Then he handed over the lo mein, plus a packet of hot mustard sauce to go with it. As I poured the sauce over the noodles, he started in on a container marked PEKING BEEF AND BROCCOLI, taking an impressively large bite.
“So why are you depressed?” he asked, his mouth full.
I paused before answering. “I met Gia.”
His eyes got wide. “Gia Henry?”
“Is there more than one?” I asked.
Then his eyes got wider as I could see him making the connections: kids to school, school to Gia, Gia to heart-sequined coat.
“Man,” he said. “That’s kind of my fault, isn’t it?”
I shrugged. “Griffin was the one who dated someone else for thirteen years and didn’t find it necessary to give me a heads-up about the fact that it just ended. Or that she still lives around the corner.”
“Don’t be mad at him about that. Everyone still lives around the corner. That’s the thing about Williamsburg. No one leaves. Or they don’t get too far. We’re all one dysfunctional family.”
“That’s so not comforting.”
He smiled. “Well, take comfort in the fact that she’s more like three corners away, actually.”
I looked up at him.
“You have to walk over to North Farms Road. Then Mountain Street . . .” He was motioning with his fingers, marking the direction you needed to go. To get to her. “Then over the bridge to High!”
The noodles were still in my mouth—greasy-hot, slippery—and it was all I could do to keep chewing.
“She used to live here? In this house?” I said.
“Maybe?” he said.
How could that surprise me? Thirteen years, where else would they be, but under the same roof? My roof. Hers first.
Jesse pushed a beer in my direction. I reached for it, opening the top.
“This is turning into a great day,” I said.
“Ah, what are you so freaked about, anyway?” he shook his head. “You guys are completely different.”
“That’s what I’m so freaked-out about,” I said. “I know I just met her, but, on the surface at least, she seems more Griffin’s match than me.”
He waved his hand away. “What does the surface tell you?” he said. “Besides, that was a loyalty thing. Not a love thing.”
I picked up the beer, and took a long swig. Then I took another. “Meaning what, exactly?” I said.
“Meaning, there are different reasons that people stay with someone. Over time, there are different reasons.” He picked the noodles back up. “You can tell when you’re in the presence of true love and when you’re in the presence of something closer to friendship.”
“And with them it was closer to friendship?” I said.
“Well, not at first. At first they were crazy about each other. . . .”
He started laughing, recalling an apparently hilarious memory involving how crazy my husband was for his ex-girlfriend. I must have given him some look because he stopped laughing, his eyes getting wide, nervous, as he tried to change the direction we were going.
“The point is that yes, sure, they loved each other when they were young, but something shifted,” he said. “They had become each other’s family, but they didn’t have that initial draw anymore. That draw that, you know, makes you feel certain about someone.”
“Who gets to have that all the time? Who in the history of the world has ever gotten to have that forever?”
He held the noodles to his mouth, thinking about it. “Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman . . . and probably someone else.”