Meg Cabot - Queen Of Babble: In The Big City

“You know I’m not going to run after you,” he says.

I don’t say anything.

“And I’m leaving for France tomorrow,” he goes on.

I stare at the numbers above the door of the elevator as they light up, one by one. They’re a bit blurry, because of my unshed tears.

“Lizzie,” he says in his infuriatingly reasonable tone. “Where are you going to go, huh? You’re going to find a new place over Christmas vacation? This city shuts down the week between Christmas and New Year’s. Look, let’s just use this time apart to cool off a little, okay? Just… just be here when I get back. So we can talk. Okay?”

Thankfully, the elevator finally comes. I get on it. And, not caring that the uniformed elevator attendant is listening, say, “Good-bye, Luke.”

The elevator doors close.

The party’s over…

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“It’s my fault,” I say.

“It’s not your fault,” Shari says.

“No,” I say. “It is. It is. I should have asked him. Back in France, I should have just asked him how he feels about marriage. You know? I could have avoided all of this if I hadn’t played that stupid woodland creature game. For once, if I actually had opened my mouth, I might have spared myself a lot of pain and hardship.”

“Yes,” Shari says. “But you wouldn’t have gotten laid as much.”

“True,” I say with a tearful sigh. “So true.”

“Better?” Shari wants to know as she presses the cool washcloth against my forehead.

I nod. I am stretched out on her girlfriend Pat’s futon couch, in their nice big living room in their Park Slope apartment. On either side of me is a large Labrador retriever. Scooter, on the left, is a black Lab. Jethro, on the right, is a golden.

Even though we’ve only just met, I love them both very, very much.

“Who’s a good boy?” I ask Jethro. “Who?”

I see Pat look uneasily at Shari. Shari says, “Don’t worry. She’ll be all right. She’s just had a bit of a shock.”

“I’ll be fine,” I say. “I’m just going back home tomorrow to visit my family. But I’ll be back. I’m not staying in Ann Arbor. New York didn’t chew me up and spit me out. Not like it did Kathy Pennebaker.”

“Of course you’re coming back,” Shari says. “We’re coming back on the same flight on Sunday. Remember?”

“Right,” I say. “I’ll be back, and I’ll be fine. I’ll land on my feet. Because I always do.”

“Of course you do,” Shari says. “We’re going to go to bed now, all right, Lizzie? You stay out here with Scooter and Jethro. And if you need anything—anything at all—don’t be shy about coming to wake us up. I’ll leave the hall light on, just in case. Okay?”

“Okay,” I murmur as Jethro licks my hand in long, steady strokes. “Good night.”

“Good night,” Shari and Pat call. And turn out the light and leave the room.

I hear Pat whisper to Shari, “Wait… did he really give her a sewing machine ?”

“Yes,” I hear Shari whisper back. “She’d convinced herself he was getting her a ring.”

“Poor thing,” Pat murmurs.

Then I can’t hear them anymore, because they go into their bedroom and close the door.

I lie there, blinking in the semi-darkness. I’d come out of Luke’s mother’s building, hailed a cab, and instructed the driver to take me to Park Slope. I’d had to call Shari to get the exact address. She’d been able to tell by my tone that it was an emergency and had instructed me to come right over without even asking for details. That’s what best friends do for each other, after all.

Pat’s place is very pretty and pleasant, a basement apartment with a lot of wainscoting and sage-colored walls and spider plants hanging in baskets from the ceiling. There are pictures of ducks on the walls. The blanket Pat put over my shoulders when I came, weeping, through the door, had a mallard duck on it.

There is something very comforting about ducks used as an item of decor. I personally wouldn’t want a duck motif in my house, but I am heartened by the fact that someone does.

Maybe, I think, as I lie there between Jethro and Scooter, whose hot, stinky breath I find almost as comforting as the ducks,Shari and Pat will let me move in here with them. Just until I can find a place of my own. That would be nice, three girls against the world. The world of men. Men who aren’t sure they see marriage in their future… or at least, not marriage with a girl like me.

“It’s my fault” was what I’d kept telling Shari, when I first came through the door. “I mean, how can I expect him to know he wants to marry me when he only met me six months ago?”

“Well, even if marriage isn’t important to him,” Pat had said crisply, “he might have realized it’d be important to a girl who earns her living making wedding dresses.”

“I don’t actually earn my living that way,” I’d informed her.

“The guy is a rat fink,” Shari had replied. “Here, drink this.”

The whiskey helped. Hearing Shari call Luke a rat fink didn’t. Because deep down inside, I know he’s not a rat fink. He’s just a guy who, up until a few months ago, didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life. Or rather, he knew… he was just afraid to take the risk and try it. Until I came along and encouraged him.

Maybe that’s his problem with marriage. Maybe he’s just afraid to take the risk and admit that there might be a girl out there with whom he could picture spending the rest of his life. Obviously that girl isn’t me. But maybe that’s just because, despite everything I’ve been telling myself for the past six months, Luke and I aren’t right for each other after all. Maybe I haven’t even met my soul mate yet. Or maybe I have, and I missed him.

Or maybe, like Chaz is always saying, you make your own soul mate.

Maybe the truth is that getting married isn’t the be-all and end- all of the universe. Lots of perfectly happy people aren’t married. They don’t sit around crying about it. In fact, they’d probably laugh at the idea of ever getting married. There’s nothing wrong with being single…

… which is what I keep telling my mother and sisters when I get back to Ann Arbor the next day. Because of course they can all tell by my reddened, weepy eyes that something is wrong.

“Luke and I broke up,” I tell them. “He wasn’t ready for a commitment, and I was.”

And Rose and Sarah have a few snarky things to say about it. Rose: “I knew it wouldn’t last. I mean, you met him while you were on vacation. Vacation flings never last.” Sarah: “Guys never want a commitment. That’s why you should have just let yourself get pregnant. Once he knows there’s a bun in the oven, he commits fast enough. I mean, when his mom finds out she’s about to be a grandma, anyway.”

But I don’t want to get my husband the way Rose and Sarah got theirs. Because that’s as dishonest as my whole woodland creature strategy.

And look how that turned out.

Fortunately Shari’s Christmas Eve announcement to her parents about her new girlfriend takes all the attention off me, and is soon the talk of the neighborhood, thanks to Mrs. Dennis’s speed dial. Dr. Dennis, I later learn, responds to the news with a mere tightening of the lips and a trip to his liquor cabinet.

But Mrs. Dennis has soon appointed herself the community spokeswoman for PFLAG. “It stands for Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays,” Shari’s mother proudly tells mine over Christmas Day dinner. “It’s the national organization for promoting the health and well-being of gay, lesbian, and bisexual persons, as well as their families and friends.”

“Well,” Mom says. “How nice.”

“Would you like to join?” Mrs. Dennis asks. “I have a pamphlet right here.”

“Oh,” Mom says, putting down her forkful of Yorkshire pudding. “I’d love to.”

Shari winks at me from across the table.Did he call? she mouths. Because Shari is convinced that, despite what I think, it’s not over between me and Luke, and that he’s going to call me, and we’ll talk things out, and everything will be fine.

Shari lives in a fantasy world. Possibly due to all the ducks.

Christmas Day is always a zoo at the Nichols household, because Mom hosts all of her children and grandchildren, in addition to Grandma and the Dennises and the occasional graduate assistant of my dad’s who can’t afford plane fare home for the holidays, and so comes over with a dish from their native country to share (which is how our holiday meals often consist of beef Wellington with a side dish of malai koftas and a basket of fresh-baked poori).