Merit
Monterey, California
Present Day
“It’s good to have you back, Merit,” Abbey says from the front of my desk. She’s just walked in.
I smile. “It’s good to see you’re on time.”
She rolls her eyes. “Someone needed to be responsible after you left. Besides, Eddie would have noticed.” She sets her bag on her chair.
“The apartment looked good, too.”
She shrugs. “I missed you. It’s not the same order when you’re not around. There’s a big black hole.”
I stop typing the email to Ryan. I just want to know how Hero is doing.
Strictly platonic. Just a brief message.
I’ve been back for three days. Maine seems like a dream, a distant memory that has become a composition of my current favorite life moments and a few of my not-so-good life moments. I close the email.
“What did I miss?” I cross my arms in front of my computer and lean forward.
“I’m totally done with men.”
My eyebrow pulls up.
Abbey’s eyes meet mine. “No, I’m serious. Totally done.”
“What happened?”
She fidgets with her fingers and pretends it’s not a big deal, but I can tell by her face that it is a big deal.
“I met the one.”
“Where’d you meet him?”
“Organic One actually. I was shopping for anything that doesn’t walk on two or four legs, and he was standing between the mushrooms and the broccoli, contemplating the price.”
I listen.
“Get this: he was raised Mormon, too.”
“It’s fate,” I say sarcastically and force a laugh. One I don’t feel in my heart.
Abbey does, too. “He’s thirty-five. Runs an internet business. Works from home.”
I deadpan. “An internet business? You know that’s vague, right? It could be anything, Abbs. Porn. Illegal drugs. A scammer.”
I feel as though I’ve let down my friend. Clearly, she needs me to be the sounding board for good decision-making.
“Actually, it’s a food company.”
“A food company.”
“Yeah, come here.”
I walk to her desk as she pulls up his website. “Seven Days a Week, it’s called. They prepare meals with recipes and then ship them all over the United States. You can order single meals or meals for your whole family.”
We both scan through the site.
I don’t see any mention of prostitution, porn, or illegal drugs.
“When did you meet?” I ask.
“The day after you left. Without you to cook, I needed to adult and go buy some ingredients for recipes I didn’t know I’d make.”
“Wait. You went to the store without knowing what recipes you’d make? Abbey, it’s the opposite. You look up recipes and then go to the store to buy the ingredients.”
“See? This is why I need you.”
Part of me knows she’s kidding. Though her mom did most of the cooking when she was growing up, I know Abbey did manage to make a few things.
“If I had done all the research and looked up the recipes first, I’d have missed my chance to meet Ruben.”
I slide onto the desk, facing Abbey. “Ruben, the was-Mormon, huh?”
She laughs as she clicks around the website. “Look. Here’s a picture.”
He’s your typical all-American guy with blond hair and blue eyes.
“Handsome. But how do you know he’s the one?”
She sighs. “Remember that time you caught me eating your entire birthday cake out of its container when we first moved in together? It was the middle of the night.” Abbey never forgets anything. Ever.
“No.”
Her shoulders drop. “Oh. Well, anyway, he was doing the exact same thing one night when I caught him.”
“Abbs, I hate to say this, but that doesn’t constitute fate or forever.”
She shakes her head. “No, it’s what he said.” She’s quiet, almost embarrassed or shy. “Do you remember what I said?”
“I have no idea, Abbey. It was midnight, and all I heard that brought me from my slumber was the sound of someone rifling through the fridge—or burning down our apartment.”
Abbey clears her throat. “I said, ‘Cake is my weakness. Take it or leave it.’”
I stare at her, waiting for further explanation.
“That’s it. Sealed the deal.”
“But, Abbey, you’re deciding your fate based on a few bites of cake? We’re talking about the rest of your life here.”
Abbey pulls her hands from the keyboard. She’s methodical when she chooses her words. Thoughtful. “Mer, it wasn’t the cake. It was my heart. Sometimes, the heart knows what the head doesn’t. Sometimes, my head doesn’t allow me to follow what my heart is saying.”
For some reason, her words, this time, they cause a burning sensation in my stomach, and they make my heart pick up pace.
“Why’d you come back?” Abbey asks, knowing full well her question is loaded.
“What do you mean?” I cough to clear my throat, not ready to answer her question.
“Why’d you come back to Monterey, Merit?” she asks again. Louder, as if I couldn’t hear her the first time she asked the question, though I think she’s just being sarcastic.
“Ryan was healed. He was released to go back to work.” I shrug, trying to be diplomatic, fact-driven. I think that’s why I appreciate science so much. There’s usually a right answer.
Abbey laughs. “Liar.”
“What?” I stand.
“You came back because you weren’t ready to face your past with Ryan.”
“You don’t know everything about us, Abbey.”
“I know enough to know true love when I effing see it. I know you enough to know that you’re in love with Ryan, and that’s why you haven’t been able to find a guy out here since college.” She leans back in her chair, crossing her arms, staring back at me.
I don’t know what to say to that. My mind spins. My eyes burn.
“Sometimes,” she whispers after a long silence between us, “it’s destiny that brings people together.”
Fuck.
It’s the mention of her name that tells me I am supposed to hear what Abbey is offering. It’s like subsequent events that fall into line in a matter of seconds that have actually been in the making for the past seventeen years. Some things that I don’t want to hear.
Moment one: I was supposed to experience heartbreak.
Moment two: I was supposed to come to California pregnant.
Moment three: Abbey was supposed to be my lab partner in our general biology class.
Moment four: I was supposed to leave for Granite Harbor each time I was called.
Moment five: I was supposed to hear the exact sentence spoken at this exact time from the person I needed to hear it from.
Moment six: I am supposed to make the realization that Ryan is my destiny.
Moment seven: I am supposed to realize that I need to heal before I return.
My eyes start to burn in meeting each of these moments.
“Hey, you all right?”
I don’t know, Abbey, I want to say. I don’t know because the rug has been ripped out from beneath me. I’m unstable and unsteady, and I have nowhere to land.
Yes. Yes, you do know, Merit. Move on. Just like you’ve always done.
“Yeah.”
Abbey laughs. “Mer, I’ve known you a long time. You’re five shades of white right now, and you look like death.”
“I do not.” I reach up and touch my face.
“Have you slept since you’ve been home, Mer?”
I have to think about it.
“And who were you about to send the email to?” Abbey smirks.
“No one.”
“Liar.”
Damn it.
“How’d you know?”
Abbey rolls her eyes. “I’m a trained researcher. These things come easy to me. Why are you sending the email?”
“Because I bought a dog for Ryan,” I confess.
“Why?”
“Because he lost his.”
“Why?”
“Why what?” I’m getting pissed.
“You’re right; I didn’t plan that question out. Look, you’re not sending the email because he lost his dog. You’re sending the email because you care about him. And”—she shrugs—“if I’m being real honest, you’re still in love with him.”
Grab at a straw, Merit. Grab at something to pull you out of this.
Why do I pick these people to be friends with?
“Things happen, Abbey, that have separated us. People make decisions. Say hurtful things. It’s not that easy.”
“Until you can get past all the stuff, you won’t be able to move forward, Mer. Trust me. That’s why life with other guys you’ve dated didn’t work out. That’s why, on Friday nights, you hang out with Ethel and Lucy. That’s why you haven’t been able to get past whatever happened between you and him. It’s keeping you in the exact same spot as you were when all this shit went down.”
Truth. It hurts. And festers in my gut like a wound that won’t stay closed, busting open at the smallest touch.
This is coming from a Mormon whose mom is overbearing. Whose dad left her mom for another woman. Who can’t seem to find what she’s looking for.
Maybe talking about what happened might change the feeling in my chest. I haven’t told a single soul aside from Ryan just recently. I trust Abbey. But I’ll wait because I hear Eddie making his way down the hallway.
Then, his head pops in. “Gotta say, Merit, it’s good to have you back. Really made Abbey step up, tell you that much.” He side-eyes Abbey as he walks to the copier.
I missed him with his shaggy silvery-white hair and board shorts, the sound of his flip-flops echoing off the stone cement flooring down the long massive hallways of the aquarium. I missed his not-in-a-rush, carefree demeanor. His advice.
“Good to be back, Eddie.”
“Liar,” Abbey whispers in a tone so quiet that Eddie misses it, and I almost do, too.
“Board meetin’ next week. Mer, can you—”
“Already done, Eddie. Board packets are printed. Research attached to our agenda item.”
Eddie turns from the copier. “Did I tell you how much we missed you?”
“Yes, Eddie.” Abbey rolls her eyes with a smile and gives me a wink.
Eddie leaves after his copies are made.
“I need a break,” I say to Abbey. “Be back in fifteen.”
Abbey isn’t paying attention to me, and she types away on her computer.
I walk down to our river otter exhibit, and my hands meet the glass as Lucy and Ethel show their excitement to see me.
I assume Leon, Ethel’s baby, is in the birthing den, as he’s still blind and immobilized until about the fourth week.
“Heard you did well, Mama,” I say to Ethel as my hand slides across the glass while she swims. “That’s a girl. I missed you, too.”
Both Lucy and Ethel glide through the water next to the glass.
Ethel jumps back out of the water and goes to her birthing den, most likely to feed Leon. Abbey said Leon was on an every-three-hour feeding schedule.
In the early hours of the morning, the aquarium is quiet. It’s so quiet that you can hear the smallest of noises as I try to tread lightly on the cement floor. It’s impossible.
I walk up the stairs and out the side door labeled, For Staff Only.
Taking in the cold, salty morning air, I meet a railing that runs the length of the building. The Pacific Ocean is below my perch.
This is where I come to find my right place in the world. Where I feel closest to my mother on the West Coast. Where I feel more human. Out here I feel safe, away from the world.
I slide down the side of the cement wall and watch the white caps move along the ocean’s surface, such a small movement for such a large entity. The space between the bottom and the water’s surface, the vastness, makes me feel so small. I take pleasure in knowing that I’m not the only person in the world. There’s the ocean, the sky, the stars, the planets, and so much more, and I’m just a tiny piece of this world.
What if, in this big world, there’s a space for happiness for me? A tiny slice that sits just beyond my reach. A place where I can sit and be comfortable in my own skin. Rest. Have some peace.
“I knew I’d find you here,” a voice says.