The Girl He Used to Know (Page 35)

“That looks revolting.”

“Don’t knock it ’til you try it. There’s more beer in the fridge.” He offered me the plate of cookies and I took one.

“I only like wine coolers,” I said around a mouthful of frosting. “Preferably cherry.”

“I saw a bottle of peach wine in the fridge. That sounds … horrible. But maybe you’d like it?” Will got up and went into the kitchen. When he returned, he held a wineglass full of light-amber liquid.

I sniffed it, and it smelled okay. Definitely peach. The first sip went down a little rough, but the more I drank the more the flavor grew on me.

“Give me some of that blanket,” Will said. I shoved it over and he shook it out a little so that it covered both of us.

“What did you get Mom and Dad for Christmas?” he asked.

“I got Dad a book and Mom some dish towels.”

“Isn’t that what you got both of them last year?”

How did Will remember something like that? I’d had to rack my brain to remember what I’d bought them last year when I was trying to come up with something to get them this year.

“Yes, but it’s a safe choice. They both seemed to like their gifts last year.” Truthfully, I was a little worried about it and would have to come up with something different next year. The same gifts three years in a row would probably be pushing it.

“I should tell Janice about this wine.”

Will drained the last of his beer and I handed him my empty glass. “Looks like someone needs a refill,” he said.

* * *

We did all of the Christmassy things in the days leading up to the actual holiday. Will was right, because my mom did seem happy. She was always smiling or humming and she kept coming into the living room whenever Will and I were in there. She’d stand at the door and just look at us and then Will would laugh and say, “Enough, Mom.” The four of us watched It’s a Wonderful Life, and I had a hard time watching George Bailey on that bridge. But I was surrounded by my family and for the first time ever, I felt like we were all in this life together.

* * *

When break was over Will volunteered to drive me back to school. “The roads still aren’t great. I’ll take Annika.” He was in a good mood, because he had an interview with a big firm in New York the next week and would be flying home the next day to prepare. He’d told me to keep my fingers crossed for him and I said I would even though that wouldn’t have anything to do with him actually getting the job.

My mother squished me with her hug. “This has been a truly wonderful Christmas. I got everything I ever wished for this year, Annika. Everything.”

I don’t know why I worried so much, because those dish towels were obviously the perfect gift after all.

* * *

“Why have you been so nice to me?” I asked Will on the way back to campus. It was calming not to have such an antagonistic relationship with my brother, but I didn’t understand how it had happened and I wanted him to explain it to me.

“Maybe I understand you better now. I’m not sure I really did before.”

“I don’t really understand anyone.”

“I want you to know that I’m here for you if you ever need me, Annika. Someday, when Mom and Dad are gone, it’ll just be the two of us.”

“Okay, Will. Thanks.”

I had no memory of ever hugging my brother, but before he left he reached out his arms and I stepped into them, and his hug was every bit as crushing as my mother’s.

* * *

Two years later, when I completed my education at the University of Illinois, I had earned my bachelor’s and master’s degrees. I started looking for an apartment in the city and began interviewing for the librarian career I’d coveted for so long.

And when I walked across campus for the last time, I held my head high.

33

Jonathan

CHICAGO

AUGUST 2001

I wake up wrapped around Annika the morning after our dinner with Nate and Sherry. We finally abandoned the couch and moved to the comfort of Annika’s bed for rounds two and three, and we collapsed in a heap of exhaustion a few hours later. She’ll be tired for days. When she finally stirs around noon we take a shower together and after making coffee and tea, we go straight back to bed.

Annika tells me she’s sorry for forgetting to take her birth control pills. Before they rushed her into surgery, she hadn’t been in any condition to read the expressions of the medical staff, and it’s doubtful she would have understood what they meant. But I saw something on the doctor’s face when he laid it all out and explained how the pregnancy had happened, and everyone else in the room would have recognized it easily: it was thinking you had your life all planned out and then standing by helplessly while the universe laughed in your face.

“There’s no need to apologize,” I say. “We’re not the first couple to have a lapse in birth control.”

“I have the implant now.” She holds up her arm and points to the spot where the doctor inserted the small rods under her skin. “Out of sight, out of mind.”

I take a drink of my coffee. “We were so young. I had this idea that we’d conquer the city together. That we’d wake up beside each other every day in another crappy apartment. But I wasn’t thinking about what would be best for you. All I could focus on was why you stopped loving me.” Here’s her chance to remove that pebble once and for all.

“I was just in a really bad place that summer after I lost the baby. Worse than what you saw. A dark place that scared me so much. I thought maybe I’d go to sleep and if I never woke up, I wouldn’t have to hurt anymore, and I wouldn’t hurt anyone else.”

I understand what she’s saying and it guts me. For a split second I can’t breathe as the weight of her words settles on me. I feel like I might throw up. “I’m so sorry for what you went through,” I say.

“I never stopped loving you, but I couldn’t go to New York. I had to prove to myself that I could finish something on my own without you and Janice.”

I set my coffee cup on her nightstand and reach for her. I don’t trust myself to talk, so I hold her tight and rub her back, thinking how selfish my thoughts were because all I wanted when I landed in New York was for her to be there with me.

“You never gave up on me,” Annika says.

“Yes, I did.”

When I met Liz at a mixer for new employees, she was everything I thought I wanted. The high school valedictorian from a small town in Nebraska shared more with me than her Midwestern roots. She had student loans to pay and ambition to burn, and she was also working on her master’s at night. We spent hours together studying, promising ourselves that when we’d earned those degrees, there was nothing that would hold us back. In the meantime, we clawed our way higher and higher in the company, working more hours than any of our peers. Liz was every bit as smart as I was, and it didn’t hurt that her intelligence was wrapped in a pretty package. She knew what she wanted, and she had the answer for everything. Eventually I would find her direct approach abrasive, her confidence bordering on arrogance. But that came later. In the early days of our relationship, she thought I was something special, and to me, it felt like a life preserver thrown from the sinking ship of my failed relationship with Annika. I grabbed for it with both hands.

Annika wasn’t ever going to join me in New York. I’d known it for a long time, but until I met Liz I still held out hope that she might. In early December, I called Annika and got her answering machine again. “It’s me. I wanted to let you know I met someone. I just thought I should tell you in case you thought you might still come. I’d love to hear from you, but I’ll understand if I don’t. Bye, Annika.”

I would never have left such an important message on a recording, but she rarely picked up the phone, and the last time I’d called, she hadn’t called me back. I told myself that being honest with her had to count for something.

It was the last time I ever dialed her number.

“That message devastated me. I wanted to call you back and tell you I still loved you,” Annika says. “But I just couldn’t. I knew what I had to do for myself, but I didn’t think about how my decision would make you feel. I didn’t understand that you could be hurt by my actions until Tina explained it to me.”

“It’s okay. I got through it.” It seems almost silly now, the extent of my heartbreak. The hours I spent listening to songs that reminded me of Annika. Her pillow that traveled to New York with me and that I laid my head on every night, missing her. The blond girls on the subway that all looked like her.

“I did call you back, but it was years later and whoever answered said you were no longer at that number. I probably could have tracked you down by calling information, but even Tina couldn’t help me figure out what I wanted to say, so I didn’t. I focused on what I’d accomplished by then, living independently and my job at the library, but I missed you terribly. When I ran into you that day at the grocery store, I was so happy to see you again.”

“Seeing you was like seeing a ghost. I wasn’t sure it was you at first.”

“I knew right away it was you,” she says. “And I’ve been grateful ever since.”