Page 34 of Except Emerson (Detroit ABCs #7)

“Because I have it on file,” I said. “I write down as much as I can remember about my conversations and interactions with people. I actually do a lot of speech to text, which is a lot easier than typing. I have transcripts and I review them.”

“What the hell?” he asked, not mad but confused.

“A lot times people go back on what they say. They’ll tell you something but later it might turn out to be a lie, or they’ll claim that they never said anything like that at all,” I explained. I took four or five, or maybe ten more fries. “These are delicious.”

“So you write everything down because you want proof? You have some ketchup there.” He reached across the table and wiped the corner of my mouth.

“Thank you. Yes, it’s so that I know I’m not crazy and that it all really happened.”

“Who told you that you were crazy?” he asked, but first we ordered. We both ordered a lot. Unfortunately, the plate was empty of french fries but the waitress promised that the rest would come quickly.

Levi repeated the question when she was gone.

“When I was little, I always had problems with my mother about information. Not that she said I was crazy, but she made me doubt myself so much,” I replied.

She had told me that we were going to move to Paris, which was where I first got the idea about living in an apartment with a terrace.

She’d told me that I was going to spend the summer with my father while she traveled in South America, that we were going to get a new car, that she was going to win a prize for one of her books.

“She said a lot of stuff about our future and later, when I would ask about it, she’d act like she’d never heard it before.

As I got older, I realized that it was all things that she wanted for herself but she knew would never happen. ”

“That’s…I was going to say sad, but it’s also mean,” he told me. “It was mean to make you believe them.”

“I didn’t, not after a while. I got pretty skeptical in general.”

“That’s why you write everything down?”

“No,” I answered. “No, that started after Grant and I had been together for a while. Because he told me a lot of fibs—what he called fibs, and I called lies. And he would tell me other things and then swear he’d never said them, that I was making it up or just nuts.

He hated when I recorded him so I started the transcripts so I had something concrete to refer to.

No matter what he tried to lie about, I knew the truth. That made me feel better.”

“Damn,” he said. “It’s pretty disturbing that you had to resort to that so you wouldn’t think you were losing your mind. I thought Mary Evelyn and I had problems, but that’s awful.”

“Grant and I weren’t very good together,” I agreed. “I thought we were, but now I see that I things were rotten. At the end, he hated me.”

“He couldn’t have hated you,” Levi said. He sounded completely confident in that. “He needed you for everything, but what did you get from him?”

“Nothing. Now I don’t have him and I’m fine, which is proof that I’m better alone.

I don’t even need a transcript…oh, good,” I sighed, as the waitress arrived.

She’d been right about the speed of the kitchen and everything tasted delicious.

I looked down at the top of my dress as I ate, thinking that maybe it was filling in a little.

I hadn’t had to pad too much to make this fit like it used to.

“The groomsmen outside the men’s room were laying bets on Britainy’s marriage,” Levi mentioned. “They were putting down money on how long it’s going to last. The over-under is six months.”

I paused with my glass partway to my mouth. “That’s terrible. I hope they’re wrong.”

“If they’re unhappy, then it would be better for them to split,” he answered.

“Based on how they started off today, I can’t imagine how it’s going to work.

Aunt Kellie told my mom that she and my uncle had given Britainy a set amount of money for the wedding, but my cousin blew it all and couldn’t cover her costs.

She also didn’t tell anyone it was gone.

My aunt had to step in at the last minute and try to salvage the situation but she didn’t have much more to spend herself.

That was why they had a cash bar, to recoup the cost of the liquor.

They also had to cancel the dinner and cake, and reduce the size of the band. ”

“And Britainy’s new husband didn’t know?”

“That’s what I mean about a bad beginning. Not just that the party sucked, but that they’re already hiding things. I took the under on six months.”

“That’s too bad, but it happens. One of Grant’s friends got married in French Polynesia and they had it annulled the day we all returned to the States. We weren’t there for very long, either.”

“Damn,” he said. “They must have known about their problems before they flew all that way. Why would you get into a marriage if you knew that there was so much wrong?”

“Because you’re lonely and worried,” I said.

“You’re thinking that you’ll spend your whole life only speaking to your cat and going to the grocery store to interact with other humans…

it’s just a theory. Why do you think that Mary Evelyn wanted to marry you?

” I could have listed a million reasons myself, but I was aware that the woman was crazy and I was interested in her twisted logic.

He laughed. “Because I’m so irresistible,” he told me, but then his smile faded and he shook his head slightly.

“She wasn’t afraid of the future but I think she wanted to keep up with everyone else.

All her friends were getting married and some were already starting families.

Her sisters had settled down, even though they didn’t seem very happy to me.

She got anxious that they were, I don’t know, getting ahead?

Leaving her behind? She was a bridesmaid a few times and we got in huge arguments after we left the receptions. ”

“So it was better to break up,” I said, nodding.

“That was what I wanted to say to the groom’s cousin today when she told me the story of how her boyfriend kept doing things to show that he wasn’t interested in a long-term commitment.

If I had been her app therapist, I would have told her straight-out that she shouldn’t marry someone who wasn’t absolutely sure that he wanted to. ”

“I don’t think most therapists act like that. Yours was unique,” he said. “But you’re right, and I asked Mary Evelyn close to same thing. Why would she have wanted me?”

Well, he opened doors to cars and buildings.

He was fun to talk to, even if the conversation was about something boring like baseball.

What about how he got along so well with his family and loved them so much?

He’d taken the time to tame a very aloof cat!

I also thought of him helping Hernán move, carrying everything and jamming it into the little car.

I thought of how he’d spent time with me, a person who had so many problems being with others.

“She didn’t,” he was saying in answer to his own question. “She didn’t really want me. She just wanted somebody, and I was there.”

“No!”

He looked started, as did the man at the table next to us. That had been too loud.

“I mean, I’m sure she loved you. I’m sure of it,” I told him. “Maybe you guys weren’t compatible and maybe it faded and flamed out in the end, but I’m sure that she did.”

“I don’t know,” he told me, sighing. “I’ve been a big fuck-up.”

“You said it didn’t bother you when your cousin made that remark about how your job is at the bottom,” I reminded him.

“No, it didn’t bother me when Braylen said it, but I am at the bottom and that fact does bother me. A lot. I can’t go back and make up the lost time, though.”

“No, there’s no making up lost time. Like five years could pass and afterwards, you realize that you wasted them and that’s it. No do-overs. But do you even like that job?”

“Have I been complaining?” Levi asked.

“You frown when you talk about it. Also, when you got hired, Ava said that she wasn’t sure if you’d like it and she knows you pretty well.”

“She does, but it’s fine.” He was frowning again, though. “That wedding was shitty. It’s making us depressed,” he told me.He crumpled the wrapper from his straw into a ball and rolled it between his fingers.

Maybe I felt upset because of the bad wedding or maybe it was all the cheap gin. I nodded and we finished eating in silence.

“I know what would have happened five or ten years ago,” he suddenly said. “I know how I would have acted right now. I would have suggested that we go back to your apartment together and we would have lit up and drunk a lot more, and then ended up in bed.”

I stared. Was he proposing—was he was asking if I would sleep with him?

I already knew the answer, and I opened my mouth to tell him.

Yes. Yes, we would go back to our building, put Coral in my living room, and make use of the mattress that he thought was toddler-sized but was actually very comfortable.

How much space did you even need for sex?

We didn’t have to do a lot of frenzied rolling or gymnastic moves.

I opened my mouth to respond but took a trembling breath before I said the word.

Levi spoke first. “Don’t worry,” he said. “That’s not how I’m going to act anymore.”

I closed my lips and swallowed.

“I was such an asshole and it was because I felt like crap about myself, so I was using women to feel better,” he continued.

“Were they anticipating any kind of commitment?” I asked. “Did you have coercive power over them, or had you lied to get them to sleep with you?”

“What? No! No, of course not.”

“Then you weren’t using them,” I said. “No one had expectations for anything more. What makes it bad is when you trust people and your heart is involved.”

“I don’t think I ever involved anyone’s heart,” Levi told me, but he was very wrong about that.