I can’t take it.
He has to return it.
Involuntarily, my hands tighten on the rolled leather handles, as if they’re sayinghell no, you’re not giving this back.
I immediately call him. It rings four times, and then he answers. “Hey. Didn’t I just drop you off and you’re already calling me?”
“Thai, this bag.”
I hear the grin in his voice. “Let me head you off at the pass, here, darlin’. No, you can’t give it back. No, you can’t give it away. No, you can’t put it in a safe and never wear it or use it or whatever. No, it’s not my way of apologizing. I apologized in words, and I’m going to prove to you I meant it with my actions. Buying you that purse—and all the other stuff along with it? That was forme, Delia.”
“In what upside-down universe is you buying me tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of stuff something you would do foryou?” I ask.
He laughs. “I’ve spent my whole life being all about me. Truth is, Dee, I’m a selfish fucking prick. Always have been—no excuse, but it’s how I was raised. I buy things for me. When I was hooking up, it was about me. Everything was always all about me.”
“You’re not making a very good case for yourself, right now, Matthais,” I say with a laugh.
“Not trying to make a good case for myself,” he answers, his tone matter of fact. “Just being truthful about the person I’ve been.” He pauses. “A friend of mine—and no, it’s not a euphemism for me—was an alcoholic. I watched him struggle with it. He’d be out partying with us, and listen, we were out of control, all of us. We all had problems with binge drinking. But the rest of us could sort of pull back, sometimes. Enough to get through classes. Lunch with our parents. Dates with girls. Exams, interviews. We knew we couldn’t be hammered all the time. Dre? He didn’t have that. He wasalwaysdrunk. I wasn’t close enough to him to ever find out what it was he was drinking to escape, but it was something deep and dark, right?” A sigh. “Okay, so the point. Eventually, he hit bottom. Made a big ruckus at a restaurant at like ten in the morning, embarrassed himself and us and it got recorded and put on social media and he was arrested…it was ugly. And for him, when he got sober enough to realize what had happened, he was like no—no more. So he went through rehab and did the AA twelve steps thing. So here’s the point—he had to face the reality of his problem. He had to admit to himself that he had a problem.”
I let out a long breath. “And you’re saying you had to do something similar.”
“Exactly. Not at all the same as what Dre went through, but it’s just a loose analogy. I had to be real with myself about who I was, who I’d been.”
“And when did you do this?”
He sighs. “Not sure I can pinpoint a precise moment. It’s sort of been an ongoing thing. There was a day I woke up in a condo I didn’t recognize, hungover as hell, a girl I didn’t recognize atallon either side of me, bottles everywhere, and I was just like, man, what am Idoingwith my life? This is all I ever do anymore. And then later that day I called a buddy of mine, Adam Prince. Successful as hell. The first of my group of friends to cut the partying and really knuckle down and make something of himself, while I was still douching it up all over the place. So I called him, for, like, support. I’d been hoping he’d cheer me up, likeno, Thai, you’re not a useless dick.”
I laugh. “Not what happened, I presume.”
“Not intentionally, but no. I asked him how he was, how things were going, and he told me. He was engaged to a girl he loved. Had a good position doing a job he enjoyed. He was happy. He was contributing to society. He was…” He trails off.
“Everything you weren’t,” I finish for him.
“Exactly.” He sighs yet again, pensive and thoughtful. “That was when I sat down and looked at my life and started trying to do things differently. Stopped partying quite as much. Stopped hooking up with, well, anything with a pulse and a pair, if I’m honest.”
That puts my gut in a twist—a feeling I’m self-aware enough to recognize as the awkward, niggling discomfort which presages jealousy.
“So…” I can’t help but hold the Birkin on my lap, touching the diamonds and the rolled leather handles. “Bring this whole big story back around to how you buying me stuff is for you.”
A laugh, a deep genuine belly laugh. “It’s simple, Delia—there’s even a trite, cliché phrase for it that people trot out around Christmas.”
We say it in unison: “’Tis better to give than receive.”
He continues. “But for the first time, I understand the truth of that statement. It really is. As much as I like going out and buying a new pair of sneakers or a nice watch or a fast car, it’s way more fun to buy stuff for you. It just…feelsbetter.”
“Well…” I sigh, laugh. “Thank you, Thai. Doesn’t seem quite enough considering how much money you spent, but…thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” His voice is quiet.
I can sense the welter of emotions and thoughts and questions in his silence, but he voices none of it. Maybe he senses that I need time to process. To accept that there’s something happening between us, and that simply because it’shim, I just need time to work through my feelings. Which are supremely complicated.
“Okay, well…I just wanted to….” I laugh, unable to find the right words. “I don’t even know. Tell you you’re crazy for the purse alone, let alone everything else. And thank you.”
“I…” A pause. “Today was…” Another pause; Thai is never tongue-tied, but he is now. “Thankyoufor spending today with me.”
“I had a lot of fun. Which for someone as prickly and uptight as me, that’s saying a lot.”
He groans. “It was a joke, Dee, god.”
