She shouldn't have agreed to meet him. They had bargained bitterly against further entanglements. That was his word for them not three months ago. He was holding his broken wrist watch in his hand, a smear of blood on his cuff. Tears trailed his high cheekbones and piked off his dark beard. Her hand had been laid on his arm and when he used that word, she pulled it away and tucked it between her legs.
Jake had always been a bit clumsy. They couldn't even have a good rout without him tripping over something or bumping his toe. It was never a fit of outrage so much as too sudden a movement, a thoughtless blundering. Only when they argued or he quarreled with this father on the phone. Otherwise, Jake was the guy people thought of as the coolest person in the room.
The weeks since they broke it off had been lonely, made more so by the pandemic, which had debilitated her social life. The old cat woman she always feared becoming probably was not as lonely as her. At least she had her cats to keep her company. Fallon couldn't keep a goldfish alive, she always said with a short laugh. It had been part of her identity in a way, the girl who was too busy for houseplants and pets. Watching her friends on Instagram taking up baking bread and snuggling with their cockerdoodles the last few months had been filling her with envy. She hated that, but couldn't figure out how to let it go.
So now it had come, the phone call from Jake, his soft voice attempting to wash away the past. Like an idiot she had agreed to see him again. But not like before, not in one of their homes. They would meet at Washington Square Park, their old stomping grounds, the corner of Macdougal and Waverly, where the chess tables huddled under the trees a good distance from the fountain and the arch.
Jake had moved out of the city in September and she could have offered up her place, even just to give him somewhere to piss after the drive, but the park had popped into her head and once she thought it, it was all she could imagine agreeing to. It gave her a small sense of satisfaction to know that, while she could not help the eagerness with which she answered his call, she could draw a line somewhere.
"You're a real badass," she muttered to herself after she hung up.
In truth, he had not bargained for more. He only said okay and they set the time.
At parties, back when people had those, someone would always ask how the two of them met. Or else they'd just make wild guesses. "Were you at college together?" they might ask. Or, "Did you work together before Fallon started freelancing?" People liked knowing how couples met. She couldn't imagine why. That sort of story always bored her to death. What did it matter. They had in fact been to college together and - briefly - worked at the same company. They got along from the very beginning and eventually started dating without a lot of fuss. There was no meet-cute to their story. Sometimes she made things up because the truth was just so mundane.
She wasn't a harried florist who ran an order of sympathy flowers out to a funeral parlor only to bump into the same rude young man who stepped on her shoe on the subway just that same morning. He would have been openly weeping as he told her how beautiful the bouquet looked. She would have realized contritely that his earlier churlishness had been caused by his grief.
The funeral was for his aunt, who raised him after his parents were killed in a small plane crash in the Andes. They had been explorers at heart and generally everyone thought Aunt Charlotte would do a much better job with him, though, of course, there was no denying it was a tragedy. Fallon could never tell a good yarn like that at a party where they knew a lot of people, but if a bartender or a temp at work were being nosey, she liked to tell them a whopper that gave them a good cry.
Jake used to tell her how bitchy it was to lie to them, but he never gave her away, not even the time she said they met when she worked reception at a counselor's office and he came in to learn how to stop beating his first wife. In fact, it surprised him so much he laughed, which made the bartender give them a withering glance. He almost blew that one, but not on purpose. She saved the day when she said all that was left of his old neurosis was a nervous laugh. That night as they walked home, she thanked him for keeping up the inappropriate chuckling throughout the night.
"I don't think either one of us wanted our drinks spit in," he said.
She wrapped her arms around one of his, liking how large and strong it felt under the burred woolen sleeve. Jake always made her feel warm and safe and, in a strange way, though they had been together two years, her memories of their best times always seemed to be against the grey backdrop of winter.
She was listening to Autumn Girl by Kirsty MacColl on her earbuds when he tapped her on the shoulder. It made her jump, her gloved fingers tightening around her phone. The look on her face made him laugh until his eyeglasses fogged up over his mask.
"You idiot," she said. She pushed out a laugh, too, not wanting to start out cranky.
He came around the park bench and sat down, not next to her, but like anyone might these days, with a good distance between them. "You look good," he said. Like a lot of men, he thought telling her how she looked was top of her list. It might be the case if they were getting dressed up to go somewhere together. She did like a little validation when it came to her clothes because she secretly worried she was shit with fashion, but generally speaking, she never cared if anyone thought she looked nice.
Still, she drank him in and decided he looked good, too. He already knew that, she was pretty sure, so she didn't say it out loud. Instead, she said, "You look thinner. Have you been sick?"
He shook his head. "Not yet. You?"
"No." She shuddered. "But it feels like it'll happen any day. This fucking shit."
His eyebrows knitted just for a moment. He would never admit he didn't like to hear her cuss, but she had figured that out a long time ago. As was her nature, it made her want to do it ever more around him.
"It is scary," he said.
She had no interest in chit-chat. Not just with him today, but with anyone ever. She just didn't enjoy idle talk. She pulled her earbuds out and burrowed them into her coat pocket. Straightening and turning to face him better, she said, "Is getting back together your way of moving back into the city? You hate my apartment."
He didn't get offended, or at least he didn't show it. This was their cat and mouse. He took off his glasses and folded them in his lap. "You realize it's a renters market right now, don't you? I could get something better than I had before for a better price."
"I know that."
Why did he still love her? It made him seem like a fool, she thought, but more so because they both knew if she said yes it would be for comfort more than love. That was how they ended it. She had been too honest. She always went for the jugular when she felt backed in a corner.
She decided to be blunt. "I told you nothing has changed."
"You don't love me anymore. You keep saying. I just don't believe you."
Fallon laughed out loud. It was pretty warm for November. She unbuttoned her coat and shoved the lapels wide. Pulling off her gloves, she said, "Don't you know not believing women is out of fashion?"
He stared back at her.
She scratched at a chip in her nail polish. Bright yellow, it would have looked better if she had a tan. Months of isolation had left her complexion looking pale. A nail tech would have maybe been honest with her, talked her into a rosy color or dark grey. It was unimaginable right now to think of going to a nail salon. Her list of grievances against the pandemic was ongoing.
"I never said I don't love you." She didn't glance up. "I said we'd started to feel more like brother and sister than lovers."
He stood up so abruptly she flinched. When had she become so jumpy? He was only standing and staring into the park. There were a lot of people out today, soaking up the sun, keeping a wary distance as they passed one another, patches of cloth where their mouths used to be.
"I don't know what kind of messed up brothers and sisters you grew up with," he said. It was like him to argue with the premiss rather than accept the meaning. She thought about standing up, too, so that maybe they would just start to walk, like they used to do, but she uncrossed and recrossed her legs instead.
"We were in a rut, whether or not you want to see it," she said. "We were at each other's throats. You said yourself we'd be better off without all the entanglements."
"I didn't mean us, I meant all of it," he said. "You chose to hear it that way because it strengthened your argument."
"And why the fuck would I want to raise a child with a man who would bother to argue with a woman who said she wasn't happy with him? Think about it, Jake."
His shoulders gathered close to his neck, but if he were chilled, it had nothing to do with the weather. She had opened up something she should have left alone. Now she stood. She had made it about something else, another ugly thing they shared that should have been put to bed a long time ago.
"I'm sorry." She almost never said that.
His shoulders eased back into place. When she had quit going to meditation classes, he had stuck with it, even signing up for another session each week. By now he was probably a zen master at stress. Meanwhile she was wound so tight, she had been quarreling with her neighbor and jumping every time a car backfired.
She wished she could tell him that, how she was such a crank nowadays, worse than ever before; how she'd stopped doing her hair for Zoom meetings. She just shoved on a beanie and told everyone her apartment was chilly. He would laugh if she told him about waving the recycle bins around in her narrow little brownstone hallway, shrieking at old Mrs. Cohen about how the number system on the bottom of the containers worked. He always laughed at stories about her making an ass of herself. They were her favorite kind to tell.
"Do you think they offer counseling for couples who've already split?" she asked.
Then they stepped out of the way of a bicyclist, followed by a mother with a stroller. Jake was studying her over his shoulder, his gaze a little sad, but also hopeful. Maybe how they got back together would make a better story than how they first met. She looked down and saw that he'd dropped his glasses on the sidewalk. He was so clumsy. The stroller was just about to get them.
"Hold up, for fuck's sake!" she yelled at the woman, putting her hand on the stroller handle. It was a stupid thing to do these days, but the mother looked more frightened than angry. Fallow forced a smile that could not be seen. "Sorry, but you're about to run over my boyfriend's glasses."
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