Page 123 of It Couldn't Be You
“I wish he would talk to me, too,” I said. She had no idea how badly I wished he would talk to me. “He didn’t even tell me he was leaving.”
“I cannot believe that. You two were inseparable the past few months. You were literally just running all over Cambria. Then he ghosts you? See,something happened.”
Something did happen, I thought. I hurt him. He should be celebrating right now, but he’s sad. I squeezed my eyes closed. God, I was such a fool. I left us both alone on opposite coasts.
“Are you there?” she said, interrupting my thoughts.
Tell her, I thought. “Well, you know, actually in Ca—”
“Hold on, babe, speak of the devil. Gabe is calling me.” She clicked over to the other line. A minute later, she switched over to me and told me she would call me back.
I sat in my bed as rumpled as the sheets wondering how much of my life was wasted on missed moments. Things were full circle, even Katie noticed, from one late-night rewriting session to another years later, yet nothing had changed.
I still wanted Gabriel. Not in a perfect, tidy, easy package that would easily fit like a puzzle piece into my life. I wanted him with the messy, challenging strings attached. Things hadn’t changed much, butI finally had.
Ionly had a few days left in New York City. I was trying to decide how best to spend the rest of my time when I received a call informing me that my laptop bag had been found by someone. They wanted to get it back to me.
This was a big, harsh city, and my assumption had been that someone had stolen my precious, irreplaceable body of work. I was wrong. It hadn’t been stolen; it had been found by a kind woman who made sure to get it back to me.
In a matter of hours after that call, I had every word back under my care and everything saved in online storage. I cried again for the millionth time this year. Grateful tears. I thanked God. I immediately called Katie.
“Wow, I thought it would be stripped and sold for parts by now,” Katie said in awe.
“Me too,” I said, shaking my head as I clicked around on the laptop, back on the same floor where I’d rewritten my project. “Look at the world taking us by surprise.”
“Are you going to submit your original draft? It’s barely been a day since you submitted the other one. I bet they would still take it.”
Quickly I said, “No, I honestly love the one I submitted. It’s way better.”
“Ah, yes, it’s your baby.”
“You know, the first thing I did was open up my original piece and read it, just to see if it was the better version. But it didn’t even compare.” I beamed with pride.
“Do you think it’s because when you wrote the new version, you had something to prove?”
“I think sometimes things turn out better when you have to start over, and that’s exactly what I did.”
Forty-Seven
Terrence called me near the end of my work trip to tell me he’d be in town for a day for a couple of meetings to wrap a few things up before the wedding and honeymoon. I requested a meeting with him, too. It felt very official and maybe even presumptuous, but I did it anyway. It felt like the perfect way to end this page-turning little season of my life.
We met at my new favorite coffee shop, me always gravitating to the familiar, even on an adventure. I wore a serious black dress with my hair slicked back in a low bun. He brought a couple of other staff from his team.
We sat a table by the window, a nonstop flow of people buzzing by. We had chitchat. One of the women on his team, Molly, was nearly nine months pregnant. Terrence had a lot of questions about the work I was doing here in Manhattan. We talked about my past work.
Then, Molly mused, “Emma, what do you hope to do with your career?”
My mind flashed to how many times I’d responded to this question with, “I don’t know,” stuttering over my words as I stumbled over my desires and my fears like a rocky path I didn’t know how to walk. But, this time, I’d been hoping for this question. I was armed with answers.
I told Molly and everyone at the table that I wanted to write full-time for a magazine, theirs or one like theirs, or a paper—somewhere that sent me off in the world. I said I’d keep freelancing until someone hired me, but I intended to keep hunting until I found this job.
They were nodding and opening their mouths to respond, but I could hear Katie in my mind when she said,“I’m going to give it a future,”and how those words had stayed lodged in my heart since she said them.
So, I quickly, added, “I can see a future for this magazine with me. I have a ton of ideas for different verticals and directions we could go. My work has gained traction for you already. I fit with this team. I get the vision.”
I felt breathless after I said it. As if when I spoke, I had let out a breath I had long been holding. A big grin spread across Terrence’s face. He said they wanted me on permanently.
Molly said they wanted me to have my own section as an editor. I’d still write my own pieces, but I would also edit and assign pieces. I had my serious, professional questions. We discussed and strategized, and really, we dreamed together at that table about the future of the magazine. I couldn’t stop smiling the rest of the meeting.
