And big girls don’t vomit on the subway either. They unlock their front door, run to the toilet, and hold back their own hair. So that’s what I did.
THREE
On Monday morning, I dressed in my professional yet attractive best and took the subway up to the midtown coffee place Miles had suggested, a soulless chain with rickety chairs and bored baristas. Had he picked it because it was convenient or because it was the least romantic spot in the neighborhood? I grabbed myself a coffee, black, and sat at a table to wait. The coffee I’d already downed before leaving home was making my limbs jitter and my heart race, but I sipped at my new drink anyway, as if the solution to Too Much Coffee was MORE. I crossed my legs and then uncrossed them, trying to remember how to sit in a chair.
Miles walked in the door, his button-down shirt a little rumpled. He spotted me and ambled over. “Beckley, hi,” he said as he approached.
“Hi!” I stood up, and we did the awkward dance—should we hug? Handshake? We settled for waving at each other from across the table.
“Let me get a drink,” he said. “Want anything?”
“Double whiskey, neat,” I said. He smiled weakly. “Kidding! Bad joke. I’m all set.”
I studied him as he waited to order. Miles had grown up a high-achieving prep school boy, taught to worship at the altar of Thoughts and Words, assured at every step that his mind was worthwhile. Once he’d landed in New York, his guilt at his privileged beginnings transformed into a healthy antiestablishment streak. At Quill, he’d come to work in faded T-shirts, his hair mussed, determined to hold the people in power accountable for their excess, pushing all of us under his purview to dig deeper, to be better. He was our hard-ass high school English teacher, our cool boss, and our extremely talented friend.
Now, his brief time at the New York Standard had already turned him distinguished. He’d started trimming his beard more neatly, strands of it beginning to gray. He looked grown-up, every inch the married thirty-nine-year-old intellectual he was. Goddamn, it was sexy.
He settled into his seat. “So, how are you doing?” he asked. I could not wait for the day when people stopped asking me that with such concern in their eyes.
“Fine,” I said. “I mean, it sucks about Quill.”
“I always knew Peter was liable to pull a dick move with the company, but I didn’t think he’d handle it quite so horribly.” He shook his head. “Anyway, how can I help you?”
I dug my nails into my thigh and took a deep breath. “Obviously I know that the Standard has very high . . . well, standards. But I have a bunch of long-form ideas that I think could be a great fit.”
He nodded, his expression serious. “Sure, tell me what you’re thinking.”
I pulled out my notebook. “Okay. The New York water supply. Turns out the aqueducts that carry it here are crumbling. I could get into the dysfunction of replacing any kind of big system in New York City—”
“We’ve already got a regular staff writer on a similar assignment. Water is in right now, strangely. What else?”
“Right,” I said, swallowing. “Well . . .” I moved to the next pitch on my list. “The plant market for millennials. Like, the new Crazy Cat Lady is a Crazy Plant Lady, but why are people so obsessed all of a sudden? Is it because—”
“As it becomes harder to dig oneself out from under student loans, traditional markers of stability like children are getting pushed back, and plants are an easy substitute?” he asked.
“Well . . . yes.”
“Already been done.”
I pitched him my other ideas, each one progressively less fleshed out, and he had a kind but firm rebuttal for all of them. Finally, he folded his hands in his lap.
“Look, I think you’re a great writer, and I want to help you. But we’re getting a flood of pitches right now, and I have to be incredibly selective since I’m so new. Maybe you need to take some time to think about the thing that only you could write.”
“Oh,” I said. “Got it.”
“Now, I have to get back to the office.”
I was an idiot. He’d come into this meeting hoping to hear ideas that he could dismiss, so that he could tell himself he’d given me a fair shot. But he wasn’t going to put himself into regular communication with me again for a story on the stupid water supply, not after what had happened between us.
• • •
When I came back to work after my mom died, everyone treated me like I might break at the slightest poke. Sympathy is nice and necessary when it’s fresh. But if you leave it out too long, it curdles like old milk. For the first few days, I was happy enough to take the offers of free coffee, the With deepest condolences cards that people left on my desk. But by the end of the week, when a coworker looked at me like I was a baby seal trapped in an oil spill, and asked me yet again, “No, really, how are you doing?” I snapped.
I stood up at my desk and yelled, “Office announcement!” Heads turned. Miles spun around in his chair and cocked an eyebrow. “I’m planning to get extremely drunk at happy hour today, and if you want to do something to make me feel better, you can come ruin your livers with me. Otherwise, please
