“You actually think Gwen believes that?” As usual, Clancy has dragged me into her conversation, ignoring my own line of discussion about our break-up.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s what I tell her, and she trusts me. Even though she’s all, like, ‘I’m turning twenty-six next year and I wanted to be a partner by the time I was twenty-five and now that will never happen because there’s no way to turn back the clock.’ She thinks her career is ruined because of you.”
“Because of me,” I say flatly. A statement, not a question. Who makes partner at any firm when they’re twenty-five? Millennials. I hate how these freaking millennials set crazy life goals and then convince themselves that they matter. Of course, that’s easy for me to say now. I do realize that I probably was one of those people.
“But I just sit her down and I tell her we all have challenges,” Clancy continues without missing a beat. “Lord knows I have my own challenges when it comes to you. But I always tell Gwen that getting through these challenges is what turns us into better human beings.”
I feel a segue coming.
“Like, I tell her that waiting for you to come to your senses is making me a stronger person on my own. Just like not making partner before she’s twenty-five will probably make Gwen a stronger person, too. Or at least a better manager… I mean, better in terms of being able to understand what people who don’t make partner by twenty-five are struggling with, I guess.”
“There’s a population that needs more empathy.” Clancy ignores my comment.
“Just like I’ll be better at understanding what other women feel – like, when they don’t get married before they’re twenty-seven, too.”
“You’re twenty-five, Clancy.”
“I’m twenty-six in eight months. And I want us to be engaged for at least a year.”
“And we broke up.”
“Yeah, for however long that’s going to be,” Clancy says, like she’s talking about a delayed flight. “But you know what? I’m accepting it. I don’t have to get married by the time I’m twenty-seven, just like Gwen doesn’t have to make partner at twenty-five. That’s what I keep telling her.”
“I think we’d both benefit by really embracing our break-up, Clancy. Like, how about we pretend that we will be broken up forever and live our lives that way for a while? I think it would do us both some good.”
“Don’t be an idiot. I’m not the one who had a nervous breakdown.”
“I did not have a nervous breakdown, Clancy. Cite for me the time and place that I had a nervous breakdown.”
“September seventeenth, two-thousand eighteen, at four twenty-six p.m.”
The day I halted plans for my apartment. The day that Gwen attacked me.
“No, Clancy. That’s when Gwen had a nervous breakdown and put three fingernails through my cheek.” I lift and turn my head so that the sunlight coming in through my windows can better light the scars. Truth be told, I don’t really mind that Gwen did permanent damage to my face. It looks kind of bad-assed. “She had to be restrained overnight. Hell, she’s lucky I didn’t press charges.”
“Don’t you try to pin this on Gwen! She was trying to save you!”
“Save me,” I repeat, flatly.
“Or at least help you. I mean, you’d lost your mind.”
“Lost my mind.” Maybe I can just repeat the last thing Clancy says for a while and this discussion will peter out. She’ll get bored and go home.
“We all agreed on the design of this place!”
“The design of this place.”
“We were a family!”
“A family.”
“Have you been drinking?”
“Not today, no.”
“Then quit repeating everything I say and just listen to me for a minute.”
“Okay.”
“What was I saying?” Clancy asks, in all seriousness.
“We were a family,” I respond, flatly.
“That’s right. We were a family. We were supposed to help each other out. If you didn’t want Gwen designing your living space, you could have just told her at the start. You didn’t have to let her present everything to her bosses and ramp up the PR engine before you nuked her dreams.”
“Nuked her dreams.”
“You said you would stop doing that.”
“Sorry. Can I respond?”
“Please.”
“First, I never actually agreed to let Gwen design my apartment. You did.”
“We were engaged. It was our apartment, or it would be, at least. And anyway, you were, like, totally out of it at the time. Like a sleepwalker or something.”
“I was reassessing.”
“Well, the world doesn’t stop just because you feel the need to reassess.”
“No, but this world you’re talking about did kind of stop when I finished reassessing and decided to re-prioritize what’s important in my life. At least Gwen took me seriously.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means she attacked me,” I say and tilt my facial scars into the light again. “She understood that things had changed. She obviously wasn’t happy about it, but she got it. You, you just…”
“Hey, is this a bad time?” Sluggo asks, standing in my open doorway for I don’t know how long.