away from Central Square in downtown Boston. The hallways smelled like a nursing home and were lined with painted bricks, like a high-school bathroom, but it was one of the only places in town that included free parking, a high selling point for someone who loathes the public transportation system. I also wasn’t too keen on living in a complex since I feared the combination of thin walls and loud neighbors, but luckily it was a small complex with about twenty apartments, not the kind with fifty floors and elevators up the wazoo.
I had barely moved one box into my new place before my cell phone rang again. When you move across the country and land a new job and a new boyfriend, your life becomes interesting at best. When you walk in on your best friend and boyfriend in bed together, your life becomes tabloid fodder.
“Hi, Mom,” I greeted, holding the phone with one hand and attempting to unpack with the other.
“Hi, honey.” I could hear the pity already. It practically seeped through the phone. “How’s the moving coming along?”
“About the same since the last time you asked.”
“Sorry,” she said, unapologetically. “You sure you don’t need any help?”
“No, I’m almost done,” I said, which was a lie. I’d spent about ninety-five percent of my day thus far on my cell phone, and the other five percent moving, which meant I’d brought exactly one box of clothing and a lamp up to my place.
“Okay, well I want you to know that I’ve been praying for you,” she said. “Everything will work out for the best, Renee. You’ll see.”
Sadly, I had shared this same belief at one time. Now, it just sounded like my mother’s usual Jesus jarble.
“So…” She paused, and I knew what was coming next. “Have you heard from Justine at all since you’ve been home?”
“No. I think she finally got the hint after I ignored the eighty-five sobbing voicemails she left me.”
Another pause. “Honey, I know this is hard for you. But don’t you at least want to talk to her about it?”
“No, Mom, I don’t,” I said flatly. “And frankly, if I never talk to her again, that would be fine with me.”
***
The walls to my new apartment were painted lime green. Apparently the gay couple who lived there before me had taken a liking to bright colors. They’d also lost their security deposit, according to my landlord, but when he offered to paint over it, I insisted he didn’t have to. If there was ever a time in my life when I needed to brighten up my surroundings, it was now.
I lugged the rest of the boxes up to my new pad, then plopped down on the sofa and stared at them for a good twenty minutes, wishing they would unpack themselves. I had agreed to meet my friend Beth later that night at Noir, the Charles Hotel bar in Harvard Square, and I knew that once I started unpacking it would be midnight before I knew it. I was an all-or-nothing organizer; once I got wrapped up in something I lost all concept of time and refused to quit until everything was completely finished.
My parents had been extremely generous and donated some of their furniture to me, which I knew was just because they felt sorry for me. But even though all the furniture had already been delivered, I had been staying at my parents’ house until everything was completely in. This is what I told everyone, anyway, because it was much easier to procrastinate and lie than to admit the truth.
I was petrified to be alone.
My friends and relatives had kept me occupied since I’d returned, and they’d actually done a pretty good job keeping my mind off David and Justine. But I knew that the minute I arrived permanently in my new home and shut the door, I’d be alone with nothing but my thoughts. My thoughts and I, alone at last, all shoved into one tiny, quiet room. The thought of that was beyond frightening.
I grabbed a black halter top and a pair of jeans from a box of clothes in my bedroom, threw them on, and then turned around to study my reflection in the mirror. I looked like hell. It would be blatantly obvious to anyone within five feet of me that I’d barely slept in weeks. My green eyes had giant bags underneath them, my skin belonged on an albino and my hair had definitely seen better days. I quickly applied a layer of foundation under my eyes and threw the blonde disheveled mess on my head into a half-assed ponytail before heading out the door.
It was a warm June day, the kind where the smell of the air made you want to fall in love, if love was even a valid concept anymore. Part of me wondered if it was even an actual, real existence, or just something that people had to believe in, so they had a reason to get out of bed in the morning.
The sun was just starting to set, and I found myself staring at it, wishing I could teleport myself back to what my life used to be, back to a place where everything felt safe. Everyone kept telling me to give it time, feeding me handfuls of bullshit lines to make me feel better. And although I knew it was the truth, I couldn’t stop seeing David and Justine together every time I closed my eyes. The image was forever embedded in my mind, like those 3D books you toyed with as a kid, the ones you stared at for so long that the images seem to rise above the page and become a part of you.
I could feel the blood pulsating through my skull as I thought about all the buoyant clichés I had once believed in, only to have them mock me years later. Give it time, Renee. Everything happens for a reason.
“Right,” I mumbled, looking up at the sky as I shifted my car in reverse. “Well then I’d love to know what possible reason could exist for this.”
And when the impact of the crash jolted me back to reality, I was too stunned to realize that I’d already received my answer.
The summer before I entered my freshman year of high school, I had convinced my seventeen-year-old next-door neighbor, Pete Maloney, to let me take his car for a spin. It was a classic 1979 Cadillac Eldorado, his prized possession, no doubt. But given the fact that I had hair the color of sunlight and a newly sprouted chest, he agreed to my proposition, as long as I promised not to leave the neighborhood.
Everybody in Wyman’s Field knew that the Queenans had the nicest house on the block. Their lilac windowsills meshed perfectly with the indigo trim of their house and the display of hydrangeas that lined their front yard. Their entire garden looked like something out of a Thomas Kincaid portrait.
So, naturally, when I drove by and noticed the Queenan brothers outside playing basketball in the driveway, I beeped and waved furiously at them, feeling like the coolest kid in the world to be behind the wheel at age fourteen. I then proceeded to drive the car up over the sidewalk and onto the lawn, leaving behind a giant row of tire marks in Mr. and Mrs. Queenan’s impeccable bed of flowers.
If you can imagine the embarrassment I experienced during that ordeal, that pretty much sums up the way I felt when I realized I’d just backed into my new neighbor’s car.
I was so busy cursing my own fate that I hadn’t even noticed the giant van that had pulled up behind me, waiting to slide into my parking space once I pulled out. The guy in the van behind me was throwing his hands up in the air and mumbling to himself. I wanted to crawl underneath my seat and hide there until he was gone.
I climbed out of my car,
