They’re lucky to have you, Charlie writes. Dusty especially. Anyone who’d go to bat for a “not bad” book is a saint.
Indignation flames through me. And anyone who’d miss that book’s obvious potential is arguably incompetent.
For the first time, he doesn’t respond right away. I tip my head back, groaning at the (alarmingly starry; is this the first time I’ve looked up?) sky as I try to figure out how — or whether — to backtrack.
A prick draws my gaze to my thigh, and I slap away a mosquito, only to catch two more landing on my arm. Gross. I fold up my laptop and carry it inside, along with my books, phone, and mostly empty wineglass.
As I’m tidying up, my phone pings with Charlie’s reply.
It wasn’t personal, he says, then another message comes in. I’ve been known to be too blunt. Apparently I don’t make the best first impression.
And I, I reply, am actually known to be very punctual. You caught me on a bad day.
What do you mean? he asks.
That lunch, I say. That was how it all started, wasn’t it? I was late, so he was rude, so I was rude back, so he hated me, so I hated him, and so on and so forth.
He doesn’t need to know I’d just gotten dumped in a four-minute phone call, but it seems worth mentioning those were extenuating circumstances. I’d just gotten some bad news. That’s why I was late.
He doesn’t reply for a full five minutes. Which is annoying, because I’m not in the habit of having real-time conversations over email, and of course he could just stop replying at any moment and go to bed, while I’ll still be here, staring at a wall, wide awake.
If I had my Peloton, I could burn off some of this energy.
I didn’t care that you were late, he says finally.
You looked at your watch. Pointedly, I write back. And said, if I recall, “You’re late.”
I was trying to figure out if I could catch a flight, Charlie replies.
Did you make it? I ask.
No, he says. Got distracted by two gin martinis and a platinum blond shark who wanted me dead.
Not dead, I say. Lightly mauled, maybe, but I would’ve stayed away from your face.
Didn’t realize you were a fan, he writes.
A zing goes down my spine and right back up it, like my top vertebrae just touched a live wire. Is he flirting? Am I? I’m bored, yes, but not that bored. Never that bored.
I deflect with, Just trying to watch out for your eyebrows. If anything happened to those things, it would change your entire stormy scowl, and you’d need a new nickname.
If I lost my eyebrows, he says, somehow I think there would be no shortage of new nicknames available to me. I’m guessing you’d have some suggestions.
I’d need time to think, I say. Wouldn’t want to make any rash decisions.
No, of course not, he replies. Seconds later, another line follows. I’ll let you get back to your night.
And you to your Bigfoot novella, I type, then backspace and force myself to leave the message unanswered.
I shake my head, trying to clear the image of growly Charlie Lastra scowling at his e-reader in a hotel somewhere nearby, his frown deepening whenever he reaches something salacious.
But that image, it seems, is all my brain wants to dwell on. Tonight when I’m lying in bed, wide awake and trying to convince myself the world won’t end if I drift off, this is what I’ll come back to, my own mental happy place.
4
I WAKE, HEART RACING, skin cold and damp. My eyes snap open on a dark room, jumping from an unfamiliar door to the outline of a window to the snoring lump beside me.
Libby. The relief is intense and immediate, an ice bucket dumped over me all at once. The whirring of my heart starts its signature post-nightmare cooldown.
Libby is here. Everything must be okay.
I piece together my surroundings.
Goode’s Lily Cottage, Sunshine Falls, North Carolina.
It was only the nightmare.
Maybe nightmare isn’t the right word. The dream itself is nice, until the end.
It starts with me and Libby coming into the old apartment, setting down keys and bags. Sometimes Bea and Tala are with us, or Brendan, smiling good-naturedly while we fill up every gap with frantic chatter.
This time, it’s just the two of us.
We’re laughing about something — a play we just saw. Newsies, maybe. From dream to dream, those details change, and as soon as I sit up, breathing hard in the dark of this unfamiliar room, they fritter off like petals on a breeze.
What remains is the deep ache, the yawning canyon.
The dream goes like this:
Libby tosses her keys into the bowl by the door. Mom looks up from the table in the kitchenette, legs curled under her, nightgown pulled over them.
“Hey, Mama,” Libby says, walking right past her toward our room, the one we shared when we were kids.
“My sweet girls!” Mom cries, and I bend to sweep a kiss across her cheek on my way to the fridge. I make it all the way there before the chill sets in. The feeling of wrongness.
I turn and look at her, my beautiful mother. She’s gone back to reading, but when she catches me staring, she breaks into a puzzled smile. “What?”
I feel tears in my eyes. That should be the first sign that I’m dreaming — I never cry in real life — but I never notice this incongruity.
She looks the same, not a day older. Like springtime incarnate, the kind of warmth your skin gulps down after a long winter.
She doesn’t seem surprised to see us, only amused, and then concerned. “Nora?”
I go toward her, wrap my arms around her, and hold tight. She circles me in hers too, her lemon-lavender scent settling over me like a blanket. Her glossy strawberry waves fall across my shoulders as she runs a hand over the back of my head.
“Hey, sweet girl,” she says. “What’s wrong? Let it out.”
She doesn’t remember that she’s gone.
I’m the only one who knows she doesn’t belong. We walked in the door, and she was there, and it felt so right, so natural, that none of us noticed it right away.
“I’ll make tea,” Mom says, wiping my tears away. She stands and walks past me, and I know before I turn that when I do, she won’t be there anymore.
I let her out of my sight, and now she’s gone. I can never stop myself from looking. From turning to the quiet, still room, feeling that painful emptiness in my chest like she’s been carved out of me.
And that’s when I wake up. Like if she can’t be there, there’s no point in dreaming at all.
I check the alarm clock on the bedside table. It’s not quite six, and I didn’t fall asleep until after three. Even with my sister’s snores shivering through the bed, the house was too quiet. Crickets chirped and cicadas sang in a steady rhythm, but I missed the one-off honk of an annoyed cabdriver, or the sirens of a fire truck rushing past. Even the drunk guys shouting from opposite sides of the street as they headed home after a night of barhopping.
Eventually, I downloaded an app that plays cityscape sounds and set it in the windowsill, turning it up slowly so it wouldn’t jar Libby awake. Only once I’d reached full volume did I drift off.
But I’m wide awake now.
My pang of homesickness for my mother rapidly shape-shifts into longing for my Peloton.
I am a parody of myself.
I pull on a sports bra and leggings and trip downstairs, then tug on my sneakers and step out into the cool darkness of morning.
Mist hovers across the meadow, and in the distance, through the trees, the first sprays of purply pinks stretch along the horizon. As I cross the dewy grass toward the footbridge, I lift my arms over my head, stretching to each side before picking up my pace.