“Then you’ll have to take my word for it.” He didn’t want to get short tempered, this of all nights. “I thought it was beautiful.”
“Still.” She wouldn’t let it go. “You have to admit that the whole concept is on the egotistical side—”
“It’s a celebration,” he cut her off. “Of a life, and it could be anyone’s life. Warmth toward your own past, and a sense of humor about your idiosyncrasies, doesn’t make you self-obsessed.”
He was overdoing the defense, but Weston was tired of being enticed into criticizing his best friend, which made him feel weak and two-faced. Yet somehow he had to imbue this meal with a more convivial vibe or put off his proposal for another time. For that matter, maybe what was making him testy was having an agenda and not addressing it. He and Paige were now sufficiently attuned that whenever one of them suppressed a thought, the atmosphere queered. So, with a deep breath, he refilled their glasses to announce, “Look, I was going to wait until after dinner, but if I don’t get this out I’m going to bust.”
She immediately looked frightened—withdrawing from her food with a stricken wince, as if he’d just destroyed her appetite. If he weren’t so determined to plow ahead, he might have considered that terrified reaction. He trusted her, but maybe the trust didn’t run both ways.
He moved the plates out of the way, leaned in, and slid his glass forward until it kissed hers. “I shouldn’t really be taking this hand,” Weston extemporized, holding her fingers between his, “when I want to ask for it.”
Either the construction was too clever, or fear had clouded her wit. She looked uncomprehending.
“I’m asking you,” he spelled out, “to marry me.”
“Oh!” Breaking the clasp, she sprang back, and her eyes filled with tears.
Now it was his turn not to get it. “Is that a yes?”
“I don’t know.”
This wasn’t going the way he expected. The lasagna was starting to congeal.
“It’s too soon? Too sudden? Too … what?”
Paige stared at her lap, worrying her napkin. “I want to be able to say yes. But I talked about this for a long time with my sister, more than once. I made her a promise, which was really a promise to myself. I can’t tell you how hard it is for me to be disciplined about this. I’d love to throw my arms around you and say, ‘What took you so long?’ But I can’t accept unconditionally.”
“What’s the condition?” A lump was already wadding in Weston’s gut. He didn’t bother to formulate to himself the nature of her stipulation, since she would spit it out soon enough. But he could have anticipated the ultimatum without much strain.
“Jillian,” she said.
Lord, how lovely it would be, once in a while in this life, to be surprised.
“You know how you meet some people and think they’re really great right away?” Paige continued. “But then they don’t wear well, and what was superficially appealing is disappointing or even annoying in the long run. And then there are the other people, who you don’t take a shine to at the start—who seem like creeps, or drive you nuts. But you stick with it, and get to know them better, and little by little they grow on you after all. So it can turn out that it’s the very people who put you off at the beginning who you end up liking better than anybody.”
Despite himself, Weston’s expression must have looked hopeful.
“Well, this thing with me and Jillian isn’t like either of those,” Paige said, meeting his eyes at last, and that was that for feeling hopeful. “I couldn’t stand her when I met her, and I can’t stand her now that I’ve gotten to know her better. She acts as if her not doing anything professionally makes her so special, when most people don’t do anything. She absolutely has to be the central focus in any given group of people, and whenever conversation strays from her latest goofball project, or her latest goofball outfit, she stops paying attention. She’s basically under-socialized. She only pretends to be interested in anyone else—though I guess the pretending means she’s socialized to a point—and whenever she asks about my life, it’s obvious she’s only going through the motions and doesn’t care. I’m not even convinced she’s that interested in you. You’re just a great audience for her, and that’s the main thing she needs from anybody. She has no sense of tact—which is just another form of being inconsiderate, of not bothering to pay attention to anyone else. So it never occurs to her to maybe keep her mouth shut about how great fracking is, because other people present might find her idiotic opinions offensive. For that matter, her opinions about anything important are all over the map. Since she doesn’t read newspapers or even watch TV news, I’ve come to the conclusion that she doesn’t have opinions—she just tries on a position like another outfit. She’s not a serious person, West! She lives her life in, like—a playroom! And there’s something so crafted about her. All presentation, no substance. With these big stagey entrances she makes. With all the feathers and jumped-up enthusiasm. It’s fake. I have no idea what’s behind the prima donna song and dance, aside from a woman who’s hopelessly self-centered, and maybe a little lost. Like a lot of people who come across as egotistical, all that high-octane vivacity could be just overcompensating for underconfidence—since she’s clearly too frightened to go out into the world and make her mark. That’s me bending over backwards to be understanding, but I’m not a gymnast. I can’t maintain that position for very long.”
This—whatever you call the perfect opposite of ode—came out in such a rush that Paige was breathing hard. Weston asked dryly, “Is that all?”
“No, come to think of it. She also drinks too much. Way too much, making her a bad influence. Every time you go over there without me, you come back soused.”
“Are you trying to convince me to despise my own best friend?”
“No, this is obviously my problem—but it’s getting worse. Like those private coinages of hers that she repeats all the time whenever we go over for dinner, and she always serves popcorn as an appetizer? Which is cheap, by the way, in every sense. Practically free, and déclassé. So a substandard bowlful always has ‘low loft.’ Having only a few dead kernels at the bottom indicates a ‘high pop ratio.’ A batch lifting the lid on the pot is ‘achieving lidosity.’ You think it’s enchanting, and I’m glad for you about that, I guess. But I couldn’t find it enchanting on pain of death. I think it’s dorky. Every time she says this stuff it’s fingernail-on-a-blackboard for me. Her very voice grates. You’d think she’d learn to speak at a volume that isn’t pitched for the hard of hearing! The stress of pretending to get along with her is wearing me out.”
“If you want to keep the socializing to a minimum—”
“If it were just a matter of your friend getting on my nerves, maybe I could simply avoid her, and we could keep making excuses for why I’m busy and can’t come with—though if we’re really talking about getting married, a there’s-somewhere-I-gotta-be routine could be hard to keep up over a lifetime. She’d figure it out. And then it would be an issue, and she’d get all touchy and wounded the way she does. Still, maybe that would be manageable. If that were the only problem, we could choreograph some sort of elaborate dance and never end up in the same room.
“But it’s worse than that. She acts as if she owns you. I’m never sure what you two are talking about all that time after tennis—because you’re always gone for way longer than the couple of hours you play. I can’t help but worry that you’re talking about me. And I worry the discussion isn’t always nice, since nice things are usually a little boring, and for some reason they never take very long to say. I can’t bear this paranoia. It’s worse than when you go see your shrink. At least a shrink