Page 63 of How to Say I Do
Our days filled up with texts to each other. His were complex and fascinating, always different, always compelling. The sunrise over 2nd Avenue, or the afternoon light hitting the UN building. Downtown, the World Trade Center, the Statue of Liberty across the harbor. Central Park, a music video set, him pulling a duck-face next to a film clacker. A giant latte topped with foam art next to his laptop at a fancy Upper East Side café. Him done up in his event-management get-up: Saint Laurent suit, sexily unbuttoned at the throat, a discrete headset over one ear and a push-to-talk mic on his wrist.
Private performance by Lizzo tonight, then a VIP after-party.
I had to look up who Lizzo was, and I spent the rest of the evening listening to her music on Spotify as I buzzed around my kitchen, cooking meals I didn’t need, but could freeze for the rest of the week.
I was too hyped to sit still, my inner Jason coming out strong. My mind raced as I wondered how Noël’s night was going and if he was enjoying himself.
He sent me a selfie from the after-party, him with a glass of champagne and a tired smile.
All done.
My texts to him were far more mundane. Boring, if I had to put a specific word to them. Fields and sky, grapevines and sunsets. I showed him the holes I was digging and the concrete I’d poured, and the frame that was going up for the shade sails. I snapped a picture of the lumber I’d had delivered for the picnic tables I was about to build, complete with a hammer on top of the pile next to a box of nails. Peanut mugged for my phone, tossing her mane all sassy and fierce and reminding me of someone else. I sent him pictures of the grapes as they started to round, maturing from delicate flowers to veiny buds to thickening fruit growing strong beneath the sun.
Sometimes, at the end of the day, I sent him a selfie of me on the porch swing. I was usually sweaty, dirt-smudged, and always terribly self-conscious. I was a stereotype of a caricature, a hick on the farm, with my t-shirt and my Wranglers and my cowboy hat.
I gave myself a talking-to every afternoon, preparing myself—I thought—for the day when I wouldn’t hear from him.It will stop eventually, Wyatt, and you gotta be ready when it does.
But Noël kept texting, all day, every day.
I learned the rhythms of his life. I knew his comings and goings, when he’d usually be in bed and usually woke up, and when that would be disrupted because of a gallery opening or a private party or a club event. I knew the meetings he had scheduled, and could text himgood morning,andhope your brunch with Ralph Lauren goes well,andgood luck tonight with the gallery exhibition.
He texted me back,asking how is block 3, anddid you fix the trellis that was giving you trouble, andis Peanut still being impertinent today?
Our lives, even a thousand miles apart, were drawing closer together.
We never talked about us. Or if there was an us, or what we were doing, or what it meant that we woke up to each other’s messages, spent the day trading photos and catch-up texts andhave a good afternoonandlook at this: a flower booming, or a butterfly on a vine, or a sunflower against the clear blue sky, or a unicyclist in the middle of 5th Avenue, or a Texas wine he found on the menu at Per Se and Gramercy Tavern.
We need to get your wine out here.
I don’t bottle enough to distribute that widely.
For now.
Was this helping him? Was our constant connectivity enlightening him about what he really wanted, or was I a compelling distraction—again—from figuring out his life?
And what wasIdoing? Was I waiting around while Noël decided if I was someone he wanted?
Or were we both trying to figure each other out? Learn each other from the outside in, rather than the head-first plunge we’d taken in Cancun?
I couldn’t answer those questions, and instead of beating my head against them, I texted Noëlgoodnight, sweet dreams, and waited for hisgoodnighttext to come back. Each morning, I woke up to a selfie of him sipping his coffee, sleepy eyed and exhausted, but shooting me a smile.
And I was happy.
Then one day, his texts stopped.
He’d had an afternoon meeting atEliteand then a client meeting, and his day was supposed to be capped off with a yacht party in the harbor. He’d been particularly dreading the yacht party, calling it a gathering of investment bros and vapid supermodels.
I’d sent him a picture of a pile of paint cans before hisElitemeeting. The white paint had come in, and I was excited to get started creating the barn of his whitewashed dreams. He’d sent me a picture of his Starbucks and a sleepy emoji, and then...
Well, you knew it would happen.
I did, but I thought there would be a slow decline, a spreading out of our conversations, the daytime texts going from several each hour to every other hour, then maybe once or twice a day, and then nothing. I thought I would be ready for the silence when it arrived.
This happened so abruptly, without a shred of warning. I was waiting for his photos from the yacht party and for his outraged texts grading everyone’s outfits and shoes and makeup.I hope it’s not another nineties extravaganza, he’d texted me yesterday.I cannot take the neon for that many hours. Or the bellbottoms.
But my night stayed stubbornly silent, empty of Noël.
I thought of the supermodels at the party, the gorgeous women—and men—that were likely to be there. Suave and sophisticated, with thousand-dollar haircuts and bespoke clothing, not the Duluth Trading Company and Carhart specials I was sporting.
