Work Text:
What is the reason for it?
Why is it there?
Is it my body or my brain?
Why do we talk about it?
What would that do?
24 hours every day
—David Byrne on love
✤
The revelation strikes Rebecca when she arrives at work on 21 December, the shortest day of the year. She hangs up her coat and sets down her bag and plugs in her laptop and the daily awareness that Ted won’t be here to bring her biscuits sets in, and today of all days she’s hit hard by the realization that she’s been stuck waiting for him to come back.
It’s not that she’s delusional; she understands intellectually that there’s no evidence that Ted will return to Richmond. He’s been back in the States for over six months, and nothing about his text messages and the occasional voice note or call suggest the regret and homesickness she’d almost hoped he’d feel. He made the right choice, clearly. He’s happy—or happier, anyway, and it isn’t her business to have opinions about the distinction.
It isn’t entirely clear what’s different about today, why it occurs to her to question this everyday feeling, this everyday marking of an absence, but the thought insists upon itself and she can’t turn away from it: she’s wasting time she could spend on real things. She’s forcing her memory of Ted into places he can no longer be.
She ought to focus on the here and now, and not only sporadically (a date here, a new project there, a skim through some of the self-helpy articles her mother insists on sending her so she doesn’t feel like she’s lying when asked if she’s read them). She ought to really, really try to live without Ted because living without Ted is reality. No more hour-by-hour comparisons between the day she’s having and the day she would be having if he was there. She’s got to get over it and try something new.
✤
Rebecca tries to settle into her new resolve over the course of her morning. It’s just that the comparisons happen so naturally, with no effort at all. She knows there’s an irony in the way her newfound resolution to stop propels her more deeply into thoughts of him, but how could it not?
Because Ted exists. At any given moment, he’s behind the Kansas line or the Missouri line in the city where he works or in the city he lays his head to rest at night. He stands at six feet one inch tall, he coaches in a youth league, he eats pizza and barbecue, drinks coffee and protein shakes and beer, makes himself order a salad at lunch at least a couple times a week. He builds Lego with Henry when football training and homework are done, and he takes him to the movies and to professional matches on the weekends. Lots of people see him every day. She is not one of them.
Ted was—is—the kind of person she most appreciates. Warm and caring and complicated. Standoffish about only a few things, open about many, honest when it matters most. He existed. He continues to exist. He was right for her (not that she’d ever managed to say so), but he can’t be here, and she has to accept it. It’s a scary thought—more frightening than the limbo of possibilities she’s been stubbornly living in. He was right to leave while Henry was still young enough for the absence to smooth into nothing but a blip within his growing-up. An interesting part of Henry’s childhood that meant he got to go up in the London Eye and take some plane rides and hear lots of funny accents.
If Ted’s choice had been wrong, maybe they could have been together, but even then their relationship would have coexisted with his wrongness about his child. But Ted was right, and so they can’t be together, and she has to stop waiting for something to change.
The truth of it is a heavy weight in her stomach. She breathes, sitting at her desk staring past the words on her computer screen until the arrival of the truth stops making her nauseous. Then she wanders back downstairs to the breakroom. She’s got a nice tea setup in her office, of course, but she’d like to see if someone’s brought anything to snack on for breakfast, something to take her mind off things.
Later, she meets with Roy and does her best to consider him not in comparison to Ted but for the coach he is in his own right. She takes care of a few emails she’d been avoiding; it’s easy to tackle them now that she’s decided her head is clear.
In the early afternoon, she’s walking back up to her office after a sponsorship meeting when her phone pings with a text notification. She doesn’t wait to check—it’s muscle memory, that sense that any text might be from Ted and therefore must be read immediately—and she has to grip the handrail to remain steady on the stairs.
Hey, boss. I really miss you, Ted says. Could we chat this weekend?
Ted exists, because who else could stab her in the heart from 4,000 miles away?
✤
Although it makes Rebecca feel itchy to leave him on read, she doesn’t immediately answer Ted’s text. She and Keeley have an understanding that texts sent during the workday may go unresponded to for hours, same with Flo, and she has no qualms about sticking to her boundaries about when she puts effort into chatting with her mother, and her other friendships tend to be casual enough and with busy enough people that she never worries much over timings. But she always gets back to Ted right away. She doesn’t hear from him all that often, and he’s got to have picked up on the fact that every time he reaches out she thrusts aside everything else so she can focus on him.
Not today. She finishes her workday on the early side. It’s the last one until next week, after Christmas. With Christmas Eve and Christmas Day landing at the weekend this year, she’d been grateful that for once the team didn’t have a scheduled match and could enjoy full days off for the holiday. But now, selfishly, it just feels like a lot of time. She’ll spend her holiday delivering presents, and paying her mum a call, and from Christmas afternoon onward she and Keeley have plans involving Chinese takeaway and a movie, the at-home version of the way Keeley’s best friend growing up used to spend Christmas Day with her family. It’s enough; it has to be enough. She has more than enough. And yet she already knows the next few days will feel long.
And what does Ted mean, that they should talk this weekend? She can only imagine how busy he’ll be with the perfect over-the-top American Christmas he’s going to enjoy with his son. He’ll probably barely be able to squeeze in time to wrap last-minute gifts amidst what’s surely a packed schedule of caroling, decorating snowmen, serving meals at a soup kitchen, work parties and neighborhood parties and sport on the telly, and soaking up every glimmer of delight in Henry’s face because he’s finally there to witness it. He’s too busy to talk to her, and that’s the whole point. His life here wasn’t full enough; his life there is. He shouldn’t have suggested this weekend.
As early as it is, nowhere near evening yet, the sun sets while she’s in the car on the way home. She reminds herself that the days are going to get longer after this. This is a turning point, a short, quiet, sad day to say goodbye to Ted, and as the days expand to take up more space, she’ll be on her own.
✤
The entire next day, there’s a leaden slug of guilt sunk into her stomach. She doesn’t reread the text, but she knows it’s there. In theory, she spends the day doing whatever she feels like, but she can only enjoy being off from work in distracted little bits and pieces. If the sunlight lasts longer than yesterday, it’s by mere milliseconds, and when night settles in she feels even worse.
His feelings are probably hurt.
But so are mine, she reminds herself. She goes to bed early.
✤
In the morning, Rebecca wakes without an alarm for her second day off. Sitting up, she grabs her phone from the nightstand and sees a voice note from Ted sent at—she calculates—nearly midnight his time. Which was less than an hour ago. For the first time, she dreads hearing his voice. She presses play right away.
“Hey, Rebecca,” Ted says. He sounds tired but pleasant. “I should’ve put this in my message the other day, that, you know, I know you’re busy, and you don’t have to feel bad if you can’t talk this weekend. But I did wanna check back in on that.” His words all have soft edges, like he’s lying in bed about to fall asleep but there’s one last thing he wants to tell her before the day is through. “It’d be great to talk to you for a little while, if we can find a time that works out. What about Christmas Day, my afternoon your evening? It’ll be weird not spending Christmas with you this year. And it’d be good to hear about—um, how you’re doing, what you got going on, all that. Okay, uh—bye now.”
Rebecca flops back against the pillows. Fuck.
✤
By the time she’s brushed her teeth and washed her face and is downstairs making tea, Rebecca decides she’ll text Ted before lunch. He deserves to know that she’s glad to be his friend but that she needs some time to allow herself to move on from the things she has to let go of. She hopes he doesn’t ask what he means by that. She doesn’t know how to describe the feeling of releasing expectations if they’re expectations she never articulated out loud in the first place. It’s embarrassing to imagine an attempt at a retrospective recounting. Missed chances he probably doesn’t consider misses at all.
She’s getting coffee with Leslie and Julie in the afternoon, but she’ll be home until then, and if she waits until eleven there’ll be no danger of texting him while he’s still awake, no risk of catching him at a time when he’ll just want to stay up later and talk. He’ll have the text waiting for him when he wakes up.
At noon, she still hasn’t managed to send anything. Ted’s probably awake, officially aware of being ignored. She types a long jumble of words in the notes app, afraid of accidentally sending something before she’s ready if she drafts in the text thread itself. It’s all wrong, so she tries something shorter, a simple “You should focus on being with your family at Christmas,” gets as far as pasting it in, then immediately starts a frantic deletion process, heart pounding as the words disappear.
She stays put in the text thread, typing slowly and carefully, feeling every word.
I miss you too. I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner. I want to talk to you on Christmas, but I’m not sure if I can.
It’s a genuine slip of the thumb, spontaneous. Her body’s decision to hit send on behalf of her brain.
Immediately, three little dots.
Would Christmas Eve be better? Ted asks.
Rebecca groans. He doesn’t get it. And why should he? They don’t have a magical connection. They weren’t “meant to be.” His intuition doesn’t transcend oceans and timezones and former bosses who are too chickenshit to talk about their feelings.
She takes a deep breath.
It isn’t my schedule, she types. The problem is, I miss you more than I should. And that’s never going to change unless I make it change. So I think you should spend Christmas focused on Henry, and I’ll spend Christmas focused on where I am, and maybe we can catch up after the holiday?
She wills him to understand this time, hoping she doesn’t regret omitting an even more direct explanation about her decision to accept the shit timing and move on.
He leaves her in suspense for a while, which she supposes is rather fair even if it’s driving her insane. She’s about to lose hope that she’ll hear from him before she has to leave to meet the Higginses, and has in fact gathered her things and is near the door deciding which pair of boots to put on when the text arrives.
I know that feeling.
It’s a standalone text, although she can see he’s typing again, and damn her flushed cheeks and fluttery throat and elevated heartbeat. The symptoms don’t dissipate in the minutes it takes for the next text to arrive.
Henry and I are opening presents on Christmas morning. He’ll get up way too early and I’ll drink a lot of coffee and try to remember that he’s pretty close to growing out of that and that I should savor the enthusiasm before it's replaced by tweenage nonchalance. Mid-morning my mom’s coming over and she and I are making a pretty elaborate lunch. Henry will set the table. By mid-afternoon, my mom will go back home because I’m 87% sure she’s got a new boyfriend she wants to see (her first new boyfriend since about 1974 so that’s a whole cluster of considerations to consider). When she heads out, I’ll drop Henry off at Michelle’s (I’ll get him back the next morning for a few more days, but the three of us decided it’d be cool for him to have some time at both houses on Christmas). She’ll invite me in for a cup of hot cocoa, hoping I’ll say no thanks. I’ll say no thanks. I’ll head back home, and I’ll be thinking about how great it is to live in a house with Henry and for us to have woken up in the same place on Christmas morning. And I’ll be thinking about Richmond, wondering what y’all are up to, feeling pretty sure I can imagine how tipsy everyone is at the party, and how happy you made the kids who received gifts from Santa this year because you made it happen, and I’ll wanna talk with you even though you and I both know it’s not the same as how it used to be. So can I call you on Christmas, right about when I get to that point in my thinking? If it’s a bad time, don’t pick up. No hard feelings. We’ll catch up after the holidays. But if you’re in a place where you want to talk, we’ll have a conversation.
The smile that spreads across her face: involuntary.
The tears that spring to her eyes: unwelcome, considering she really does have to get a move on if she doesn’t want to keep Leslie and Julie waiting.
The text she sends back right away: fully intentional.
Yes, Ted. You can call me on Christmas.
✤
Rebecca wakes up on the evening of Christmas to credits rolling on the TV. It’s deliciously warm on the couch, a blanket tucked around her and Keeley blinking awake next to her, bundled in her own blanket. The coffee table is still strewn with mostly-empty takeaway cartons and wine glasses, still half full.
She’s surprised she fell asleep—all day has been laced with nervous energy. But it’s been a lovely day all the same, the sky spitting snow that didn’t stick, happy kids at the council estate, Deborah on such good behavior that she ended up having the energy to swing by Leslie’s party for a while, and then the perfect afternoon and evening with the best friend a girl could ask for.
Keeley yawns, pushing her blanket down her body so she can stretch. “Did you miss the whole film too?”
“Pretty much.”
“Good sleep, though.”
“Right. Probably needed it.”
On the coffee table, Rebecca’s phone rings.
“Oh, is it Ted?” Keeley asks innocently.
Rebecca giggles. “You know it’s him.”
“Why don’t you go get comfy in your room while you talk to him. I’ll clean up dinner and read my book in here.”
“You’ll still spend the night? We won’t talk forever.”
“Yeah, can’t wait to hear all about it when you’re done,” Keeley says with a grin that soon dissolves into giddy tension. “For god’s sake, answer it!” she shouts, eyebrows raised in incredulity.
When Rebecca answers, she’s nearly out of breath from how close she came to accidentally letting it go to voicemail. “Hello, coach,” she says, blushing at the flirtation she didn’t entirely mean to thread into her voice. She stands up, making her way to the bedroom as the conversation begins.
“Hey, boss.”
“Merry Christmas.”
“You too.”
“Ted, how are you?”
“Um,” Ted says.
Rebecca’s heart plummets and rises again, a thrill ride.
“I’m…pretty good,” Ted clarifies after an age. “Man, though. Christmas. Memories. Families. The whole concept of time. We really said ‘let’s do this every year,’ huh?”
“It’s a lot,” Rebecca agrees.
“Can I just say something?”
“Well,” Rebecca teases, “it’s a phone call, and you rang and I answered, and I very much hope you were planning to speak at regular intervals.”
Ted chuckles. “I guess it’s just—for a couple months now, I’ve been ruminating on something, and I think I’m finally ready to ask you how you feel about it. Which is—which is—look, I don’t know that I was necessarily the right person for the job, but I’ve always felt amazed that we met at exactly the right time. And I guess…doesn’t that seem like it ought to mean something?”
The right time. He’s come to the opposite conclusion she did, and yet their stories complement.
“Ted. No. You were the right person.”
(Still are. Always was. Always will be. Even if it could only be for that short, impossible time.)
“You were,” Rebecca says when he doesn’t respond.
“Well. Thanks.”
She’s sitting on her bed, which is so big and comfortable and warm. Of all the places in this house, she feels particularly at home here. She reads here, sleeps here, spends time with her thoughts. It isn’t always sacred, bringing another person into this room, but she’s only ever done it when she’s wanted to. She took her life back, and this has been the setting. And Ted helped, even if he’s never been in this precise space.
“And see, I’ve been sad about the timing being wrong,” she admits. “I’ve been trying to get over it. I wanted more time with you, and I know that makes me selfish, but I can’t help it.”
“Not selfish,” Ted says gently.
“Then I want to see you,” Rebecca stammers. It suddenly seems possible. “Maybe in the new year. Summer, if you can manage it. Or I’ll come to you.”
“What about this weekend?”
“What?”
“Like I said the other day, I’ll have Henry a few more days, but he heads back to his mom’s Thursday. I could hop on a plane, hang out with y’all for New Years.” He clears his throat. “Hang out with you for New Years.”
“That sounds perfect,” Rebecca says softly.
“Why don’t you tell me about your day,” Ted suggests, “because mine went exactly as I predicted in that text. And then I’ll look at flights for Thursday night and we can decide which one I should buy.”
Rebecca can already hear the scream Keeley’s going to let out when the phone call ends and she heads back downstairs to tell her the news. She really does need to remember that she can’t stay up all night talking to Ted, not when most of what she wants to talk about will be best shared in person, not when Keeley’s waiting. But for now, there’s plenty of time. She settles back against her pillows and begins to tell Ted about her Christmas. She starts at the beginning.