out a startled cry. Edmond bolted, leaving his plate rattling in a circle on the floor. The offending jar was filled with slimy brine and … a dead sea creature?

I sent Macon a photo. What is this thing??

Edmond skulked back into the kitchen, so I plucked up my courage, too. I heated the manicotti and tried not to look at the submerged stack of mucus-y pancakes. I swore it was watching me. It didn’t seem to have eyes, but whatever it was, it was alive. Or had been alive.

Macon’s response was so quick that I wondered if he’d been expecting me. Kombucha.

WHAT?

The big one on the bottom is the mother, and it eats tea and sugar and grows babies. The fermented liquid they’re expelling is kombucha.

But what IS it??

A bacteria culture.

For several seconds, I was speechless. This is so upsetting.

You’ve drunk my kombucha before.

I know, but I didn’t KNOW.

There was a pause, and then he said, You can have one, if you’d like. One of the babies.

I sent him eight million crying emojis. He would never respond with an LOL, but I knew it was happening all the same.

The microwave dinged, and I snapped a photo of the manicotti. Thank you for this but nothing else , I said.

Are you reading the bacon book?

Whiplash. I wondered if there was a hidden camera in the house but then remembered my selfie with Edmond. Had Macon scrolled back through our texts to look at it again?

It IS the bacon book, but it’s not THE bacon book. It’s East’s copy. It’s good!

Dinner was better than anything I’d eaten in weeks, and we chatted throughout it, breaking another record. I washed the dishes and then carried my phone to the couch. If Edmond had been a human, he would have been annoyed at how often I stopped reading the novel out loud to respond to my texts. Instead, it was as if he sensed Macon’s presence on the other end because he hopped off the back of the couch and sat beside me. At last, he accepted my hand. His little tuxedo was so soft.

I spent longer than intended at Macon’s house that evening and longer than intended the following morning. Edmond allowed me to pet him straight away. We did our usual routine of feeding and reading—our cozy book club of two—and I exchanged more texts with Macon. I had just reached the penultimate chapter when he told me he was getting on the road. My time there had come to an end. The last thing I needed was to get so comfortable that I fell asleep on his couch, only to wake up when he opened his front door. I used his bathroom one last time, sniffed his soap, told his cat goodbye, and left his spare key underneath the planter.

Let’s do dinner , Gareth texted a short time later. Fri?

I was empty and antsy and didn’t feel like finishing the book anymore. What about tonight?

As always, he was game. It was Monday, so he was working and would need to grab a shower first, but we met downtown that night at a restaurant with bland American cuisine and mediocre ambiance that neither of us had been to before.

“You ruined my plans,” he said with a laugh.

“Oh no. What’d I do?”

“This isn’t our date.”

“It’s not?”

“Nope. This is our pre-date. Our real date is next door.” He grinned at my confusion. “The pinball machine museum! They don’t serve food, but I was going to make a picnic for us on Friday and sneak it in. I didn’t have time tonight.”

I brightened with relieved laughter. “I wasn’t going to say anything because I didn’t want to hurt your feelings, but this place does feel like a misstep.”

He clutched his heart. “I would have never knowingly done this to you.”

I’d been to the museum a few times with Cory. Every machine was in working condition, and for one flat fee, you could play any of them for as long as you liked. It was all ages during the day, but after hours it became adults only, and they served boozy slushies. The building was packed for a weekday and rang with chimes, knocks, clacks, thunks, and bells. The volume was loud and overstimulating, and I wasn’t any good at pinball, but I did enjoy trying. It was an appropriately silly location for us. He paid the fees, and I bought the slushies. I thought I was being smart by ordering watermelon—at least my mouth wouldn’t be stained blue—but then he ordered piña colada, and I realized I could have had a completely neutral color.

We wandered around, triggering the flippers and watching the balls fly around and objects spin and light up. He liked the same row of antique machines that I did. They were also less crowded. The atmosphere amplified the nervousness and excitement bouncing around inside me. We flirted harder than ever, finding excuses to touch, standing so close that I could see a few stubborn splatters of gray primer on his left cheek and ringed in his nail beds. It was as if we were both waiting for the other to be brave and say, “That’s enough. Let’s get out of here.”

A woman with influencer makeup and influencer wavy hair tripped behind us, spilling her pinky-red drink onto the carpet and the back of Gareth’s jeans.

“Whoa,” he said. “You okay?”

She kept stumbling toward her bachelorette party and didn’t apologize.

When he looked back at me, we both cracked up. I was glad that he wasn’t angry. “Your poor pants,” I said. “Are you okay?”

“I think she had the same flavor as you. They’re watermelon pants now.”

“It’s madness to allow drinks near all these machines.”

“I assume the cost of repairs is built into the price? I noticed they weren’t cheap. Thanks again,” he added.

Examining the backs of his legs, I realized this was an opportunity. “If you want to save those, they need to go straight into the wash. We should go back to your place.”

His eyebrows rose, and it was on.

I followed his car to a newish apartment complex near the library. Of course he lived near my branch, and I felt dense that I was surprised by this. I’d only driven past the building before, but its generic exterior reminded me of the one where Cory’s friend Robin lived. I’d been dragged to several parties there. As challenging as the last few months had been, no part of me missed having to socialize in large groups of mostly strangers. Cory and I were both good with new people, but he enjoyed it more than I did and genuinely loved meeting them. Their stories gave him energy. They drained mine, and after a long day at work, I preferred returning to the familiar to recharge. Our shared days off required negotiating and compromising and taking turns with how the free time was spent.

“It’s not much,” Gareth said as he opened a door on the second floor.

The interior looked so much like my own apartment that it knocked me sideways. It was beige and unadorned and filled with the same build-it-yourself furniture from a decade ago.

“Okay, so it’s worse than I thought,” he said, taking in my expression.

I explained that I was only startled by the similarities. He relaxed, seeming comforted by this. I couldn’t explain why I did not feel the same comfort.

“Something else to drink?” he asked. “Cider, soda, water?”

Another serving of alcohol seemed useful. He grabbed a cold cider for me, then excused himself to change pants. If we’d been more confident, that would have been the moment for us to lose our clothes altogether, but neither of us was Justin.

I glanced around and discovered a shelf of books beneath his extensive movie collection. Most of them appeared to be assigned novels and textbooks from his school days, but there was also some film history and criticism. I flipped through a newer biography about Buster Keaton.

“Oh no,” he said, reappearing behind me. The washing machine sloshed in another room. “I’ve been dreading this. Please don’t judge me by my books.”

I forced my mouth into a smile. “I would never.”

This was a lie, but his books were also fine. I wasn’t sure why I felt uneasy. Maybe because he’d imagined me in his apartment before, inspecting and scrutinizing his life, but I had never imagined him in mine. This did make me feel bad—I had more information about our lack of a future than he did—but something else was rumbling inside me, too.

We settled onto his couch, ostensibly to watch something. It reminded me of my earliest dates with Cory, when we still needed an excuse to sit beside each other and fool around. I started, realizing Gareth’s couch was the exact same model as mine, only with navy upholstery instead of red.

“What?” he asked, alarmed.

“This is my couch. We have the same couch.”

He laughed in relief, and I pretended to laugh, and after a few seconds it eased into the real thing. I was nervous, that was all. Condensation slipped down the bottle in my hand. He was asking what I wanted to watch when the tiny splatters of primer on his cheek caught in the television’s flickering light. They looked like a constellation of stars. I set down my drink and touched them gently. His eyes closed, and unlike those earliest dates with Cory, the situation escalated immediately into sex. But we fumbled more than Cory and I did now, which made sense because this was new, yet we also fumbled more than I had with Justin. Perhaps this was because Gareth and I never left the couch. Our bodies were too aroused to take it elsewhere. The correct buttons were hit and experiences were had. Yet afterward, I felt deflated.

The way he gazed at me warned that he did not feel the same way.

A siren went off inside me. I did not spend the night with him. He offered, but I used work as an excuse. I was so rattled that I forgot I’d be seeing Macon in the morning and didn’t get nervous until I was sitting behind the desk the next day and saw his car pull into the lot. Were we friends again? Or would things still be weird in person?

My heart was thumping as he entered through the double doors. Our eyes met, and he halted. His expression looked hesitant and exhausted … but it also held a glimmer of hope.

I broke into a warm smile that seemed to surprise him.

He smiled back reflexively. But then self-consciousness engulfed him, and he hurried off to the annex, presumably to catch up with Sue. I awaited his return anxiously and regreeted him enthusiastically. His skittish response reminded me of Edmond. I was coming on too strong. I backed off to let him get used to my physical presence again.

That week, we resided in a liminal space between politeness and friendship. We conversed about subjects other than work, but we didn’t tease each other as we used to. We were overly respectful of boundaries. We stayed on our own sides of the desk. But we were taking steps in the right direction and finally seemed to be on our way to course correcting.

The hiccup occurred on Thursday night when Gareth arrived. Macon disappeared with his watering can again and didn’t reappear until Gareth had left, but there was no way he hadn’t overheard us discussing our upcoming plans. Once more, Macon’s mood soured, but he didn’t lash out at me, nor did I try to provoke him. Instead, we retreated into frustrated silence. He was jealous—it was so obvious—yet I still couldn’t decipher the implications.

No. Ingrid. No.

That weekend, against my better judgment, I did spend the night at Gareth’s. I thought that being in his company would quell my loneliness, but as I lay beside him in a bed strikingly similar to my own—as he slept soundly and I kept checking the clock on my phone—the truth shook loose and broke inside me. I liked him, the dates were fun, and the sex had improved. But I wanted to run screaming from his apartment. Something was deeply, fundamentally wrong.

“Maybe it’s his coloring,” I said to Kat as soon as I could escape to FaceTime her. “His hair and eyes are so similar to Cory’s.”

“He doesn’t look anything like Cory,” she said.

He did, though, a bit. His sense of humor was similar to Cory’s, too, not to mention the shared appreciation for a themed location. But why was it so distressing that we had the same pathetic furniture? It wasn’t like Macon—it felt shameful to still be comparing other men to the man who had rejected me—had amazing furniture. Arguably, his couch was even worse.

“But Macon’s couch is inside a house,” Kat pointed out. “And he cooks adult meals and tends an established garden. His decor might be shit, but he’s firmly in another phase of life. It sounds like Gareth is making you anxious because he’s in the same phase as you and Cory.”

“Shouldn’t that be a good thing? To be in the same phase of life?”

“Maybe. Unless you don’t want to be there anymore.”

It hit me like a sledgehammer. One sentence shattered me into pieces that could never fit back together the way they used to be.

“You need to break up with him,” Kat said, not realizing what she had done. “It’s already gone on too long.”

I could barely say it. “Cory?”

“ Gareth .” Her expression changed. “Oh my God. It finally happened. You finally just realized that you need to break up with Cory.”

It wasn’t true, though. As startling as it was to learn that she had been expecting it this whole time, I hadn’t reached that conclusion yet. I still didn’t understand that breaking up had always been the inevitable and only possible way this could end. I reeled and sputtered.

Kat realized her mistake and backtracked to refocus my attention on Gareth. “One step at a time,” she said. “Let’s do this first. Then we can figure out Cory.”

“What am I supposed to say to him?”

“To Cory?” she said.

“ Gareth ,” I said.

She advised me to tell the truth, but how could I do that to him? From Gareth’s perspective, we were heading in the direction of becoming an actual couple. He wasn’t living inside my world of pretend. I’d asked him out, we’d gone on a series of adorable dates, and then we’d slept together multiple times. I’d given him no reason to suspect that I was already taken.

I’m sorry , I texted him that evening, after ignoring his texts all day. I can’t see you anymore because I’m getting back together with my boyfriend. I didn’t know if I was lying, but it was close to the truth. Cory and I would at least be seeing each other again. I was simply withholding a few crucial details that would only make the situation worse.

Normally Gareth responded immediately, but this reply took several minutes. The three dots appeared and disappeared. I don’t understand. Is this a joke?

I’m sorry , I said again. It’s not. You’re a great guy, and I had so much fun with you. I wish you all the best.

WOW. Seriously?? Fuck you too.

An arrow shot through my chest. His hurt and pain leapt off the screen as if they were written in pulsing neon. Heat flushed my skin. He was a nice person. I was a nice person. I hadn’t meant to do this to him. I didn’t treat people this way. Kat’s words from late February rushed back to me: and then feel guilty about how you treated him for the rest of your life.

My world tipped over sideways. I supposed it had tipped over on Christmas, but I hadn’t noticed how tightly I’d been holding on to the edge until I finally lost my grip and fell.

The next few days spun in a nauseous whirl. Kat tried to press me about Cory, but my thoughts were unraveling so quickly, so catastrophically, that I didn’t dare speak any of them out loud. I began to ignore her calls.

I had never been able to see my future with Cory in any kind of detail. There wasn’t anything, apart from a vague sense of more , that I was looking forward to. The realization was devastating. Cory himself had been the only part of it that I could see, but now it seemed this was because he’d been blocking the view of every other possible future, and I had been doing the same for him. Maybe. Probably. I couldn’t be sure yet, but I was certain there would be no threat of a ring in April. Perhaps there never had been.

My mood and behavior at work became so erratic and abnormal that Macon’s attitude toward me shifted again, and he grew protective. He tried to provide space for me. He answered the phone, jumped to help patrons approaching the desk, volunteered to assist people with the computers. He didn’t know what was going on with me because I didn’t tell him. But on Thursday, he dared to ask, “Is your boyfriend coming in tonight?”

He didn’t mean Cory. My reply was sharp but guarded. “I doubt it.”

He did not ask any follow-up questions.

The days continued to slip by, out of control. An outraged book banner showed up during another late shift. Macon was straightening the periodicals in the back when the woman marched straight to my station, screeching about a list of books in our collection she hadn’t read—they never read the books, which was part of the problem—and then accused me of being a pedophile. I wasn’t strong enough to take it. My backbone had broken. And although I had a personal rule to never let the hatemongers see me cry, it was too late. She spat another abuse behind me as I ran full throttle toward the annex, and then Macon was roaring at her to exit the premises.

I burst into the restroom—and into racking sobs. My body collapsed against the wall beside the sink, searching for support, and slid down until my limbs crumpled onto the floor. I heaved and gasped. Wailed. Gasped again, in shock, and covered my mouth. Snot and tears bubbled into my hands. I was breathing so rapidly that I couldn’t breathe.

A knock on the door. “Ingrid?”

I cried and choked, gripping onto myself so tightly that my nails dug into my flesh.

“Ingrid?” Macon said again. He tried the handle and let out a noise of surprise when it wasn’t locked. “Ingrid, I’m coming in.”

The door opened cautiously, just wide enough for his head to poke in. When he saw me, he hastened inside and began grabbing paper towels. He was the one who’d placed the REMEMBER … THESE COME FROM TREES stickers on our dispenser, but now he kneeled beside me and handed me an entire fistful like a bouquet.

I was aware that I was sprawled on the floor of a public restroom and felt all the accompanying revulsion and self-loathing, yet I was helpless to do anything about it. I wiped my face with the paper towels, continuing to sob, still unable to breathe.

“Do what I do.” His voice was firm. “We’re going to make our exhalations longer than our inhalations.” He demonstrated loudly, shortening his inhalations to mirror mine but then exhaling for a few seconds longer. “Look at me. Look at me .”

He forced my eyes to meet his. With each breath, our inhalations lengthened. Our exhalations lengthened even further. We inhaled. We exhaled. Inhaled. Exhaled.

“There,” he said a minute later.

I was breathing again.

“That woman was abhorrent,” he said. “A goblin. I will murder her.”

I laugh-choked. But although my tears had quieted, they still spilled. He pried the crumpled paper towels from my hands, threw them away, and handed me a fresh one.

My voice wobbled. “It’s not just her.”

“I know,” he said.

I couldn’t speak anymore, and he didn’t ask me to.

“Hello?” a man called out at the circulation desk.

“Shit.” Macon started to leave but just as quickly stopped. He took off his thick duffel coat and draped it over me like a blanket. The tile floor was cold, and I was shivering. He left, but two seconds later the door swung back open. His head was shaking as if he were the fool. “I just remembered there’s a handkerchief in the pocket. If you need it.”

He left again.

My muscles felt weak, my bones heavy. I hugged the coat with my whole body the same way I hugged Cory’s pillow in bed. It was the closest I could get to the comforting presence of another person, and some nights, it was the only way I was able to fall asleep. Did I imagine Cory in its place? I did, sometimes. But other times it was somebody else, somebody nameless because my loyalty to Cory still lingered. The coat was warm and weighty and smelled like Macon. Smelled like his house. I breathed in the concentrated scent.

A few minutes later, he returned with an oversize hardcover about the Faroe Islands. He squatted beside me again and opened it to a photograph of a stone cottage with a sod roof that overlooked a windswept sea.

“Let’s close early and go here,” he said. “We’ll light a fire. Put the kettle on.”

“We’ll wear our oldest and most comfortable sweaters.”

He smiled. “I’ll bake bread.”

“I’ll sleep.”

We held each other’s gaze until it became too much. He broke away first and placed the book into my lap. “I’ll handle everything out there. Stay here as long as you need to.”

He meant both the floor and the cottage.