Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney - The Nest

But there he was, shirtless, on her bed. Leo, whom she’d been a little in love with for always, and all she cared about in that moment was the length of his body against hers.

“Everyone’s fucked up,” she said, even though she didn’t believe that for a second. She wasn’t. Most people she knew weren’t. But she also knew this: Nothing was a sure thing; every choice was just an educated guess, or a leap into a mysterious abyss. People might not change but their incentives could.

So the first time she and Leo combusted she’d practically been poised for the breakup. In some inexplicable way she’d been looking forward to it and all its attendant drama, because wasn’t there something nearly lovely — when you were young enough — about guts churning and tear ducts being put to glorious overuse? She recognized the undeniable satisfaction of the first emotional fissure because an unraveling was still something grown-up and, therefore, life affirming. See? the broken heart signaled. I loved enough to lose; I felt enough to weep . Because when you were young enough, the stakes of love were so very small, nearly insignificant. How tragic could a breakup be when it was a part of the fabric of expectation from the beginning? The hackneyed fights, the late-night phone calls, the indignant recounting for friends over multiple drinks and in earshot of an appropriately flirtatious bartender — it was theater for a certain type of person, a certain well-educated New Yorker, and it was, then, for Stephanie, too.

Until it wasn’t. Until she stopped being young enough. Until, like an allergic reaction, every time she exposed herself to Leo, the welts rose more rapidly, itched more intensely, and took longer to go away.

She didn’t remember which time (second? third?) she’d caught Leo cheating and kicked him out and he was apologizing and begging and she was mustering her reinforcements (whose patience was almost gone, strained to the limit, incredulity replacing empathy, what did you expect? why would this time be different?) and her assistant, Pilar, wrote the Kübler-Ross stages of grief on a cocktail napkin to chart her breakups with Leo: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.

“You get exactly forty-eight hours for each,” Pilar said. “It’s all you need, believe me.” She opened her Filofax. “That puts you smack at acceptance next Thursday at six in time for cocktails. See you then.”

“Don’t act like I’m the most pathetic person on earth,” Stephanie had said to Pilar. “Because I’m not, not by a long shot.”

“I’m acting like you’re the most pathetic version of you. Because you are, times a million.”

And that was finally what she had to ask herself, Did loving Leo make her a lesser version of herself?

WHEN LEO LEFT HER HOUSE IN BROOKLYN,he left almost everything behind, including his cell phone and wallet, which was a nice touch, a convincing feint. When he didn’t come home the first night, Stephanie vowed to kick him out the minute he was off his bender and reappeared contrite and exhausted.

The second night, she started poking around the house and realized certain things were missing: a small duffel of hers and a few of his nicer clothes. The shoes he’d had custom made in Italy. The shoes were the tip-off; he treated those fucking shoes like they were infants, wrapping them in burgundy-felt swaddling clothes. Also gone: a small picture she’d taken of the two of them with her iPhone one night, a picture of her laughing while he was playfully biting her left ear that she’d printed out and tucked into the corner of a mirror above her dresser. The one thing she hoped he left behind, the thing she searched the house from top to bottom looking for, wasn’t there: Bea’s leather bag with the new story inside. Later, she would realize it never even occurred to her to look for a note from Leo. That he might leave Bea’s story seemed possible; that he would leave Stephanie an explanation, an admission of wrongdoing in and of itself, did not. And she would be more stung than she’d ever admit to discover he’d taken the time to send his siblings the decoy e-mail buying himself the space to flee.

Tonight was Melody’s birthday dinner and Stephanie had told herself all day she wasn’t going, but then finally felt obliged to tell his family in person that Leo was missing. Missing was probably too optimistic a word, she knew. Missing implied something accidental might have happened, that Leo had run up against some trouble, was trying to get home and was somehow being prevented. And although those things could have been true, Stephanie knew they weren’t. As she headed toward Jack’s place, she decided she would be brief. Say what she knew and then quickly leave. She wouldn’t stick around for the likely hysteria.

Acceptance. She had to be honest with herself; she hadn’t told anyone about Leo’s disappearance and the pregnancy because she was holding on to a sliver of hope, and hope, when it came to Leo, was a one-way ticket to despair. She would go to the dinner, tell the truth, and unburden herself, because that’s what someone would do who was not Leo, who had moved beyond anger — and hope — to acceptance.

Standing in the rain in front of Jack’s apartment building on West Street, she steeled herself and rang his buzzer.

Nora and Louisa were sitting toward the middle of the long table and Melody was standing over them, livid.

“Tell them,” she said, gesturing around the table where everyone was seated. “Tell them what you just told me.”

“Jack got married,” Nora said.

“Not that!” Melody said. “Tell them about seeing Leo.”

“You’re married ?” Bea said to Jack and Walker. Walker raised his hands in a gesture of surrender and shook his head, absolving himself. He’d wanted to invite them all.

“When did you see Leo?” Jack asked Nora, ignoring Bea.

“Last October,” Nora said.

“Tell them the other part,” Melody said.

“He was in Central Park. Flat on his back,” Louisa said.

“In the park?” Bea turned her attention to Louisa now. “He was on his back in Central Park?”

“Drugs,” Melody said, biting off the word. “He was buying drugs.”

“I didn’t say that!” Louisa said. “I said he could have been buying drugs.”

“But you didn’t see him with drugs?” Jack asked.

“We just saw him on his back,” Nora said. “It was after that snowstorm, it was super icy. I think he just slipped.”

“It was the day we all met him at the Oyster Bar,” Melody said. “He supposedly came straight from Brooklyn. Remember? He said he was late because of the subway, so why was he up in Central Park?”

The three Plumbs sat, thinking. Why had Leo been in the park?

“Even if he was in the park to buy something,” Bea said, “what does that mean?”

Melody snorted. “Seriously? He’d been out of rehab for all of three days.”

“Okay,” Bea said. “But what does that have to do with us?” She was already tired of this conversation, tired of talking and thinking about and waiting on Leo, and also feeling secretly relieved and pleased about the stack of pages in her bag, the ones with his notes on them.

“When did you see Leo last?” Jack asked Bea.

Bea cowered a little in her chair; she’d hoped not to have to answer that question tonight. “I haven’t seen him in a few weeks,” she said, pouring herself more champagne.

“I thought he’d been hanging around your office. That’s what Jack told me,” Melody said.

“He had been,” Bea said. “But he hasn’t been around lately.”