Page 59 of Parallel

My hand grips the counter. Did he really just ask me that question? We’ve been living on one income—mine—on and off for the past six years. I’m not sure I realized, until this moment, how much I resent him for it. “Of course I fucking realize how tight things will be,” I reply, and I march into the bedroom and shut the door behind me before I can say anything worse.

I hear the roar of his truck, and instead of being worried that we’re fighting, I’m just really glad he’s gone.

I want Nick right now. Instead I turn on Netflix and find Inception. Even watching it feels like a small act of rebellion. I’m two minutes in when Nick texts, and it doesn’t even surprise me. I needed him, and here he is.

Nick: I’m listening to Everlong on repeat.

Me: I’m watching Inception. It’s just starting.

Nick: With Jeff?

I hesitate. The impulse to whine to Nick about the fight we just had is an unworthy one.

Me: No, he went out.

Seconds later the phone rings. “I’ll watch it with you,” Nick says. “Where are you at?”

I tell him, wondering if his girlfriend isn’t there or if he’s just been slightly more open with her than I’ve been with Jeff about all this. Somehow, I doubt he has.

We watch, mostly in silence, aside from my occasional pleas for spoilers. “Is his wife going to be okay?” I whisper.

His laughter is low. I can almost feel it against my ear, can almost feel his warmth against my side, smell his chlorine and shampoo. “I can’t tell you that.”

“Just tell me if—”

He cuts me off. “Watch the movie, baby.”

It’s a quiet thrill, that word. I wonder if he realizes he said it.

At the movie’s end, I am weeping. Not pretty crying, but hysterical sobbing. “I’m so glad you can’t see me,” I say with some combination of laugh and sob. “I look like an idiot right now.”

“No, you don’t,” he says quietly, certainty in his voice. “Did you like it?”

I swallow. I am full and heartbroken at the same time. “It was the most gorgeous movie I’ve ever seen. But do you think he got home? I guess we’re not supposed to know.” My voice breaks. I can’t believe I’m crying this hard over a movie. “I think he got home.”

“I think he did too,” Nick says. We sit in silence for a moment, and I let myself picture an entire life like this, one in which all the beautiful and painful things in the world are shared with someone else, someone who feels them and sees them like I do. My eyes squeeze tight. I wish I could have that. I wish he was mine.

29

QUINN

The next morning, Dee barks at me from her office and I walk to her slowly, teeth grinding. I’m never in the mood for her bullshit, but that is especially true today with so many other things stressing me out. I still have not exchanged a single word with Jeff since our fight last night.

Dee regards me with even more hatred than normal when I walk in her door, but I expected it. Today when I got ready I didn’t downplay anything. I put on my favorite pale gray sheath, red strappy heels, careful makeup. I knew I risked a day of her ire by coming in pink-cheeked and shiny. It was freeing that I no longer had to care. It’s freeing even now. I can’t believe I’ve spent so many years at this job I hate, cowering as if the fate of the world rested on remaining here.

I haven’t decided when I will quit—it would make sense to wait until just before school starts, especially since Jeff could lose his job any second now—but I expect it’ll be the moment she pushes me too far. Which could be anytime, really. Maybe today.

She has a litany of complaints, of course. She hates the layout, hates the cover, she even hates the design elements she herself insisted on. Funnily enough, it bothers me less than it normally would, because at last there’s a finish line, a light at the end of the tunnel. Her time to use me as her whipping boy is running out quickly.

I’m at my desk making yet another set of unnecessary changes when Trevor pulls up a chair beside me.

“You look gorgeous today,” he says. “And way too happy.”

I grin at him. “The times they are a-changin’.”

“And now you’re quoting Bob Dylan,” he says. “So, you’re either morphing into a seventy-year-old or you finally got laid.”

My phone chimes. Jeff’s name flashes across the screen and my smile fades. He was in bed beside me when I woke this morning. I took in his face, dredging up every good memory I had of us in order to feel the way I’m supposed to feel—but it didn’t work. “No one’s getting laid, I assure you. But I’m leaving early today, which is almost as good.”