"I'm just thrilled she's not Millie. I didn't want that wedge of iceberg lettuce at my wedding," Magnolia added.
"Magnolia, I swear to god, if you start with that again," Ash warned.
"Oh, stop it, Ash," Mrs. Santillian chided. "We're not bickering this morning. Your sister's new eyelashes are too fragile for dramatic squabbling."
"Don't explain that to me," Ash said. "Whatever it is, don't tell me."
Ignoring him, Mrs. Santillian turned back toward me. "You're coming to our family dinner tomorrow," she announced.
Ash gasped."Mom."
"Oh yes, you're definitely coming to dinner," Magnolia said, gesturing toward me with her phone. "I'm calling Linden right now. I'll bet you my life savings he's forgotten he's supposed to be there."
Again, I met Ash's gaze in the mirror. His brows pitched up as if he was asking whether I wanted him to jump in front of this speeding train for me.
I stared at him for a moment but then I glanced away because—because I didn't know what I wanted anymore.
* * *
I gazed down the street,watching the car carrying Ash's mother and sister inching through the jammed intersection. It was a hot summer day and everyone in their right mind should've been out of the city. This was a beach day, a lake day. An anywhere but here day.
But Ash and I, we were here. We were hereandalone on the sidewalk. Again.
He was right behind me. I could feel it just as much as I could feel the plump water molecules in the air and the sweat gathering at the back of my neck.
"I, uh, I—or, we," he stammered, his words coming from over my shoulder, a distance too close to be considered polite. He wasn't polite. No, that wasn't how I'd characterize my boss. He was direct and assertive, and at times, abrasive. "I need to get some work done. I completely lost yesterday and the coming week is packed, so I can't let that slide. I should go home and—and catch up. You don't have to come with me. You can do whatever you want. I'm sure you know that," he added, mostly to himself. "You've probably had enough of me."
Direct, assertive, abrasive. Also ooey gooey like a perfectly underbaked brownie.
"Not sure what you're planning on doing but I need to remind you about the one-hand situation." I shifted to face him. A thick layer of scruff covered his jaw and even though it was the worst idea in the world, worse than packing my life in the middle of the night and hopping on the first flight to the East Coast with nothing more than a Post-it note of explanation in my wake, I reached up and cupped that scruffy jaw. Just for a moment. Just to feel him against my skin. "I do believe it is I who hasn't been willing to be shaken loose."
He laughed at that and I realized I enjoyed the feel of him laughing as much as the sound. I pulled my hand away, shoved it in the pocket of my jeans. At that, Ash's smile fell. His brows pinched and the warmth in his eyes—all that soft brownie goodness—chilled. I glanced at the street again. It was one thing to be on the receiving end of that chill when it was his prerogative but another when it was self-inflicted.
"Do you want me to get a cab for you?" I asked, stepping closer to the curb. "I'm not sure but I don't think it's that far back to your apartment. We could walk but maybe you should probably take it easy, considering"—I tipped my head toward his shoulder—"all of that."
"It is too fucking hot to walk around the block, Zelda," he replied with that well-worn exasperation he favored so much. "Sorry but I'm in no mood to hike through the Common, down Charles Street, under an overpass, up Cambridge Street, and across Haymarket Square to my building."
I stared at him, blinking, my hand in the air as I hailed a cab. "Are you ever in the mood?"
His lips parted and his eyebrow bent up. I didn't expect him to reply and he didn't, not when he held the car door open for me, not while I scooted across the seat, not when he dropped down beside me, not when I rattled off his address, and not when the driver lurched us forward despite the crush of traffic.
He didn't say a word to me in the cab and I didn't expect any. When Ash didn't want to share his thoughts, he locked them down. I imagined there was a large strongbox in his head and it was overflowing with thoughts and feelings he didn't want to examine. And I was certain he believed that was a smart, efficient way to operate.
Not that I was much different. I didn't bury the things I didn't want to confront. I ran away from them. I found a brand-new disaster, another world to tape back together and resent for being broken in the first place, and then I'd run away from that one too.
Wasn't that it? Wasn't that the highly defensible thesis of Zelda? And wasn't I bound to do it again? Every single time I thought I was finding the gig, the place, the people, the guy, the state of comfort with myself that would finally translate into being a grown-ass woman whose life was greater than the contents of a backpack and more stable than a Jenga game, I slipped right into those old patterns. I bailed on grad school, took the go-nowhere gigs, settled in the wrong places, fell in with shallow friends who wouldn't notice I'd gone, hooked up with a guy who was no prize, and kept on wrestling with which part of this misshapen construct of myself I should smooth down next.
Some would say it was easy. I was taking theeasyway out. There was nothing easy about this. It wasn't easy to meander from place to place, the totality of myself contained within a hard pass of a résumé and a storybook of tattoos and a bit of blue hair because I'd tried everything else.
This wasn't easy and it wasn't going to be easy when my current disaster ended. I'd have a pocketful of moody glares and gooey moments and my complete inability to know better.
"Wait," Ash called from behind me as I climbed out of the cab and marched toward his high-rise building, walking as fast as I could without running. "Zelda,wait."
I stopped at the doors but didn't turn toward him. "What are you working on today? How can I help? Better yet, let me page through your email and your calendar. I'll figure it out from there."
His hand met the small of my back and I startled, skittering forward a step. "Sorry," he murmured, his hand still pressed to my sweat-dampened t-shirt. "I didn't mean to—"
"Let's just go upstairs and get things sorted out." The words tumbled out in a breathless heap, each one more panicked than the one before. Though it wasn't panic, not really. It was the moment when the rush of jumping without a fully sewn parachute transitioned from exhilaration to desperation and I started working double time to piece it all together before it was too late. "You'll feel better when you have everything sorted. I always do."
