Page 119 of It Couldn't Be You
They met and talked for hours. And agreed Katie would be the next owner of Coffee & Commas. They would begin the process the next day.
As I told Katie that night on the phone, “I’m so proud of you for just going for it like this.”
I kept flashing back to shutting the door in her brother’s face. I wanted to tell her, “I wish I had bet on your brother when I had the chance.”
I wanted to tell her that there had been no returned call from Gabe, no text messages. That it felt painfully, cruelly fair to be agonizing over his lack of reply after my own silence years ago. How I always put silence between us, and he always put states. I wanted to tell Katie that I never said what I wanted the way she did to Terrence, to Rose. Even when her brother was begging for me to tell him what I wanted. I lost without even playing.
Telling my oldest friend in the world about how I’d been walking around with a shattered heart in my chest felt natural, felt like it would be a salve. But she was so excited, chattering away about Coffee & Commas and the wedding, her joy radiating through the phone screen, so I kept my feelings to myself. I knew I would share everything, eventually when the time was right.
As our conversation slowed, the two of us growing tired, Katie said, “Let’s say it’s your turn now, Em. What call do you need to make tomorrow morning?”
I knew just the number to dial, a number that would answer when I called.
I called Terrence the next morning and said, “I want work. I want a project. A big one. Lay it on me.”
He sent me to NYC for three weeks.
Forty-Four
Katie
So pls be near your phone while you’re away as I attempt to plan this wedding in like weeks k thx lol
Katie
I know you’re busy traveling the country today but mom and I are in a heated debate on ceremony seating – AHHH.
Katie
Now all my brothers are in on it, big wedding planning debate over dinner
Iwent to Manhattan for the first time in the heat of summer. Instead of twinkling shop windows or autumn leaves crunching under my feet, I brought a suitcase full of sundresses. The heat was tangible, like dew on my skin everywhere I went. That dewy skin was most apparent on the days I rode the Subway, which was thickly humid. I was dripping the first day I arrived.
I was taking a complicated journey from JFK airport to my temporary place in Manhattan. Taking the Air Train to the Subway and then, hot and tired, I gave in and took a Taxi, dragging my bags along with me. I got to my new place and immediately showered. I was exhausted and stressed but proud of myself.
I stayed in a little studio short-term rental on the upper east side. It was tiny, cramped, and old with a cranky air conditioner that sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t. The fridge was small and appeared to have been around longer than my grandma. And there were two windows. One was over the sink with a view of an alley and the building next door, but the other, across from my bed, had a view of the city around me.
It was that other view, the one of the city, that gave me butterflies. It wasn’t a particularly beautiful or notorious view, but it was still of Manhattan. The part of it that became mine. I would sit and watch night fall over the upper east side, soaking in a reality that years ago I had begun to believe might never happen for me.
Ikept an ongoing note in my phone of ideas—things for the magazine that I was planning to get up the guts to pitch and things to write just for me, not for any publishers beyond my Word document.
One morning I woke up, and I started a note in my phone titledThings to Say to Gabe. I added to this note daily. It was long, sometimes serious, sometimes ridiculous. It was full of things I should’ve admitted to him years ago. Things I should’ve admitted tomyselfyears ago. But there I was, alone in NYC, and finally being honest with myself about who I was and what I wanted. I was someone who wanted things that scared me and a man who scared me.
And I was someone finally ready for all of it—my notes said that. They told him,I’m finally ready.That note still reminds me of walking under a sky of towering concrete, passing stranger after stranger, missing him.
Ididn’t just write in that little apartment. I also had lengthy phone calls helping plan Katie and Canada Man’s wedding. There was even an infamous four-hour-long call about the guest list. Since the wedding was happening on the Hernandezes’ expansive property, Katie felt anyone and everyone should be invited, but her parents were far more hesitant. Terrence and I got called in for perspective. It got heated. But Katie won.
There were also short, frantic, decisive phone calls helping plan Katie and Canada Man’s wedding that sounded like, “Hurry, tell me sunflowers or lilies?” These mostly happened while I was wandering around the city.
I would be walking down the street and shout, “Lilies!!”
Within my first days there, I had a coffee shop I visited every morning that quickly felt likemyplace. There was also a Thai restaurant that I had so many times, I felt sad to leave when the time came. I stopped into a gorgeous, brick Episcopalian Church down the street that was so welcoming that I came back the Sundays and Wednesdays I was there. They had future events scheduled that, in another life, I could imagine myself attending.
I figured out how many shopping bags I could handle. My main mode of transportation became my sneakered feet. These were things that I knew I would miss when I left. And I also knew, as I was heading to the Thai place for dinner, these were things that could be the beginnings of a life.
I could build a life here, I realized. I could build a new life outside of everything comfortable and cozy. A new life was not as scary as it felt when you were driving down the same roads you’d always known. Because there were roads everywhere—some more traffic jammed than others.
I could adapt. I could dig up roots and replant them, especially because a new life didn’t mean shaking loose everything you loved from the old one. I didn’t have to fight so hard to protect what I loved because the things that truly love you back fought to stay in your life.
