Gold Digger – Story 15 – SARA KNOWS

I went to Sara’s on Thursday.

Not for any particular reason.

That’s what I told myself on the way over. No particular reason. Just wine and the kitchen table and the baby already asleep and Sara in the specific way Sara is in her own home – unhurried, warm, completely herself in a way I’ve always found simultaneously comforting and slightly incomprehensible.

I was going to talk about Noah.

Or Richard.

Or the founders dinner, or the club, or the leather dress, or literally anything that was not the thing I had been not thinking about for four days.

Or literally anything that was not the thing I had been carefully not examining for four days.

Sara opened the wine before I sat down.

That’s how she is. No ceremony. No how are you, how was your week, let me take your coat. Just wine on the table and the specific ease of someone who has known you since you were seven and has decided that the social niceties are for people who haven’t seen each other cry over a maths exam.

We talked about the baby first.

Then her husband, who had done something helpful with a shelf.

Then my work, briefly.

Then Noah – I gave her the founders dinner version, the club version, the ten minutes that became fifty-five. She listened with her whole face the way Sara listens. Asked two questions. Neither of them tactical.

I was doing well.

The plan was to keep doing well.

“How’s D?” she asked.

“Fine,” I said.

Too quickly.

The problem with talking about D is that it makes him real.

Richard lives in the spreadsheet. Noah lives in the spreadsheet. Even my mistakes live in the spreadsheet – yellow entries, red flags, columns I invented because the existing ones weren’t sufficient.

D doesn’t.

D exists entirely outside the system and I prefer not to examine that too closely because every time I try, the conversation becomes about things I don’t have columns for and I end up sitting in someone’s kitchen in a hoodie I forgot I was wearing which is – not relevant yet.

“Yeah?” Sara asked.

“We’re fine. He’s fine.”

Sara watched me over her wine glass.

I hated that look.

Not because it was judgmental.

Because it wasn’t.

So I kept going. I talked about Richard – dinner three was Thursday, he’d texted to confirm, something about a new restaurant, he’d remembered a thing I’d said about Italian food three weeks ago and I was filing that under concerning and also under impressive and also under a column I hadn’t named yet.

Sara listened.

Said the right things.

And then, approximately one glass later, she looked at me with the expression she’s been using since we were nine – the one that means she’s already arrived at the conclusion and she’s just waiting for me to catch up.

“You’re wearing his hoodie,” she said.

I looked down.

I was.

Maroon. Worn. Sleeves slightly too long.

I had gone home from D’s apartment. Slept. Gotten up. Made coffee. Gone to work. Come here.

Never took it off.

I hadn’t noticed.

That was the part I couldn’t quite look at directly – that I had worn D’s hoodie for four days without noticing because it had just become the thing I was wearing and I hadn’t thought about it once.

“It’s just -” I started.

“I know,” Sara said.

She wasn’t smiling.

Not unkindly.

Just – watching me.

“I’ve never actually worried about D,” she said.

A pause.

She refilled my glass.

“Only about what you’re going to do about him.”

I didn’t answer.

Not because I disagreed.

Because answering would require admitting there was something to do.

And admitting there was something to do would require admitting D existed outside the category of accidental decisions and midnight mistakes and emergency contacts and hoodies I forgot I was wearing.

I wasn’t ready to do that.

So I changed the subject.

Sara let me.

Which was worse.

I’m still wearing the hoodie.

I noticed that just now.

I noticed it and I didn’t take it off.

Make of that what you will.

Spreadsheet status:

Richard → dinner three: Thursday. note: remembered the Italian food. filing under: still concerning.

Noah → under review. ten minutes still unaccounted for.

D → [row does not exist] 

Sara asked why I was wearing his hoodie. I changed the subject. She let me. Which was worse. – Mila