o.o.o
I wish I'd never made that wish. I wish I was 13 again.
Eyes closed, fists clenched, Jenna Rink sits on her porch and wishes fervently on magic wishing powder or the dream house or whatever it was that made her 30, flirty and thriving. She wants things back the way they were. Everything has gone wrong for her as a 30-year-old and it's all her fault even though she didn't really do anything, and she's been so wrong and she's learned so many lessons and surely, if there is any fairness or any magic in the world, she will be allowed to go back to her 13th birthday party.
Pachelbel's Canon ends and Jenna opens her eyes. It's still 2004, she's still an adult, and the man she loves is at this very moment marrying someone else.
She stands with as much dignity and poise as she can muster, tears streaming down her face, and takes the dream house down to the basement closet. Then she leaves the house, shutting the door carefully behind her, and walks as quickly as she can away from Matt Flamhaff's wedding.
o.o.o
It's five years before she sees him again. Those five years are good to her, or at least they are after a rough first few months. Soon after the close of Poise, her sweet former assistant Arlene put her in touch with the editor-in-chief of a small homemaking magazine in New York City: all recipes and table settings and home decor projects. It's a humble magazine, but a sincere one, and most importantly it's far enough removed from the world of high fashion that the taint of Poise magazine doesn't follow her there, and her co-workers have no idea that some repugnant former version of Jenna destroyed her last publication with her ambition and her greed. (It also keeps her in touch with some industry contacts, from whom she gets the rather satisfying news that Sparkle's circulation numbers have been dropping steadily since Lucy took over; turns out Jenna really did have all the good ideas in their partnership, and without her Lucy is foundering.) She gets to do the kind of work she wanted to do for the Poise redesign—real people, encouraging stories, making the world beautiful—and her contributions are valued, and if not for the guilt she still feels over Poise, she'd surrender herself wholly to the realization that she's rather happy in her new job.
Of course it was a major pay cut, and she had to move about of her fabulous apartment and into a smaller fourth-floor walk-up in a less desirable part of town, but at least none of her coworkers are trying to stab her in the back. And anyway she's cut off almost all contact with her former life, so what does it matter if she's not in the heart of Manhattan anymore? She broke up with Alex the day after the wedding; he was staggered at the thought that anyone would want to dump him and she sighed exasperatedly and wondered how she, who was mentally 13, was more grown up than him. She hasn't seen Lucy since then either. But she sees Arlene and Tracy from Poise regularly, and she's still in touch with Richard (doing just fine at a fashion magazine in London), and she visits her parents at least every other week (every single week at first, when she was still hurt and reeling and clinging to anything familiar like a lifeline).
She's no longer baffled by the trappings of modern life; she can use a smartphone and a laptop, and she can order an espresso just how she likes it. But she's still plagued by the realization, five years earlier, of something she held at bay for the first few weeks of being 30: that she lost 17 years of her life and she will never get those back. She will never personally experience—even though it apparently did happen—going to prom. She will never remember partying with her friends in college, or her actual first kiss, or high school graduation. She has photographs of her travels around the world, but the photographs might as well be of a stranger.
She goes through a dark period in that first year, mourning for what she's lost, until Arlene, not entirely sure what's eating at Jenna but wanting to help, gives her the name of a good therapist. And to Jenna's surprise, it does help, immensely. She can't tell Dr. Nemrow everything, but she tells her about all the mistakes she made from 13 to 30, how she doesn't even recognize the person she was then, and how hard it is to try to remedy the situation now. How she feels like she will always be haunted by the person she used to be, and how she's lost so many important things because of that person. And talking about it really does help.
She doesn't date much—just not interested, which she supposes is a function of feeling so much younger than the people around her. Being forced into the adult world has forced her to mature a lot faster than she would have otherwise, but the fact remains that in her head she's only a teenager. Actually, the only long-term relationship she's ever had was with a college student, a 23-year-old named Daniel who got teased by his friends that he must have a thing for older women (which always made her laugh, because the truth was that she felt like she was dating an older man). The fact is, there's only one man who's actually her physical age who she's ever been attracted to. But it's best not to think about that.
But all things considered, by the time the summer of 2009 rolls around, Jenna is feeling good about life. She's been out of therapy for a while, and she almost never dwells on the fact that in another life, she'd have graduated from high school this year. She has made real friends who wouldn't willingly sell her out. She has a good job where the higher-ups love her work and the fact that circulation numbers have gone up since she arrived. And she almost never thinks about Matt anymore.
Until she's sitting at a table at some twee sandwich and soup shop on her block, waiting for her meal to show up, and she hears a voice she hasn't heard in five years: "Hi, Jenna."
Her head pops up, and without her realizing it, she grins so wide it nearly splits her in two. "Matty," she says softly.
A huge part of her wants to throw her arms around him, but she's fairly sure Wendy wouldn't like that, so she holds herself back. "What are you doing in New York?"
He fidgets a little, a movement that is so Matt that it makes her want to cry. "Living here, now."
Wendy's no longer at her job in Chicago? She opens her mouth to ask, and at the same time Matt tries to speak, and they quickly break off, chuckle a bit awkwardly, and lapse into silence. Jenna still considers Matt her best friend, but a confession of love, given five years ago as wedding guests mingled downstairs, hovers between them like a ghost, stealing and mangling her words when she tries to speak. He is equally quiet, and they stand there for a time that feels like days but is really only moments.
And then, without warning, Rob appears. "Sorry," he says, slipping an arm around her waist, "long line for the bathroom."
Matt grows still, and he looks down at the arm around Jenna's waist, and Jenna racks her brain for a way to tell Rob to get off without sounding rude. It's only their third date, after all; no need to get so possessive. And also, as illogical as it is—because he's a married man, for goodness' sake—she doesn't want Matt to think she's seriously dating this guy.
But maybe it doesn't matter, because Matt is smiling awkwardly and shoving his hands in his pockets and backing toward the door. "Good to see you, Jenna," he says, and he's gone.
She breaks things off with Rob after that, which she doesn't feel particularly bad about; she wasn't that into him. And she goes back to her normal life, where she works and hangs out with friends, and she makes it nearly a week before the curiosity overcomes her and she pulls open her laptop and Googles "matt flamhaff new york." A website comes up, Matt Flamhaff Photography, which she opens quickly then stumbles around the site for a few moments (she may be able to use a computer now, but she'll never have the fluency that her colleagues do—the comfortable ease that comes with growing up on this technology) before finding the About link.
The address given there for his studio confirms it: Matt is back in the Village.
Equally intriguing is the link at the bottom of the contact page: Blog. How could she not click on it? It turns out to be simply a professional blog, where he talks about his latest projects and posts some of his work (he's branched out from just doing product photography, and she hopes that his stint at Poise is what gave him the confidence to try something new), but it gives her a very interesting piece of information: he's working on a shoot all this week at Riverside Park.
And she's not going to do anything about it because surely they've both been happier keeping their distance, and surely Wendy would disapprove of Jenna showing up at Matt's shoot. She tells herself this every ten minutes for the next two days, and yet, Friday on her lunch break, she finds herself heading across town to Riverside Park. Just for a glimpse, she tells herself firmly. And anyway, he was her best friend from age 3 to 13, and it's not unreasonable to go see your best friend who has unexpectedly moved back to town.
But it turns out even a glimpse may be impossible. The shoot is huge and Matt is buried somewhere in the thick of it, and as she hesitantly steps closer a man with a clipboard stops her. "Are you supposed to be here?" he asks.
She hesitates. "No," she admits.
He raises his eyebrows at her, and she takes the hint and keeps walking, down the sidewalk, past the shoot, away from Matty yet again, why is she always walking away from him, but what did she expect to happen anyway, and then suddenly—"Jenna!"
She turns with a shy smile. "Matty."
He's jogging up to her, a stack of papers in one hand and an old film camera in the other, while the man with the clipboard stands back at the edge of the shoot area looking annoyed. "What are you doing here?"
She considers lying, pretending that she just happened along on her lunch break, but it'd be a transparent lie—she doesn't work anywhere near here. "I wanted to come say hi," she admits hesitantly.
A strange look crosses his face. "How did you know where I was?"
Another moment she'd like to lie, but doesn't. "Your blog." She gives a little uncomfortable laugh. "That makes me sound like a stalker."
He shakes his head fervently. "No, it's—"
"Flamhaff!" It's the man with the clipboard, pointing at his watch impatiently.
Matt looks annoyed and apologetic. "Look, I've got to go," he says.
"It's fine," she says. "I shouldn't have come anyway—"
"No," Matt says firmly. "I'm glad you did." He glances back at Clipboard Man. "Look, my shoot's done at four. Do you want to meet me for dinner?"
Don't read anything into it, she tells herself firmly. He's still a married man. "Sure," she says casually.
"Six o'clock," he says, starting to walk backward from Jenna. "At the place I saw you at last week."
"I'll be there!" she calls. And she turns away before he can see the smile to bloom across her face.
But it's not a date. He's a married man, so it's not a date and she's not going to get excited about it, because maybe the old Jenna didn't care about things like that, but new Jenna does, and she will not be old Jenna again. And anyway, she's sure Matty isn't capable of violating someone's trust like that.
She's so determined about this that she doesn't even let herself go home and change into something nicer between the end of work and dinner. In fact she stays at work until 5:30 so that she barely has enough time to get to the restaurant at 6; freshening up isn't even an option. Because she's not going to let herself think of this as anything more than dinner with an old friend.
Matt's already there when she arrives, waiting just inside the front door, and she smiles when she sees him. "Matty."
He laughs in that shy way of his, looking down at the floor. "You know," he says, "you're the only person who still calls me that. Even my grandma stopped."
Her brow furrows. "Do you want me to stop?"
"No," he says quickly, and the shy smile is back. "It's . . . I like it."
They get in line to order at the counter. "What have you been up to?" he asks.
So she tells him about her job and her apartment, and after they've ordered and found an empty table by the window, she tells him about Poise and Sparkle and Lucy—she normally doesn't tell people these things, but if there's anyone she can trust, it's Matty. And as she'd known he would be, he is deeply sympathetic, and she looks into his concerned brown eyes and starts kicking herself all over again for ever drifting apart from him.
When their sandwiches arrive, he downs half of his before she's had a bite of hers. She recognizes this mood of his; when he's anxious, he gets extra fidgety and his appetite grows. So she tries to sound reassuring. "So," she says with a smile, "how long have you been back in town?"
"Uh, six months."
Six months and this is the first she's heard of it? But then she thinks, she didn't know what he was up to in Chicago, why would she know what he's up to in New York?
"Why did you move back?"
He shrugs. "It's home, I guess. I lived here for twelve years. And it's close to my parents. Plus I still knew a lot of people so it was pretty easy to get my photography business going again."
She looks at him curiously. "Right, but . . . what about Wendy's job? As an anchorperson in Chicago?"
And now it's Matt's turn to stare. "Wendy?"
"Your wife?" Why is he acting like this is a strange question?
Matt is giving her the oddest look. "Jenna, Wendy is . . . not in the picture anymore."
She drops her fork. "What?"
He shakes his head. "I figured you knew. I thought my parents would have told your parents."
All she manages to say is a strangled "No."
"Well," he says, eyes fixed on the table, "we got a divorce. About a year ago."
She almost doesn't know how to react, because most of her is sorry for Matt's misfortune but a part of her she's been silencing for five years is waking up and whispering in awe-filled joy that Matt is free. But the sympathetic side is the one that gets control of her mouth. "Matty, I'm so sorry."
He shrugs uncomfortably, still not meeting her eyes. And if it were anyone else she wouldn't dare ask this next question, but she knows Matt—or at least she did when they were 13—and she knows that talking helps him get through difficult emotions. So she asks gently, "Do you mind telling me about it?" And when he looks up and meets her eyes, she sees she was right: he wants to talk about it. So she smiles encouragingly.
He smiles back at her, although it's not a happy smile. "I don't know," he says. "It was—things were good for the first year. We were really happy, I thought. We were talking about having kids. And I was getting used to Chicago, and my business was growing, and things were good. But then . . . things got worse. She started staying late at work—really late, sometimes. Some days I never even saw her. And she claimed it was just new responsibilities at work, and I was worried it was more than that, but I never talked to her about it because she'd get all . . . the littlest things would set her off, and even when I was trying to stay out of her way, we'd have these fights. She claimed it was stress."
He falls silent, and Jenna gently prods, "But it wasn't?"
"It was a guy at work. One of the other anchors, actually. She was the one who told me about it; she was tired of keeping secrets. And I think she wanted me to be furious and kick her out so she'd have a reason to leave. She actually asked me, 'So when are you going to file for divorce?' But I couldn't do it. I'd already sacrificed so much for this marriage." And here he and Jenna both shift uncomfortably, and Jenna thinks that it's a safe bet that they're both thinking of the same thing.
"So I asked her to see a counselor with me. We went for six months, and I thought it was going well, and then one day I got home from a shoot and she was waiting by the door. She said she was taking a new position in Seattle and she didn't want me to come with her." He shrugs at Jenna and though his expression is mostly calm and resigned, she can read the emotions in his eyes: pain and guilt and just a bit of embarrassment, like he's ashamed he couldn't keep his marriage together.
Jenna can't muster much more than a whisper. "Matty, I'm so sorry," she says again.
He looks down at the table. "It's been almost a year," he says. "The worst part of it is wondering if I could have done something differently. If I'd been a better husband, maybe she wouldn't have cheated. But other than that, I'm okay. I really am."
Their sandwiches are gone, and he glances outside. "You want to walk for a bit?"
With Matty? Especially now that she knows he's single? Yes, she absolutely does. But she's not going to do throw herself at him or anything; it's been five years, and she has no idea how he feels about her now. And what is it he said the day of the wedding? They've gone down different paths for so long. But she's also not going to give up. As she's fond of quoting, love is a battlefield. So she says, "I'd love to walk."
They walk aimlessly for a few minutes, both silent and uncomfortable, until Matt speaks, not looking at her. "How are things going with that guy?"
"What guy?"
And now he does look at her. "The guy I saw you with last week."
"Rob?" she laughs. "That's over. No, that never even started. We only went out a couple times, and he thought it was all a lot more serious than I ever did. That was our last date."
"Oh," says Matt, and the tone of his voice and the slump of his shoulders are unmistakable: he is relieved. And her heart starts to pound.
He doesn't seem to know what to say next, though, so she speaks up again. "Ice cream?"
He acquiesces and she leads him to her favorite shop. There's a long line—she doesn't mind, because it prolongs her time with him, and he doesn't complain either—so they settle in to wait.
After a few moments of awkward silence, she speaks again. "I never asked, what brought you to that restaurant last week? It's nowhere near the Village."
He hesitates, and then he grins embarrassedly. "I was looking for you."
She freezes. "What?" she demands, and apparently her voice is louder than she intended because the teenage girls in front of them in line turn around and give her odd looks.
"Yeah," he says, rubbing the back of his neck, "I asked my mom to find out where you live. I—I deleted your number after . . . everything; it was an uncomfortable reminder. So a few weeks ago, I asked my mom where you live, and she got it from your mom, and I came to visit you, but when I got to your street I looked in a window and there you were."
"You wanted to come visit me?"
"Yeah," he repeats.
"Why?" she demands.
He shoves his hands deeper into his pockets and shrugs. "Well . . ."
Part of her says not to be pushy, but the other part of her says that this is the first time she's felt anything like hope in five years, and after what she's been through, she deserves a little hope. "Matty?" she insists.
He looks so embarrassed and awkward, but he can't fight the smile that's tugging on his lips, and she wants to cheer. But she schools her features into a serious expression. "Matty," she says in the same tone she once used to insist on seeing his tongue, "you're dodging the question."
He looks up at her from under his brows, giving her that shy half smile of his, and the girls in front of them in line drop all pretense of not listening to their conversation. "Because," Matt says slowly, "I missed you."
"Mmm hmm," she says, nodding thoughtfully, and his smile grows.
"Because it only took me about a day of being back in New York to realize that I wanted you back in my life," he adds, sounding more confident this time.
She fights (and fails) to keep her face austere. "This is a very interesting development, Mr. Flamhaff."
He laughs, and then his expression turns serious. "Because I'm still in love with you, and I had to ask you if there's any chance that you still—"
He doesn't finish because Jenna has launched herself at him. Behind her, the teenage girls are applauding, and by the sounds of it, other patrons at the ice cream store are joining in. Jenna doesn't bother responding or even pulling away from Matt. It took her seventeen years of lost time and five years of real time to reach this point, and she doesn't want to waste another second.
o.o.o