Page 29 of Kill Your Darlings

Afterward, both partially re-dressed, Ariel had made a pot of coffee and they sat together on the same couch, rain tapping on the window, mugs in hand.

The day had turned dark since they’d walked back from lunch in Union Square to her apartment up a steep hill that overlooked city hall and Somerville High School.

It was Thom’s first time in her apartment and now that he could focus on its interior and not just its owner, he found himself looking around for signs of Ariel’s calling.

All he could see was what looked like a Bible on the bedside table next to her reading lamp.

“What are you thinking about?” Ariel said.

“I thought there might be a giant cross on your wall or something. Above the bed.”

Ariel laughed. “I have my master’s of divinity degree framed in the bathroom.”

“I saw that.”

“Are you disappointed?”

“In what?”

“That my apartment doesn’t match my job.”

“No, no. I was just curious. I mean, I’m curious about seeing where you live.”

“What does your place look like?”

“Besides having a wife in it?”

“Ouch.”

“Sorry, that was a weird thing to say. It’s nice. We have our cat, Malchy, but you know about that. We have lots and lots

of books.”

“When I picture your apartment, I picture a grown-up place, like something from a Woody Allen movie. I feel like I still live

in a dorm room, basically.”

“Are you happy here?”

“I’m happy right now. I’m happy you’re here with me.

” Ariel put her coffee down on the glass-topped coffee table and slid in close to Thom.

He slipped his arm around her, pulling her in tighter, her head against his chest, trying to stave off the sudden feeling that he needed to flee this apartment as soon as possible.

It had been a mistake, but he’d known that even before it happened.

It had all been a mistake, really. Ariel was the assistant minister at the Unitarian Church in Cambridge, close to where Thom and Wendy lived.

He’d met her on Christmas Eve, then re-met her two days later at a wine-and-cheese shop he went to frequently.

“You’re so familiar,” he’d said to her as she was studying a label.

“You came to my Christmas Eve service. You and your wife. Her name was Wendy, but I’m sorry. You’re...?”

“I’m Thom Graves,” he said. “You have a good memory.”

“It’s part of the job.”

“Right. All those Bible verses.”

She laughed, the first of so many times that he was going to see her do that, and he fell a little bit in love with her right

then and there. What had Wendy called her after the service? Something like a hot pixie? He couldn’t remember exactly, but

she was quite small, and also quite pretty. Short, dark hair and big, brown eyes. And her laugh was almost awkwardly explosive.

“Well, yes, Bible verses,” she said. “But mostly I need to remember the names of parishioners.”

“I’m afraid that Wendy and I are, at most, once-a-year parishioners. I don’t want you to waste the brain space.”

“Too late,” she said.

The encounter at the wine shop would probably have been the end of it, but they ran into each other again in the middle of

February at the post office. He was mailing off an application for the PhD program at Cornell, with very little hope of getting

in, and she was there on what she said was official business, bulk-mailing a church newsletter. Afterward they went to a coffee

shop on Mass Avenue and talked for two hours.

It turned out that Ariel Gagnon was from New Hampshire, as well, but together they determined that their two towns were about as far apart as you could get in that particular state.

She came from the northernmost part of the state, both her parents wildlife managers more interested in nature than humans.

“When people ask me why I found God, I tell them that it was loneliness, that I had no one to talk to growing up so I started to talk to Him.”

“And He talked back.”

“He didn’t actually. But that doesn’t mean I don’t think He’s there.”

“You said ‘think’ and not ‘know.’”

“I did,” she said. “Ministers have doubts too. But I’m really in it because it’s a form of social work. I want to help people.

You know how I said at the cheese shop that I didn’t remember your name. I actually did and have no idea why I said I didn’t.

But I’d been thinking of you. You looked like you were there for a reason, like you were looking for something.”

Thom, on the cusp of making a joke, instead said, “I think I’m looking for forgiveness.”

“Forgiveness for what?”

“My own selfishness, I guess. I don’t know. I just don’t like myself very much.”

“This is where I’m supposed to say that God loves you, but I think you know that, or at least you know that that’s how it

is supposed to work. Instead, I’ll tell you that I like you, and I’m never wrong about anyone.”

“Is that true?” Thom said.

“That I like you?”

“No, that you’re never wrong about anyone?”

“So far.”

Between the conversation at the coffee shop and the afternoon spent on Ariel’s couch in her Somerville apartment, they’d seen

each other almost once a week for lunch or for coffee. She’d told him about her on-again, off-again boyfriend Alun, and her

wavering belief in her calling to the church. He told her about the constant anxiety he’d been feeling, and how Wendy approached

life in a different way.

“You mean she’s happy?”

“I suppose that’s what I mean.”

“Must be hard.”

“It is. It is.” He reached across the table at the Middle East, where they were sharing a falafel platter and a bottle of

lunchtime wine, and dramatically took hold of Ariel’s hand.

“But you said you wanted forgiveness, back when we first talked. What do you need forgiveness for?”

“When Wendy and I met, she was married—I told you that already—and I had a girlfriend, a serious girlfriend. I guess I don’t

feel guilty about her because we weren’t meant to be together.”

“You were meant to be together with Wendy.”

“I was. I believe that. I’ll be with her forever. But I feel guilty about the end of her marriage to Bryce. I guess that’s

what I’m hoping to be forgiven for.”

Ariel looked skeptical and poured the last of the bottle of wine into Thom’s glass. “I thought Bryce died.”

Thom quickly rearranged the features on his face, trying to remember what he’d already told her. “He did, yes. But we had

already...”

“Right, you told me that. Look, it seems to me like you’ve followed your heart, and that’s the important thing. I don’t think

you’ve really hurt anyone.”

Toward the end of that lunch—or had it been the time they met in Boston at Cheers, just because it seemed like a funny thing

to do?— Ariel said, “I take it Wendy doesn’t know about us meeting like this.”

“She sort of does,” Thom said.

“What do you mean?”

“Remember when we took that walk across Harvard last week? She saw us. She was in her car at a crosswalk and we walked by.”

“What did she say?” Ariel sounded genuinely alarmed.

“Oh, nothing much. A little hurt that I hadn’t told her that you and I were friends.”

What Wendy had actually said, after grilling Thom and getting him to admit that they’d been meeting up for heart-to-heart talks for a few weeks now, was that she’d prefer it if he just fucked her and got it over with.

“You wouldn’t mind?” Thom had asked.

Wendy made the face he’d seen a few times in the last year, a face that seemed to say that he was about one and a half steps

behind her, and said, “I wouldn’t be happy about it, but all I’m saying is that it’s preferable to you getting a new best

friend that wants to know everything about your life.”

Thom, wanting to change the subject from his wife, asked Ariel about Alun, her boyfriend.

“What about him?”

“Does he know about us?”

“No. But it doesn’t really matter.”

“Why doesn’t it matter?”

“Because I’m not in love with Alun.”

Less than a week later, Ariel, dressed only in a pair of boxer shorts, her head against his chest on the sofa, said, “We just

made a mistake, didn’t we?”

“If it was, it was a very nice mistake.”

“But you feel guilty, I can tell.”

“Are you sure you’re not projecting?”

“I’m definitely projecting,” Ariel said. “I feel very guilty. I only met Wendy once but I liked her.”

“You’re not responsible for her. I am.”

“I know, but it doesn’t make me feel any better about it. And it’s not just her, it’s me. I didn’t cheat on Alun, but I think

I just cheated on God a little bit. Does that make sense?”

“Not really.”

“Remember when I told you I started to speak to God because I was lonely?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I think you made me realize that I’m still lonely, even with God in my life.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s not your fault. And it’s not your fault that this is over.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’re over, right? Now that we’ve done this.”

Thom felt the lie rising in him, but stopped himself from saying it. “I think so,” he said. “I’ll miss you, though.”

“I’ll miss you too.”

When he got back late that afternoon, he just assumed that Wendy would be able to see what he’d done on his face, that she

would take one look at him and know everything. But she was in a good mood, watering plants, playing her Lauryn Hill CD. After

dinner that night she told him that she was three days late in getting her period. “You’re pregnant?” he said.

“I might be.”

“I’m going out to the CVS to buy a pregnancy test,” Thom said, standing, knocking his knee on the underside of their dining-room

table.

“No, not yet. We can do it tomorrow. Tonight it will be a mystery.”

In bed, later, Thom almost told Wendy about what had happened that day with Ariel, and how it was over, but he could already

hear her response. “You know, darling, just because we’re married, you don’t have to tell me everything .” She’d said it enough times. So he kept it to himself, another secret, hopefully the last one he’d ever have to keep.