“I don’t want to talk to you about this anymore,” I said. “I would never talk about your life that way.”
“Well, I’m not you. I’m a royal bitch, at least some of the time. But that’s not news. Also not news: I love you more than anything. And don’t pretend for a second you doubt that all of a sudden. This is about you, and what’s good for you. This isn’t about my brother.”
I looked down at her. “He’s your brother again?”
She had no trouble holding my gaze. “My point’s the same either way, Annie. I want for you what you want for yourself.”
I motioned around myself at the interminable mountain. “This is what I want for myself,” I said. “Did it occur to you that just maybe I found exactly what I’ve always wanted?”
“Since when is this what you wanted?” she said. “I’m sorry, but I won’t sit around and let you get away with getting less than what you really want: till death do you part. Just because during a moment of Nick ’s slight confusion, you decided it was the right decision to move to the middle of nowhere with Chef Boyardee.”
I didn’t know where to start, with all of that, but I shored myself up to start somewhere. “First of all, this is not the middle of nowhere,” I said. “There is a state university nearby, if you didn’t notice.”
“There is also a farm museum nearby, if you didn’t notice.”
I turned and started walking away from Jordan, started walking through the thick snow toward the entrance to the trail that would lead me back down the mountain and away from her.
I could feel Jordan behind me, struggling to keep up, and then stopping in her tracks. Coming to a full stop.
“It’s over with Pearl, by the way,” she called out, after me. “In case you’re interested. It was over before it even started.”
I didn’t turn around. I didn’t keep going, holding in place exactly where I was, but I didn’t turn around either.
Then I could hear Jordan’s footsteps start again, as she moved closer, until she was standing right behind me.
“He’s in London, finishing up his project. And trying to line up whatever work he can get all over Europe, and trying not to be as miserable as he is. It’s pathetic, really. But he says he can’t go home without you. He won’t.”
I still just stood there, Jordan lowering her voice.
“Look,” she said. “He knows how royally he screwed up. But he told me that he’s not going to just show up and tell you so, not if I tell him you’re happy. But if I tell him you’re not . . .”
I turned around fast to look at her, fury filling my eyes. “Don’t do that, Jordan,” I said. “I’m not kidding. That’s the last thing I need right now.”
“Then tell me it doesn’t matter to you,” she said. “That six months ago he was the love of your life, but now it doesn’t matter to you.”
“It was more than six months ago.”
“I’m sorry, my mistake. Seven months ago.”
I turned away from her and started walking again. “It doesn’t matter to me,” I said.
“You want to say that while looking at me?” she said. “I’m thinking it’d be more effective.”
I kept going, right down the cold mountain.
“I don’t like you very much right now,” I said.
“Well, it’s a goo
d thing,” she called after me, “I can live with that.”
21
Jordan didn’t stay over. She drove back to New York City and was planning to take the first flight out to Los Angeles the next morning. She said she was going to stay by the airport, but I wondered if airport was friend code for spending a day or two in New York City or Boston or anywhere but with me in rural Williamsburg, before heading home to California. Whether or not that was true, she might as well have stayed with me. Right in the house. In my bedroom. Her words kept echoing in my head as loudly if she were right beside me. As if she were still saying them in real time. You shouldn’t stay here.
This was at least part of the reason why, after she’d gone, I went over to the restaurant to help Griffin. I thought going there was the wise thing to do—to be with him, try to feel reconnected, and get focused on helping him with the endless preparations for opening night. But with Jordan’s words in my head, I’m not sure why I didn’t understand that the wise thing, right then, would have been to stay away.
We started setting up the outside lights—the beautiful, lotus-shaped lights, white and sparkly—stringing them up on the roof and the front brick, vinelike.