I shrugged. “You might as well.”
Danny took the seat next to me, though he kept looking straight ahead, which was a good thing. I could feel the heat coming off of him, warming me, even from several inches away.
“So . . . I just wanted you to know that I pulled down the site. Ain’t No Sunshine is no more.”
“You do realize anyone can google me and they’ll see everything, right?”
“They’ll stop googling after a while. If they haven’t already.”
“Danny, if that’s your idea of an apology . . .”
“It’s not.”
He focused on his hands, his wedding ring still there. I couldn’t stop looking at it.
“I’m not here to apologize,” he said. “And I’m not here to argue with you about whether I should.”
“So why are you here?”
“I kept thinking that I had to do it, to help you, regardless of what it did to us. It’s weird, I thought I wouldn’t care if you hated me,” he said. “Turns out I was wrong on that front.”
He paused.
“Turns out I can’t stop thinking about you.”
I looked at him. It was the kindest thing he could say, but it wasn’t enough. Fourteen years. I knew he wasn’t willing to let go, maybe neither of us was. But that was different from knowing how to hold on. Neither of us knew if we could really do that—with so much negative stuff between us now. Except I couldn’t feel the negative stuff. When I was with him, actually sitting there with him, he just felt like Danny. Maybe that wasn’t enough either. But it felt like a good place to start.
“There was another way, Danny.”
“Maybe. But this way worked.”
It had worked.
“I’m pregnant.”
Danny turned and looked at me. “Really?”
I nodded.
He turned away. “I’m going to need a minute to process that,” he said.
I started counting in my head, but before I even got to ten, he reached out and held me to him.
54
You probably didn’t think I was long for 28—or maybe you did. Maybe, after I turned Julie down (and Z turned me down), you thought this story would end with Z changing his mind, giving me a real job, a real shot at the restaurant. It would have had a certain symmetry to it. The man I had thought would be the way back to my old life would instead lead the charge to my new one.
After all, how often do you meet your opposite self? Hadn’t Chef Z been mine? Here was a man completely uninterested in the very things I had pursued—stardom, commercial success, the praise of others. He had given them away a long time ago. And even though they had found their way to him again, he seemed to give them the amount of time they deserved.
Very little.
There was a lesson in that, which Z had taught me, about what we should pay attention to instead. About taking a hard look at what we are willing to throw away, about what we should be letting it show us.
There was also a lesson in unmitigated honesty.
“Please get out of my face!” he said when I found him in the wine cellar.
And how we should temper it.
I almost turned around and gave Lottie my notice instead. She also wouldn’t have particularly cared, but she was a lot less scary.
But after I didn’t run away, Z seemed mildly interested in what I wanted. “Speak, already,” he said.
“I’m moving to New York,” I said.
He sighed, not turning from his bottle search. “I thought you wanted a promotion.”
“You said no. Plus, I’m having a baby. And the father is in New York. And I hate it here. I mean, not here at the restaurant. Here in the Hamptons, though.”
He shot me a look, like I had stepped on his face. “That was a longer answer than I was looking for.”
“I don’t have a job there,” I said. “And I could use one.”
“Could you?”
“If you know of anything.”
“If I know of anything?”
It was a crazy thing to ask him for, and I knew it. And he knew it. But I didn’t actually expect his help. I just thought it would give him an opportunity to say good-bye in his own Chef Z way.
And it did.
Chef Z smiled, like he was going to say he was going to help, like he was going to say he knew a guy, like he was going to say I’d become indispensable to him.
“The radishes are shit tonight,” he said.
I smiled. “Is that right?”
He nodded. “Take a bucket of them. And go.”
55
The morning I left for New York—to find an apartment, to begin the process of starting again—I found Ethan at the end of the driveway, getting out of his car.
He had been avoiding spending too much time with me, so I was surprised when I walked outside, bag in hand, and saw him walking toward the guesthouse.
“Don’t get excited,” he said. “I’m just going to see my friend.”
“Are you?”
He shrugged. “Depends how this goes,” he said.
I motioned toward the top step, and he motioned toward the bottom one.
“Meet you in the middle?” I said.
He smiled, and we both sat down.
He pointed at the bag I was holding in my hands. “What’s in there?”
“Lunch,” I said. “I’m taking the train to New York.”
He looked at the bag, which was incredibly full: two sandwiches, a salad, a large iced tea.
“Are you sure that’s enough? You’ll be on the train for at least two hours. Maybe three.”
“Very funny.”
“What are you doing in New York?”
I touched my belly. “I’m going to find out if this is a girl or a boy.”
“It’s a girl.”
“What makes you say that?”
“The old wives’ tale. When you’re having a boy, it gives you beauty. And when you’re having a girl . . .”
I laughed. “Hey! Not friendly.”
He shrugged. “You’ve looked better.”
“You’re right about that.”
He smiled. “Is the husband going with you?”
“That’s the plan.”
“Good.” He nodded. “That’s good.”
I started to agree, but that wouldn’t have been the truth. Everything was different between Danny and me now—a little forced, fairly tense. I didn’t want to volunteer that part either. Danny and I would either work it out or we wouldn’t. And it was better for Ethan to think we would. It was probably better for all of us to think that, but how could we work it out?
After all, what would that story sound like? We had been married, and I had been unfaithful. And he had sold out our entire lives. And then, we worked it out. It wasn’t a good story. It wasn’t a story that sells. In the story that sells, he would have forgiven me before he knew I was pregnant. In the story that sells, there wouldn’t have been infidelity and betrayal. There wouldn’t be someone new sitting in front of me that I didn’t want to say good-bye to. There would have been a pervasive love that wouldn’t have allowed me to sell my husband out, even when my entire world was for sale.