Ava stared. “Emerson, please don’t let misplaced sympathy trick you into getting back together with him.”
“No, that’s not going to happen. I don’t want Grant. I realized a long time ago that I didn’t even like him very much, but he was able to accept me and that was enough. Before, it was, but not now. Now I want a real bond, like real love, not just someone who needs me to clean up his problems.”
“That sounds like a good goal.” She clinked her mug to mine and I saw that both of us had done a lot of sipping, because they were nearly empty. “Here’s to love. Don’t settle for a douche ashtray who only tolerates you while he’s secretly in love withsomeone else. At least he didn’t act on it. Oh, holy shit.” Her eyes widened. “Did something happen between the two of them while the two of you…no, don’t cry. Here, this napkin is pretty clean.”
It had some of her beer spilled on it, but that was ok. “They’ve been cheating together for years,” I said. “Almost since the time that Grant and I got together.”
“He’s awful. So is she!”
“She didn’t want to give up the lifestyle,” I explained. “She had everything she wanted while she stayed with Lance, all the material stuff, and then she got to sleep with Grant on the side. But Lance had been suspicious for a while. Grant wouldn’t tell me why but Lance saw something that I didn’t, and after the car accident, he had Vivienne followed. He caught them. She’d signed a prenup that Lance’s mom had insisted on, and now she has practically nothing. She moved in with Grant and he said that all they do is fight.”
“Right, because the ideal woman is still human,” Ava said. “And life’s a lot harder without a private jet and with the rent due. They’re getting a dose of reality, and good. Good! Why does he think that you would care?”
“He said that he can recognize how wrong he was. He didn’t apologize, because he doesn’t do that, but he said that now he sees that I wasn’t so bad after all. He said that he lost his best friend and his girlfriend, and that the woman of his dreams is a flop.”
“The word he was looking for is ‘nightmare.’ Like, ‘The woman of my dreams is a nightmare,’ and boo hoo.” She mimicked rubbing her fists over her eyes. “His loyalty is impressive,” she continued. “Now he’s ready to ditch the new girl, too.”
“I think that’s why she was coming over to my apartment and telling me to leave Detroit. Vivienne was afraid that he would do exactly this, that he would try to come back to me so he could recover the life he’d had. I know that I shouldn’t feel sorry for her—”
Ava put her fingers over my mouth. “We’re not feeling sorry for either of them,” she informed me.
“But I understand how it feels when people don’t love you the way you want and need.”
She removed her hand and picked up the mug of beer. “Here’s to you getting that exactly that kind of love.”
We clinked our glasses again and finished the rest of the liquid. “I know I’m crying, but I do feel better. I’m glad to know all this,” I said. “It’s like I’m finally putting it to bed.”
“And now you can finally get over him.”
“Ava, didn’t you hear me? Didn’t you listen to what I said? I am over Grant. I have been for months, for more than a year! I’ve been a mess because my life fell apart and I needed help, so having a boyfriend would have been great. But not him. I don’t want him and I don’t understand why you think that I do.”
She hesitated for a while and then said, “Because Levi thinks so.”
“I’ve told him the same thing!”
“I’m not going to speak for him, even though I really, really want to,” she answered. “I really do, a whole lot, but you guys should figure it out together.” She signaled to the waitress. “After we have another round.”
Chapter 15
It was so early that it was still dark out. No light, either from the moon or the sun, came through the window, the one that still wouldn’t open—but something had awoken me and had startled Coral, too. She was crouched on the edge of my bed and seemed to be listening, so I lay still and tried to hear.
Then I caught it: low murmurs of a voice and some soft thumps coming from the apartment across the hall. Levi was trying to be quiet but the walls in our building had the sound-muffling properties of aluminum foil. I heard him every weekday and on Saturdays when he got up to go to row, but today was Sunday, and anyway? It was so early, much before he ever had to be at the dock.
All those thoughts floated through my head but I was sleepy and hungover, too, from the excursion that Ava and I had made the day before to the Crookstown bar in Detroit. That meant that my mind wasn’t totally connecting with my body and sparking it into action. Specifically, I should have done a Hernán and runto throw open my door to ask what was happening, but I didn’t realize that until I heard Levi’s car start in the street and pull away. Then I hurried to the window but it was too late to see anything except his taillights.
It made me worried. He usually told me what was happening in his life, like when he’d mentioned that practice was cancelled on the prior Wednesday so I shouldn’t think that he’d slept through his alarm and was missing it. Last night, when he’d come to pick up me and Ava at the bar, he’d said, “I’ll be around tomorrow if you need anything, like aspirin or coffee. Damn, Aves, when was the last time you had so much to drink?”
It had been a while for her but at least, as she had noted, we weren’t wearing black tie and terrible shoes like at their cousin’s wedding, so it was easier to walk. “Holy shit, I forgot to tell you!” she’d continued. “Britainy and her husband separated last week.”
“Looks like I chose right when I took the under,” her brother had said with satisfaction. Ava had looked at me and I was aware that she was thinking of the end of my relationship with Grant, which she believed had happened earlier that afternoon. But I hadn’t said anything about it to Levi, not at that moment, because I’d decided to wait until I wasn’t under the influence of Boilermakers. I had planned to talk to him today except now he’d gotten up ridiculously early and left.
No matter; I could track him, like I did for Hernán and they both did for me. I looked at my phone and watched Levi’s car moving south on Woodward Avenue toward Detroit, then hooking a right on Eight Mile Road. It appeared that he was going to thehouse that his friend August owned, the place where we’d found him after we’d run around and searched the different properties in his real estate portfolio. I watched as the dot that represented Levi stopped in front of the house that August had bought for his mom.
I worked determinedly on my furniture project, and I finally succeeded in forcing it to (mostly) resemble the finished picture on the directions, although there was way too much hardware left over and that made me nervous. The dot didn’t move. As soon as it got light enough, Coral and I went for a very early walk, with her on the leash and compliant (mostly). But the dot stayed at that house. I took a shower and got our breakfasts, and the dot held its position.
Then I stood at my window and wondered what he and August were doing. My eyes drifted to the front steps and I recalled talking to Grant there. “I miss you, Emerson,” he’d told me. “Can I come in now? We can hang out like we used to.”
“No.”
