Page 28 of Exit Lane
“Two whiskeys on the rocks, please. And chicken fingers and mozzarella sticks,” she says to a bartender, a different one from last time but somehow the same. Settling onto a barstool, Marin looks ten years younger. Her eyes flash to the jukebox—like it’s her mark, identified for later, once we have a plan.
I pout over to my seat next to her, loving and hating that I feel like a puzzle piece fitting into place. “This is... how are we here again?”
She stands out in a cashmere sweater and aviator reading glasses she pulled somewhere from her bag. I want to make the case that I could pass as a local in a sweatshirt and jeans, but I have to admit that we’re both giving City Folk. That, this many years removed from cornfields, we’re even less likely patrons than we were on our first visit.
“We’re here because it’s too dangerous to drive, so weneed to wait it out. The fact that it’s the same bar, that’s just... well, I don’t know what that is, Teddy.” She takes a healthy sip from her whiskey, her profile in this light revealing bags under her eyes I didn’t notice before. “Don’t even tell me what time it is in Copenhagen.” She smiles.
Someone puts “Hotel California” on the jukebox, and before I have a chance to conjure a reaction, she rests her face in her hands, elbows on the bar, at the exact moment our food arrives. “Jesus Christ,” she whispers with a rueful chuckle. “The only remedy is fried cheese.”
I clear my throat, uncertain of what I really want to say but starting to feel like we’re past the point of avoidance.
Marin lifts a hand. “Let me go first, please.” She shifts in her seat. “I fucked up in the most unforgivable, selfish way. I think about the ten thousand other ways I could have responded to you that day constantly. I was scared—of how much I loved you and how real losing you felt. But none of that’s an excuse. I was the meanest, cruelest person to you that day. I don’t deserve the chance to even tell you this, but that’s the grace of a wedding weekend in a snowstorm I guess.” She exhales, taking a quick sip, and before I can respond, she goes on. “You are the best person, Teddy. You have somehow made me—me—feel like people are predestined for each other in some cosmic way. And I ruined that. So go ahead, lay into me. I promise the small fortune I’ve spent on ‘healing modalities’ has prepared me for this exact moment.”
“I... I don’t know what to say, Mar.” Five hours ago, I could have unrolled a scroll of all the reasons why shewas correct about being the worst and would have kindly asked for this to be our last conversation. But then there’s her—real, in front of me, asking for forgiveness in a way that pulls at every part of me that believes in reconciliation, in second chances. I speak before I can process what I’m saying or what the consequences might be. “I forgive you. Of course I do. You hurt me so much, and I thought I might never be able to, but eventually I did forgive you. Because despite every effort you’ve made to be unknowable, I do know you. And I know what part of you won out in that moment. And I care about you too much to let either of us stay stuck there. I forgave you long before I stopped resenting you, which, for the record, may have only happened in the last hour or so. If it’s happened yet.” I watch her face soften, watch fear transform into familiarity.
“Friends,” she says, scooting her barstool closer to mine. “For real this time.” She stretches out her hand for me to shake, and I picture it wrapped around a karaoke mic, a bag of pastries, the curve of my jaw. When our palms meet, the stomach drop her touch brings registers as a shock even though I knew it was coming.
XXII
Marin
We’re splitting a cigarette in the cold, one pilfered from a local insurance agent who tossed us a matchbox printed with his face. “Perfect execution.” Teddy laughs, examining the man’s likeness on the cardboard and lighting the Camel dangling from my mouth, inches from his.
Our conversation went better than I expected, which is to say, we’re not screaming or crying in the blustery parking lot. But instead of feeling the relief of a resolution, I’m somehow even more on edge. Teddy’s perpetual kindness sets my head spinning, and I try not to let my hope spin out of control. The mere promise of the situation warms my body, inching me closer to where he leans on the building’s facade.
“Sloane’s calling,” he says, motioning for me to lean in to answer. The screen’s bright between us, his hand shielding it from the snow, our red noses almost touching. Drunk and blissed out at the roaring success of the opera flash mob at the rehearsal dinner, she’s taking our absence in stride. “Are you kidding? How could I be mad? It’s so filmic.” I roll my eyes, smiling. “I’m just thrilled you two haven’t jumped eachother in a bar fight yet. The fact that you’re standing close enough to take this call is good enough for me.”
Our lack of distance hits both of us at the same time. Teddy’s hand has been casually resting on my shoulder, but now it darts into his pocket.
Sloane isn’t done. “You know you both did this to yourselves by taking the last possible flights. I’ve done enough damage control for you two over the years to know why. Go to bed. Leave as soon as the roads clear. I can’t wait to kiss you both.” We hang up, laughing, and head back into the bar.
Nursing a club soda from our seats, I watch Teddy across the room as he reenacts the black ice scene for a group of truck drivers who are just as surprised about our miraculous pickup salvation as we are. He’s beautiful, more beautiful than all the times I tried to conjure him after he left. The way he speaks reflects light onto the faces of everyone in conversation with him. These men are glowing, the subject of his total attention. When he turns to me, waving me over, I catch one of the truckers remarking, “I’m just saying, if she’s not yours, I’d like to take a swing if you know what I mean.”
“I can’t shake this one, unfortunately for you. She’s like my shadow.” He playfully tugs me to him by my waist as I make my way to the jukebox, silently grateful to not have to fend off rounds of drinks from the increasingly male population at Envy’s.
This act he’s putting on is a joke. It’s a ruse. But the simple idea of being his anything makes me blush. Oureyes keep finding each other when they don’t need to, when I don’t mean for them to. I turn away from the group to queue up “I Feel for You” and then “Borderline” and, because I owe it to him, “Hotel California.”
Back on my stool next to him, I barely listen to the conversation he’s found himself locked into about weight limits and traffic cameras. His new friends have migrated to the bar with us. Picking at the fried pickles we must have ordered at some point, I note an overwhelming sense of peace in his proximity. Absentmindedly, if there is such a thing, he lets a hand rest on my thigh, moving his thumb slowly back and forth over the inseam of my jeans. The friction sends a current between my legs. I move my hand, which was propped on the edge of his stool to stabilize me, to reach for the belt loop in the back of his jeans.How did I ever think straight when he was touching me?I wonder.
“We’re on the way to our best friends’ wedding,” he says, smiling at me, mischief in his eyes where there was hurt only a few hours ago.
“Maybe you’re next?” The group lifts their beers in our honor while Teddy presses his forehead against mine as our glasses clink.
“I should be so lucky,” he whispers, only loud enough for me to hear. I want all of this to be real, bankable, the kind of fortune you read about in epics. As heat spreads across my entire body, I accept that my promise of friendship hours ago was once again a lie.
When I hear the opening synthesizer of “I Feel for You,” I wait for Teddy’s reaction. He turns to me and grabs myshoulders with the same urgency he brings to everything he’s excited about. At this point, our stools are practically overlapping, and our legs haven’t stopped finding reasons to knock into each other.
“Did you know that Prince played all twenty-seven instruments used on his 1978 debut albumFor You?” He kisses me on the cheek, like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
And for a moment, it is. The two of us, together, reminds me of everything I ruined.
“Brilliant.” I drape my arm over his shoulder, blinking my eyes furiously and pushing away all the things I want to profess, all the ways I swear I’ll do better. Instead, I lean against him, giving into the warmth of his orbit and the unlikely way I respond to the worn-in and safe home I find there. He leans back.
Carter and Sloane send selfies with “Big kiss x” as the caption in a group chat that’s been dormant for years. I send back a picture of Teddy dancing under a hot dog topping menu. Quarters from God knows where keep appearing. Leaning against the glass of the jukebox, Teddy tugs at the sleeve of my sweater, sending shivers across my arms.
“Pick something good.” He tilts his head against mine. “You’re my fake girlfriend, and I’ve elected myself as mayor of this bar.”
“I saw. Interesting technique.”
