Finding Bliss (13 page)

“Pffft, you’d be fine with Amanda’s shoulder to cry on, she and her trust fund can handle any crisis.”

“I mean it, Cam. If you think I’m taking advantage of our friendship for one second, you let me know, and I will fix it.”

Cam rolled his head and stretched his neck. “I do not feel taken advantage of. I’m only looking out for you. I can tell that you want to fix him, and I just don’t want your efforts to be for naught. I don’t know him well enough—or at all—to say whether he deserves you or not, so all I can hope is that he appreciates how much you care for him.”

“I really think he does,” I said, trying to convince myself as well.

B
y the time my graduation from law school rolled around, Tyler and I were preparing to move in together to a condo he’d bought in the city. After our rather unusual hospital-room courtship, our relationship had blossomed into the real deal. It was a happy, romantic time for us, and it wasn’t long before we fell into a comfortable routine. Though my head swam night and day with constitutional law, contract law, family law, and intellectual property law, Tyler was unfailingly sweet and supportive and kept me grounded. Some nights he’d watch sports at my apartment while I’d study with my feet resting on his lap. Other times he’d surprise me at the law library with a chocolate shake and cheese fries.

Tyler’s relationship with his parents had gradually become less strained as ours grew more serious. Upon his recovery, he’d taken a job at McCutcheon Meats to appease his father, and his mother—being an expert at ignoring anything that displeased her—never brought up the past. My mother remained the same, but thankfully drama-free, and my life was on track to become more than I’d ever dared to hope for.

Everyone on our floor threw a huge party after graduation, even though we all knew the real work was ahead with the bar exam looming over us. But the night of our party, we were all in great spirits and got drunk off our asses. Cam and I spent most of the evening retelling old stories that made us laugh beer out of our noses and
whispering private jokes to each other one last time. Saying good-bye to school was easy. Saying good-bye to Cam was another story.

I purposely messed up his apartment by dancing around and throwing empty plastic cups all over the floor just to annoy him, and he let me. We sat on the floor in the hallway with a few other friends and played poker. Cam sat across from me and sent me secret signals indicating what cards the people next to him had. We ended up winning $125 from Amanda’s trust fund.

The next morning I woke up with a wicked hangover. I ran out to grab a Quarter Pounder with cheese to refuel before packing up the last of my things. Tyler came by around noon to help me move, and was amused to find the note he’d written me years before in Lake Geneva lying on top of a stack of papers.

“Don’t mess with my note,” I said as I saw him holding it. “It’s proof that you want me.”

He placed the note back on the dresser and came over to the sink where I was standing; then he wrapped his fingers around the base of my neck and pulled my lips to his. He lifted me off my feet and then proved how much he wanted me one last time on the floor of the kitchenette. We were lying naked amid a pile of crumbled newspaper when there was a knock at the door.

“Shit,” I said and scrambled to get my clothes back on. “One sec!” I yelled to the door.

Tyler grabbed my ass as I was getting dressed and made very little effort to pull his pants up.

The woodpecker-tapping began when I took too long, and Cam was leaning against the doorframe when I finally opened it.

“Am I interrupting something?” he asked before looking past me and realizing that he was.

Tyler walked past us with two large boxes in his arms. “T’sup, Cam.”

“I could use a hand too,” Cam yelled after him.

I threw my hair back up into a ponytail. “You want to come in? There’s actually room to sit now that Tyler’s here to help.”

“No, no, I just wanted to say good-bye,” he said.

“I thought you were leaving Friday? You’re not even packed.”

Cameron fished a small box out of his jeans pocket and offered it to me. “Tic Tac?”

“I’m good.”

He popped two mints in his mouth and began sucking and talking simultaneously. “I’m going to New York to visit a friend, then coming back and packing up this weekend. Get your tears out and your hugs in quickly, because I’m leaving”—he paused to check the time on his phone—“now.”

I launched myself at him and hugged tightly.

“I’m going to miss you something good, Cameron Sparks,” I said.

“I’m going to miss you too.”

“Please call and text me all the time, okay? Be like really, super annoying about it.”

“I promise,” he said.

I let go and put some space between us. “Maybe we can get together when you’re back from New York? I can help you pack up your stuff.”

“Sure, I’ll give you a call.”

We stood there, suddenly awkwardly distant, as though the three years we’d lived and breathed each other every day had never happened.

I leaned in and gave him one last squeeze, and then pulled away. I didn’t want to let go of him and was surprised by how sad I was. “You’re cute,” I said.

“I know.”

S
tudying for the bar exam was like training for the Olympics, only there was just one medal: gold. You either passed or you didn’t. No second place, no consolation prize, and in my case, no job unless I passed. I’d been working for two summers as a law clerk at Goldin & Bass, a midsize firm in the city that specialized in divorce and family law. That summer I’d been given six weeks off from my job to prepare for the exam. I enrolled in a bar review course, and attended classes there five days a week, four hours a day. After class, I went straight to the library, and spent another seven to eight hours on class assignments and studying. Training for the exam began to take a toll on my mental and physical health. There were times when I’d be reading a case study and start hallucinating. Words would rise off the page and turn into insects right before my eyes. I lacked sleep, vitamins, food, liquids, exercise, sex, and just about everything else. Tyler ceased to exist, and I hadn’t seen or phoned my mother in weeks. The only thing I could afford to care about was passing that test, and for some cruel reason, three years of law school had done little to prepare me for it.

During one of my last weeks of classes, I came home from the library at eleven o’clock and woke Tyler by accident when I knocked the toothbrush holder onto the bathroom floor.

“What the hell was that?” he yelled at me.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, peeking my head into the bedroom. “I dropped the toothbrush cup on the floor.”

He looked at the clock. “Jesus Christ, some of us have to work.”

And then I lost it.

“Do you have
any
idea what I’ve been going through? No wait, let me rephrase that—you have no idea what I’ve been going through. I’m up to my ears in books and reading and class assignments and stress and worry and guilt, so much so that I’m starting to see things that don’t exist. I can’t even form a thought without arguing the other side of it in my head! How dare you make me feel as if I need to tiptoe around here because ‘some of us have to work’!”

My heart was racing. I could feel my body trying to stop shaking and return to normal. All I wanted was to crawl into bed and get the minimal amount of sleep I needed to stomach the next day’s routine.

“Shut the fuck up,” Tyler mumbled and pulled the comforter over his head.

His reaction nearly knocked me off my feet. He’d never spoken to me that way before, and he was well aware of the pressure I was under. Had he reached his limit of being supportive? Was it too much to ask of him to ride out this wave with me? I would never treat him like that if the tables were turned. I cried myself to sleep on the couch and made sure I was out of the house before he woke up.

The next day I attended my prep classes, but went over to Grace’s apartment afterward instead of the library. I had four missed calls from Tyler, but hadn’t returned any of them. He’d thrown me off course, and I resented him for doing anything that might risk my grade on that exam.

“Come on in,” Grace said when I arrived.

“I haven’t had a drink in three weeks, but I’m praying you have a bottle of wine.”

“I teach preschoolers for a living…you know I have wine. So what happened?”

I threw my backpack on the floor, placed my laptop on her coffee table, and collapsed on the couch. “I blew up at Tyler last night. He gave me attitude when I accidentally woke him up, and I exploded.”

Grace uncorked a bottle of Pinot Grigio, poured us each a glass, and joined me. She had always taken care of me. Whether I was having a breakdown about my mother, or complaining that I would never succeed in my career, or arguing with Tyler. I could always count on Grace. Though she liked Tyler a lot at this point, she’d always remained a little skeptical of him. I think she thought I was more invested in him than he was in me, but she’d welcomed him into the fold with open arms because she knew he made me happy. “I’m sure he knows you’re under a ton of stress with the bar, and he’s not going to be mad at you. Have you talked to him today?”

“He’s called, but I haven’t returned his calls.”

“Just call him back. You’re no good at playing games.”

“That’s just it, I’m not even trying to be stubborn and aloof. I don’t even have time to
think
about making him suffer, much less act on it. I’m at the breaking point, and I can assure you, if I don’t pass this test the first time, I’m going to move to Mexico and braid hair on the beach.”

She snorted mid-sip. “I hear Playa del Carmen is nice,” Grace said.

“Don’t laugh, you know you’ll be first in line.”

“Well, you’re not increasing your chances of passing the test by getting distracted over this. Finish your wine, and go home to your boyfriend so that you can get back on track.”

“How are things with you and Jack?”

“Same old, same old.”

Grace and Jack had been dating since well before I’d started law school. On the one hand, he was a respected young dentist who was due to take over his father’s successful practice one day. On the other, he was the perennial child. He’d had the same group of friends since kindergarten, and as much as he loved Grace, he loved sports more. Watching sports, playing sports, talking about sports, thinking about watching and playing sports. He was about as interested in getting married as she was in playing fantasy baseball. But she wanted a family one day, as did I. Sometimes, we’d split a bottle of wine and imagine our picture-perfect lives together: as neighbors in Glenview, with our kids running back and forth, splashing through the sprinklers while we barbecued and sipped sangria in the backyard. Only then I’d remind her that I’d be at work most nights until ten o’clock, frantically begging her via texts to relieve my sitter and watch my kids for a few hours until Tyler or I could get home.

“He’ll come around, Grace, and soon enough you’ll be picking his dirty underwear up off the floor, wishing you were still single and living in the city listening to me bitch all night over a bottle of wine,” I said.

I got home around seven o’clock. Tyler opened the door as I was fishing for my keys.

“Come here,” he said and held out his arms.

My lips tightened, and I fought back tears as thunder sounded in the distance.

He pulled me close to his chest. My body convulsed with exhaustion, pressure, worry, fear, and self-doubt. Then I began to cry.

Tyler rubbed my back, wiped my tears, then pulled away and led me to the kitchen, where he had prepared dinner. “Don’t ignore my calls. At least let me know you’re okay,” he said to me.

“Fair enough.”

He pulled a tray of lasagna out of the oven, one that his mother had brought when she’d visited our apartment the first—and only—time. In addition to a homemade lasagna, she’d brought a six-pack of paper towels, some nuts (for guests, she instructed), a glass bowl to put said nuts in, four martini glasses that were hand-painted in pink and green leopard print, and a tiny cardboard box with scented soaps perched on a small pile of hay.

“I made the lasagna and picked up a salad,” he said.

“Fancy.”

“Thought you’d be impressed,” Tyler said, spooning two servings onto plates.

“It looks amazing, Ty, thank you,” I said and embraced him from behind. He placed the spoon down and turned around, clutching me like we’d been apart for days and kissed the top of my head.

“I’m starving,” I announced.

“Have a seat. I’ll bring everything over,” he said as he uncorked a bottle of wine.

We didn’t own a table and chairs yet, so I took a seat on one of the two stools at the island that separated the kitchen from the family room. Tyler grabbed the two glasses of wine and joined me. He looked tired and beat up. I knew he still missed having a passion for something. Whether football had been his true passion or not, he’d been committed to the game and accustomed to its accolades. It was hard for Tyler to live without praise and adoration once he’d gotten used to having them around. The drudgery of answering e-mails and dealing with disgruntled customers was no comparison to the glory days of performing your work in front of bleachers packed with cheering fans.

“A toast to you,” he said, raising his glass. “The most beautiful and intriguing woman I’ve ever known. All that I know about
happiness, you have taught me, and everything good in my life can be traced back to you. I know I act like a complete thug most of the time, but I really don’t know where I’d be right now without your support. I love you, Chloe.”

He rendered me speechless for a moment. Tyler was a man of few emotions, who mostly repressed his feelings like dirty secrets. The look on my face went from pleased to elated in an instant.

“I love you too,” I said and leaned in to kiss him. Tyler was and always would be a bit of an anomaly to me. One night he’s snapping at me, and the next he’s professing his love over a semi-home-cooked meal with words I’ve never heard from him before. As much as he praised me for making him happy, deep down I still questioned whether he was capable of loving me as much as I loved him. But that night, I simply basked in his kind words. It was exactly what I needed.