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Thirty
Henley
2017
I leave before Conner has the chance to throw me out again, reminding myself that he’s not the reason I’m here. Not really. It may have started that way, sailing the Hudson with Jeremy and his boyfriend on a Sunday afternoon. He and Jeremy are careful in public. To the outside observer, Gregg is my flamboyantly gay bestie. Jeremy is my heterosexual, but tolerant boyfriend. They’ve been together for three years and have had the kind of relationship everyone dreams of.
“You need to get laid before we do this thing,” Gregg said, looking up at me from where he was sunning himself on the deck.
“Our girl is saving herself for someone special,” Jeremy said, giving me a sly smile. “What’s his name? Carter? Conrad?”
“Conner.” His name slipped out like it’d been there all along, poised on the end of my tongue. “His name is Conner.”
“That’s right,” Jeremy pats me on my arm like a spinster aunt. “Conner. Our girl has been in love with him since before I met her.”
I smile, remembering. It’s what made our arrangement work. How we were able to fake a 10-year relationship. Jeremy is gay, and I’m in love with someone I can never have. We’re fake perfect for each other.
We’ve hatched all our best schemes on that boat. Our fake relationship to hide the fact he’s gay from his ultra-conservative family when we were seventeen. The fake pregnancy scare that became the talk of our social circle when we were eighteen. Our fake marriage to save his trust fund when we were twenty-five.
We decided on a long engagement. An iron-clad pre-nump because his father will insist. A huge, lavish wedding because his mother will want it. We’ll start to display marital problems halfway through year three. I’ll discover he’s cheating on me a few months later, triggering the infidelity clause in the pre-nump. We’ll see a therapist to try to save our marriage, and it’ll work for a while. Year four will be wonderful, but another round of cheating in year five will shatter the illusion of our fairytale romance. Disillusioned and heartbroken, I’ll file for divorce.
It’s all planned, down to the day.
We’ll marry when I’m twenty-eight and divorce when I’m thirty-three. Five years of my life for five-hundred million dollars. And then I can get away from my mother and start my life.
My real life.
“You need to find him and fuck him, girl,” Gregg says, looking at me over the tops of his sunglasses. “For real.”
“She doesn’t need to find him,” Jeremy says. “She knows exactly where he is.”
“Then what are you waiting for?” Gregg asks, exasperated. “I’m being serious, Henley. You need to take care of your little problem before you, and Jer get married.”
My little problem, meaning my virginity.
I laughed it off at the time but the more I thought about it, the more sense it made. I know where Conner is now. I know who he is now. I won’t be able to say the same thing, seven years from now.
It was now or possibly never.
So, I called Ryan and planted the seed. Waited for an opportunity to present itself. When one of my professors from Sara Lawrence emailed me about the internship at Boston City Library, mere weeks before my mother’s annual trip to Paris, it seemed like divine intervention.
I applied and Margo, my favorite librarian, called me almost immediately. She’d recognized my name, and the first thing she said to me when I answered my phone was when can you start?
Now, I meandered my way through the neighborhood in the general direction of Boston City library. My internship doesn’t officially start until Monday, but I want to see Margo. Say hi. Get reacquainted.
Thankfully, my landmarks are still here. Tess’s dad’s garage, now Conner’s. Gilroy’s bar. The park where we used to play pickup baseball games, back when I was still allowed to play. My old apartment building. Even if they weren’t, even if I was blind, I’d know where I was.
I’m home.
The building looks shabbier than I remember. The concrete stoop crumbling away underage and use, the brick face of it dingy and in need of a power wash. The lower level has bars on the window I don’t remember. The door has a security buzzer, even though it was propped open with a chunk of cement, presumably from the stoop.
Standing on the sidewalk, I look up, aiming my face at the front of the building, searching for and finding what used to be our living room window. It’s closed now, like whoever lives there now has the good sense to keep it closed that my parents never did.
Conner keeps calling me Daisy. Last night it confused me. I didn’t understand. Thought it was a generic term of endearment he used with women like sweetheart or honey. A way for him to fuck them without getting bogged down with petty details like names.
But then I saw the copy of Gatsby tossed onto the table between us and I understood.
Daisy.