- Landon -
o I guess you would describe your style as minimalist?” Margot asked as she surveyed my apartment’s main sitting room.
I eyed her silhouette in front of my picture window, surprised to find that the vast city skyline didn’t dwarf her at all. If anything, she looked larger than life as she improved the view I was so proud of.
“Can you keep a secret?” I asked, pulling some liquor from my freezer.
“Of course,” she said, looking over her shoulder.
“It’s mostly Ikea.”
“That explains why I love it so much.”
I set a clean glass out and poured a small measure of grenadine in, trying to remember the exact drink recipe my friend Ethan had shared with me recently. “The size of the service elevator makes it difficult to have grander ambitions. Plus, I figure someday I’ll meet someone who’ll want to put her own style touches on the place, and this way I won’t mind a bit.”
“I think you’ve done a nice job,” she said. “It’s stark, but still cozy.”
“Not unlike your place, I imagine.”
She laughed. “The size of my place makes coziness unavoidable, but I do have a covetable view of a brick wall covered in pigeon shit.”
It bothered me to hear she couldn’t see anything interesting from her window when I knew what a daydreamer she once was, always zoning out in the car on family road trips, endlessly distracted by the sky and everything below it. No matter how many times we tried to include her in our games of Ghost and I Spy, she’d always opt out eventually as a result of not paying attention.
“What are you making?” she asked, sauntering over and leaning on the opposite side of the counter.
“A Dirty Shirley,” I said, pouring some vodka over the grenadine until it turned a lighter shade of pink. “A buddy of mine taught me to make it. He’s the head bartender over at Club Abbott.”
“Fancy.”
“I’ll take you there sometime,” I said, topping the drink off with some Sprite before sliding it across the counter. “I hope I got this right.”
“That’s a pretty girly-looking drink,” she said, hoisting herself onto a bar-stool. “I can’t imagine you drink those when you’re home alone.”
“No, they’re purely for entertaining female friends.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Which you have a lot of, I take it?”
I leaned against the counter. “Not really. Most of the women I’ve met since I moved here are hard work, and I’ve had enough of that in my life.”
She still hadn’t taken a sip.
“Try it already.”
“I’m waiting for you to get yourself a drink,” she said. “So we can cheers.”
“Right.” I grabbed an IPA from the fridge and pulled an opener from the drawer. “What do you want to toast to?” I asked as the metal cap rolled across the counter.
She twisted her mouth as she considered the question. “How about we toast to us? To you for helping me get the hell out of my parent’s house and to me for making you look good at work.”
I smiled and lifted my beer. “To us.”
She clinked her glass against the neck of my bottle before taking a sip, her eyes sparkling before she’d even swallowed.
“Well?” I asked, licking my lips and wondering if there was anything on Earth that tasted as good as a cold beer after a long week.
“It’s delicious,” she said, not lowering it to the counter. “But surprisingly strong. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were trying to get me drunk.”
“You’re very welcome to get drunk. You certainly deserve it after all your hard work this week, but don’t try blaming me if that happens.”
“Fair enough,” she said, taking another sip.
“Now for eats,” I said, setting my beer down. “You have two choices.”
“Okay.” She rested her cheek on her hand.
“You can have a Cup Noodle, as promised,” I said, grabbing three different flavors from one of the cupboards and stacking them in front of her.
“You weren’t kidding.”
“Or you can have some homemade pasta bake.”
She furrowed her brow. “I don’t want you to go to that much trouble.”
“It’s already made,” I said. “I just have to blast it in the oven.”
“Already made by who?”
“Me, of course. Who the hell else is going to make me a pasta bake?”
“I don’t know.”
“You want to try it?” I asked. “And if you don’t like it, we’ll resort to plan B?”
“Sure.”
I flicked the oven on to preheat.
“I had no idea you could cook.”
“How else would I have grown so big and strong?” I asked, flashing my eyebrows at her. “My dad can barely boil the kettle, and my mom hasn’t shown up for dinner in over ten years.”
Her expression drooped. “I’m sorry, Landon. I didn’t mean to bring that up.”
“It’s fine,” I said, removing the pan from the fridge and setting it on top of the stove. “It was a long time ago.”
“Did you ever hear from her again after she left?”
I nodded. “She came back for a week six months after she first left.”
“Really? How could I not know that?”
God, the things she didn’t know. “I asked Matt not to say anything at the time. I had a feeling she wasn’t going to stick around.”
“And she didn’t.”
I shook my head. “No.”
“I can’t imagine how awful that must’ve been.”
“It was worse the first time,” I said, taking a swig of beer. “Since my dad and I didn’t have any warning.” She just disappeared, leaving nothing but a sticky note on the counter that said, I’m sorry. I can’t do this anymore. Two days later my dad found more in the trash can, all with the same message, plus or minus a few words.
Margot cocked her head, her blue eyes fixed on me.
“You blame yourself as a kid, you know? You wonder what you did wrong, if you drove her away, if you didn’t love her enough or vice versa.”
“That’s awful.”
“I grew up a lot in those six months, though. I learned to take care of myself, learned to take care of my dad. And I swore that if she ever came back and couldn’t love the new me enough to stay, I wouldn’t take it personally.”
“Whatever she was going through,” Margot said, reaching her hand across the counter and resting it on mine, “I’m sure it had nothing to do with you.”
“I know that now, but… It was still fucked up.”
She squeezed my hand.
“Sorry to go on about it,” I said, pulling my hand back. “You guys did enough for me and my dad back then that you shouldn’t have to hear about it anymore.”
“Don’t be silly,” she said. “I appreciate you opening up to me. I know it can’t be easy to talk about her, even after all this time.”
The oven light clicked off then, and I was grateful for the interruption, since the last thing I wanted to do was drive Margot away with my impromptu pity party.
After all, if there was anything my mom had taught me, it was that there was nothing worse than having someone you care about walk out on you.