Overdue - 13

I called in sick again the following day, and Cory came by to pick up the rest of his belongings. He planned to store everything in Robin’s spare bedroom while he was inn-sitting, which would give him time to figure out where to go next.

“It feels weird to be back.” He scratched his head, taking it all in. “Kind of like visiting my parents’ house.”

I bristled.

“I mean it’s like visiting home when it’s not actually your home anymore. But some piece of you, a ghost, is still wandering the rooms.”

I thought about that and softened. “I’ve felt your ghost.”

“I guess it would have been hard not to with my stuff still here. Are you planning to stay?” He knew that money would be tight. I probably wouldn’t have to dip into my savings, but I would no longer be able to contribute to it. My paychecks would be fully stretched.

“I’ll stay until the lease runs out this summer. Or who knows, maybe I’ll renew. I’m not in any state to find a new place to live.”

He laughed, but he was choking up. “Right there with you.”

Which he was. But it was also sort of the point that he wasn’t.

We grieved as we loaded his car with his clothes, his record player and vinyl, his novels and comic books, some of the kitchenware. Our shared items weren’t difficult to divide because neither of us was attached to any of it. He didn’t take a single piece of furniture. Everything was particleboard, cheap and disposable. We had never put down roots anywhere or in anything or in each other, yet we cried and clung to one another in the parking lot.

“I wish it had been you,” I said into his shoulder.

“I wish it had been you, too,” he said into mine.

That night, when the stupid pull chain on my bedside lamp dinged loudly against its metal base, I recalled the lonely matching lamps and side tables in Macon’s bedroom. I had tried to convince Cory to take his, but he hadn’t wanted them. I didn’t blame him for that, nor did I blame him for anything else. I shivered as the temperature plunged below freezing, and when I awoke, many of the flowers on the trees—the most fragile and tender spring buds—were dead.

I thought I’d used up all my tears before we’d broken up, but it turned out those had only been the tears that were immediately accessible. I was tapped into the reserves now, and my spout was all the way open. The waterworks never stopped. I cried so much that first week that I became dehydrated. I began crying while chugging glasses of water, crying in the shower, crying outside in the rain. Water went in, water went out, water was everywhere.

I apologized to Kat for ignoring her calls. “There’s nothing to forgive,” she said. “I understood what was happening.” But I still had to tell my coworkers. I dreaded having to admit that Cory and I had not survived our experiment, just as I dreaded the look that might pass between Sue and Macon, who had known it all along. Kat, Sue, Macon—they had all seen our future. Why had it been obvious to them but not to us?

By the time I arrived on Tuesday morning, my coworkers had already divined my truth again, and there was not a trace of smugness to be found. Sue and Alyssa each held me in a long embrace. Macon did not hug me, but he was worried and kind, and he covered for me whenever I needed to go outside to cry. That day was also Elijah’s twenty-first birthday. Sue had brought in a drenched rum cake that I couldn’t stomach, and that night we received a message in our group text in which Elijah proclaimed himself to be LEGALLY DRINK!! instead of DRUNK!! , which Macon would razz him about forever. Apart from that, I retained few memories from that first week without Cory.

One more does jump out, though. My fridge was bare, so I forced myself to stop by the grocery store one evening after work. I was trying to be responsible. I was trying to feed myself.

I was not hungry.

My sister called and found me lost in the produce section. The options were overwhelming, and I couldn’t remember what I needed or wanted or even liked. So far, I’d placed an onion and an out-of-season carton of blueberries into my basket.

“Hey,” I said. Carrots? Maybe carrots?

“So you are alive,” Riley said.

“Sorry. I’ve been busy.”

“Busy.”

“Yeah.” I picked up a bag of carrots. Set it down. Did they have the unbagged kind?

“So are you busy now ?”

“No. What do you want?”

Her silence was so sharp and bladed that it cut through to me. Oh my God , I realized. I answered the phone. I’m going to have to tell my sister. Obviously, I would have to tell my family eventually, but I wanted to wait until I wasn’t so broken. I didn’t want to answer their questions about what had gone wrong. I didn’t even know what had gone wrong: nothing, but everything?

I clutched my phone harder but affected a brighter tone. “Sorry, I was distracted! You okay? Have you and Mom settled on the floral arrangements yet?”

“The floral arrangements.”

“Isn’t that why you’re calling? For backup?” I was grasping. “Mom wanted something, and you wanted … that other thing?”

“We settled on the arrangements weeks ago, and I’m calling because I’ve barely heard from you all year.” When I didn’t respond, she pressed. “What’s going on? Because it feels like you’re avoiding me, and I just texted Cory, and he said I should try calling you again, but then he wouldn’t tell me why. Which is extremely unlike Cory.”

“I guess I feel like I don’t have much to offer. You and Mom seem to have this covered.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about. Are you okay? Where have you been?”

“Here! I’m here, I’m working. I’ve been busy.”

Riley grew terse again, an angry nurse tired of dealing with other people’s bullshit. “Yeah. You mentioned that.”

“Fuck,” I said, my voice wavering. A woman with a toddler strapped into her shopping cart glared at me, so I turned around to face a dusty mound of baking potatoes. “I can’t do this right now,” I whispered.

“Do what ?”

And then I began to cry again, and Riley’s frustration transformed into alarm. I’d never cried on the phone with her before. “Iggy. Ig! You have to tell me what’s going on.”

“Cory moved out,” I choked.

“Oh my God.” My sister was stunned. “When?”

“Just after Christmas. After your engagement.”

“ What ? Why didn’t you say something? Why didn’t you tell me?”

I set down my basket and stumbled outside in a sobbing haze. It didn’t occur to me to get into my car. Instead, I crouched beside the big metal box where bagged ice was stored and used it as a protective shield. I told her about the experiment, the failed dates, the successful dates, the breakup. I told her about everything except for Macon. Those redactions were still too humiliating, too private. There was something more there that I wasn’t ready to touch.

Riley took a shuddering breath, internalizing my story and holding it safe for me, little sister morphing into big. “I wish you had told me. I understand why you didn’t, but I could have at least taken you off the wedding texts with Mom.”

“Oh God. I have to tell them. Mom and Dad.”

“You do,” she said. “But you don’t have to do it today.”

“I don’t think I want to tell them that Cory and I have been dating other people. I don’t think they’ll get it.”

“Do you get it?”

“I thought I did?”

Her laughter was crestfallen. “I’ve missed you. And I wish I’d known. I wouldn’t have texted you so many pictures of white dresses.”

“No, I’m sorry I haven’t been there for you. For the record, I’m always on your side. Who cares what Mom wants? She already had a wedding.”

“ Thank you ,” Riley said, as if to say, That’s what I’ve been saying this whole goddamn time .

“She’s probably just being overbearing because it’s something she’s helping pay for.”

“Yeah, well, I would have preferred if she and Dad had put their chunk of the wedding money toward my nursing school instead. That would have been more helpful.”

“Seriously,” I said. “Although she’s also probably being like this because she figured I would’ve gotten married years ago, so she’s had all of these plans piling up and going nowhere.”

“In that case, I’ll tell her she can save them for you.”

“Oh God. I’m never getting married.”

My sister quieted. “You know, I can’t tell if you mean that you don’t think anybody will ever want to marry you or that you never want to get married. It’s okay if you don’t want to,” she added quickly. “But if you do … you can still have that. Cory is only one guy.”

I didn’t know what I meant. When I was younger, I had wanted to get married, but then not wanting to marry Cory had confused the situation. Not to mention the fact that if he had asked me, I think I would have said yes. It would have seemed like the correct thing to do. What was I supposed to do with that knowledge about myself? It made me so ashamed.

“Excuse me,” a new voice said.

I started and blinked up from behind the ice box. It was the woman who’d glared at me for cursing in front of her toddler. Her expression was sympathetic as she held out a plastic grocery bag. “I don’t mean to intrude,” she said, “but I saw that you were still out here.”

She gestured for me to accept the bag, and I did. Inside was my onion, the carton of blueberries, and a box of tissues.

Kat, Brittany and Reza, my coworkers, my sister, this stranger.

I was never as alone as I thought I was. I often had trouble seeing it, but in this moment—with my sister in my ear and this stranger in front of me—it shone like the waxing gibbous moon rising over the darkest edge of the parking lot. I was lucky, and I knew it. I was grateful to be surrounded by so many steady hands.