Page 10 of The Note
“Oh, you know we’ve always loved Tyler. And he’s been such a rock for Marissa during this whole wedding planning thing. Nothing but the best will do for her. He’s got a flexible schedule, with his writing, but I know it can’t have been easy. And even now, he’s looking at her like he’s so worried something will go wrong,” she said looking at Tyler affectionately. “I just hope someday he’ll find a guy who’ll cherish him.”
“Yeah, someday,” I agreed, though the words felt like sandpaper in my throat.I’dtried to cherish Tyler once upon a time, but he’d made it quite clear he didn’t see me that way.
“Do you think there’ll be anyone here this weekend we can set him up with?” my mother blithely continued, looking around the room eagerly. “Old Uncle August has a young male nurse here with him. I wonder if he’s Tyler’s type.”
I wasn’t gonna touch the subject of Tyler’stypewith a ten-foot pole.
“I have no idea what his type is.”
“But I thought you two talked a lot! Alex used to complain that every word out of Tyler’s mouth wasGus says this, Gus says that,even when they were dating.” She winked and elbowed me. “I think Alex was kind of jealous of the way Tyler idolized you.”
Oh, God.Another topic I wouldn’t touch,ever.
“I wouldn’t say we talka lot,” I muttered. “Maybe back when he was in college, but not anymore. I’m really busy at the hospital and there’s the time zone thing. We FaceTime maybe twice a week.” We also texted dozens of times a day, but I wasn’t gonna mention that.
“That’s not a lot?” She grinned. “Gus, how often do you callme?”
I ignored this. “Tyler and I don’t talk about Alex,” I informed her. “We never have.”
“Really? Not even when they were dating?”
I shrugged like I hadn’t deliberately engineered it that way.
I’d promised to be Tyler’s friend. But the only way I’d been able to make it work was to basically pretend that Alex didn’t exist. So I’d given Tyler some bullshit about it being a conflict of interest, and he’d gone along with it.
Instead, we talked about the insanities of my job. We talked about how much Tyler loved his work, and how his father was still sending him job listings, even a year and a half after he’d accepted his position at the small publication in the city.
We talked about Tyler’s psychopathic cat, which I’d named Baldric because the stripe across his shoulder looked like a medieval sword belt, and I sent him daily cat memes.
We talked about the Shelby I’d bought last year — which Tyler had dubbed the Compensation-Mobile because clearly only someone with a very small penis would need to drive a muscle car — and he must’ve spenthourstrolling the internet for penis enlargement solutions because he’d sent me a new one every day since September.
We talked about our apartments and our neighbors, and when my free moments and his aligned, we watched Drag Race together over FaceTime.
We planned a trip to Thailand together that would probably never happen, but we’d nevertheless scoured restaurant recommendations in Chiang Mai and debated the merits of rice noodles versus egg noodles.
Normal stuff. Friend stuff.
Non-Alex stuff.
“You know, come to think of it, maybe I’ll have to talk toTylerabout findingyoua date this weekend.” She watched my dawning horror with unconcealed glee. “That would be one way to make sure you come back to New York once your residency is over next year.”
I tensed. “That’s… probably not going to happen, Mom. I’m used to living where we don’t get buried in snow. I have a tan to maintain.” I framed my pale face with my equally-pale hands in demonstration.
“A tan. Please. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you sparkled in the sunlight.”
“Did you… Oh my God, was that a Twilight reference?”
She tilted her head to one side and gave me a pitying look. “Oh my God, yes, August. I exist in the same world you do and I haven’t entirely lost my powers of observation, you know.”
I pressed my lips together, fighting laughter. God, I loved my mother. “Sorry, I—”
“And though I am, indeed, awithering,ancienthuskof a woman,” she continued, talking over me. “I do still see the occasional moving picture and read the occasional sheaf of papyrus, much like you youngsters do.”
“I know,” I said, placatingly. “Of course.”
She cupped my cheek and patted it lightly. “And I’m a sucker for eternal love just like you, too.”
I frowned, wondering exactly what she thought she knew, and almost against my will, my gaze was dragged across the tent toward Tyler, who was now staring down at the tablecloth in front of him like it held the secrets of the universe, and tensing his hands into fists like those secrets were unpleasant.
