Page 124 of Our Last Resort

38New York City

Eleven Years Ago|And Then Ten Years Ago And Then Nine Years Ago

We had so many good times. Gabriel, Annie, and me.

Then the garden of earthly delights did what it always does. It started to spoil.

Can I be honest?

When I introduced him to her, I never thought those two would end up gettingmarried.I figured they’d do what they needed to do and move on.

Gabriel had just turned twenty-two when they tied the knot. Annie was twenty-three. In a sense, their ages don’t matter, but neither of them was fuckingready.

One evening, a year into their marriage, Gabriel showed up at my place. When he’d moved in with Annie, I’d signed a lease for a new studio on West 133rd Street, tucked between a park and a barbecue restaurant.

Gabriel stood at my door, finger on the doorbell, looking flushed. His messenger bag was strapped across his chest.

“Can I crash with you tonight?”

I didn’t have time to ask what had happened. Iryna, my new manager at the diner, had just called me to ask if I could work a half shift—Carmen was supposed to work that night, but her kid had chicken pox.

“You’re vaccinated, right?” Iryna had asked on the phone.

As of three years ago, yes, I was.

“I have to go to work,” I told Gabriel. “Here’s a key. Speak later?”

He nodded, looking dazed.

When I returned at three in the morning, he was lying on the couch with the lights on. I showered and changed. Sharing space with him still felt like the most natural thing in the world.

I sat on the floor, my back against the couch. Gabriel started to shift to free up some room for me, but I stopped him.

“Why don’t you tell me what happened?” I said.

I knew he’d find it easier to speak if I wasn’t looking at him.

He sighed.

“We had a fight.”

“About what?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Try me.”

There was a silence, then, he conceded: “Money.”

Money?

Yeah, well. I can’t say I’m too surprised.

When Gabriel and Annie moved in together, I had…reservations, shall we say. Okay, fine. I didn’t think it was a good idea. Not even in the lovely suburb of Bloomfield, New Jersey, in a cute two-bedroom house. Yes, I know: romance, whirlwind, young people. But I was a brutally pragmatic person. I didn’t know how they’d make it work, financially. Gabriel was a writer’s assistant. Annie had just started working as a regional manager at her father’s company. He couldn’t pay hertoowell, lest the other employees riot. Annie’s family helped them, but still.

It seemed so precarious, this suburban lifestyle they were jumping into without a plan. Like a child’s idea of real life.

“There’s just…never enough, somehow,” Gabriel said. “I don’t know. I guess we’re bad with that stuff.”

---