“You probably forgot that you went after her like she was a house on fire that day you almost got caught in a public relations disaster!” She looked dreamily toward the chair beside Will. “That was the day I took home my babies.”
Will swallowed. “Right. No, I didn’t forget.”
“I knew you had a thing for her.”
At this, Gerald stood and collected plates, and Will had a feeling like he’d had the day Marian and Mrs. Salas had arrived with all their Tupperware. Sabotage, he thought, but this time, he supposed he didn’t really mind.
“I’ve got more than a thing for her,” he said, because the correction seemed important. “That’s the problem.”
Sally looked at him with eyes full of sympathy. “So it’s unrequited, then. No wonder you look this bad.”
He would’ve been insulted, but he’d seen himself. He did look bad. He needed a shave and a good night of sleep, and also probably a few more meals like the one he’d just eaten.
“I’m not sure it’s unrequited,” he said, which was an embarrassing thing to admit. But also he was sitting at a dining table next to two cats and getting a talking-to from his boss’s ex-wife, so.
“Well, what’s the problem, then?” She lowered her voice and smiled. “Does she criticize you for putting your elbows on the table?”
“Nothing like that.” He shifted in his seat. “I’m not—I don’t know that it’s a good idea, for me to get serious with someone.”
“You’re one of those, then. Commitment-phobic!” She threw up her hands. “I’ve met a bunch like you. When you turn forty and start losing your hair you’ll probably want to have a baby.”
Will resisted the urge to touch his hair.
“No, that’s not it.” Or at least it wasn’t that particular version of it, not the way Sally meant.
“It’s her or it’s no one,” he added, and as soon as it was out of his mouth he felt the truth of it, right in the aching center of his heart.
Sally had a look on her face like Mrs. Salas when he talked medicine. “So why isn’t it a good idea?”
She said it so nicely, so genuinely, that Will thought he probably could’ve told her the whole thing, and she would’ve listened.
I’ve got this fear, he could’ve said, that I’m exactly like my parents. He could’ve said, I’ve got this fear that I don’t know how to love anyone any other way. He could’ve told her about what had happened to him, when he’d seen that picture: a big, blurry rush of unpleasant memories. He could have told her that seeing his parents so young and in love had only reminded him of where they’d ended up: utterly lost at the prospect of being without each other.
I’ve got this fear that I’d lose sight of everything else.
But Will’s boss was still in the other room and Sally didn’t have all night, and anyway, this wasn’t as simple as fixing up Donny’s apartment or finding a home for the two cats sitting next to him. This wasn’t the kind of thing Sally could have a solution for.
So instead he said, “She and I, we’re pretty different.”
Sally shrugged. “Gerald and I are different.”
“You’re divorced.”
She pursed her lips and cocked her head at him, giving him an exasperated look. “Obviously,” she said, “we are working on it.”
He nodded down at his placemat, appropriately chastened.
“Will,” Sally said, and he could tell a big, frustrated, Why are you like this? sigh was lingering beyond it. “Let me ask you a question.”
One of the cats started to climb onto his lap. Quincy, which meant it was fifty-fifty he was about to get peed on, screamed at, or both.
“Why not,” he said blandly, pretty much to both Sally and Quincy.
“Do you want to work on it?”
Quincy’s tail swiped across Will’s face like an admonishment, and frankly, it was extremely clarifying. Of course you try to fix a brain bleed, asshole, he thought to himself, straightening in his chair. It was like having an anchor dropped in his body, slowing him down enough to see his surroundings, to actually think for what felt like the first time in days, maybe since he’d seen that picture. He thought about Gerald in the other room, washing dishes and probably deep breathing through his annoyance over Sally’s elbows on the table. He thought of Gerald in the hospital, asking him about purchasing a kitten or a gift card, trying to sort out ideas for nonroutine dates.