He nods, reasonably uncertain, then hops up, offering me a hand. Feeling balanced again, I insist I help with my bags. “Fine, you can take the heavier one.” He throws the menagerie of shoes in my direction, and even as I struggle to lift it, I feel a teensy bit grateful to be stuck here with someone like him.
An hour later, when we’re both tucked into our beds, lights out and snoring not yet started, Hector whispers into the static void of the room, “Are you awake?”
I’d been awake this whole time, listening to the house sounds. A creak here. A pipe bang there. A woodland creature scurrying across the back patio not far from the door. My anxiety makes it hard to adjust to new sleeping arrangements. Every noise is a possible threat.
“Yes,” I whisper back, though I’m not entirely sure why we’re whispering since we’re not going to wake anyone up down here.
A rustle comes from overhead. The lump of his body, the impression of which I can see through the wooden slats, readjusts.
In the darkness, with my sight dulled, we could be anywhere and be anyone. While I wait for him to say something else, I imagine for a moment that we’re in the undercarriage of a boat. Two guys belowdecks on a yacht charting a Mediterranean voyage. I imagine toasty sand, bothersome sunburn, cocktails in coconuts. It’s soothing, and I’m nearly asleep when—
“I get why you did it, dude.” His words hang heavily, like a mobile of rocks above my head.
“What?” I ask groggily, not understanding in the slightest.
“Why you tried to run off tonight,” he explains. The toilet runs in the other room, the water sounds only making the Italian coastline fantasy more potent. Maybe I wasn’t looking for a real escape, just a mental one. “I wish I were home too,” he admits.
Home. What another highly subjective word. By the way he says it, I can tell Hector means where his family is. The place where he’s welcomed with warm hugs and homemade dishes. For me, home is purely a place I can point to on a map. The Upper East Side is a neighborhood, a subway stop. The apartment—at Sixty-Seventh and Fifth—is a necessary smattering of impeccably designed rooms that I call my place of residence. It’s where I go to rest my head.
They say home is where the heart is, but my heart always seems to be chartering a jet to its next destination, unable to settle down, running from the fear that if it stops for too long, it might get squished. People will learn too much, look too hard, dismiss me for real reasons and not the bullshit ones I can hide behind.
There was no hiding tonight out on that porch, but I’m too sleepy to let that worry me right now.
“I wish that for you too,” I say finally. Softly. And I mean it. Sincerely, which… Ew. I don’tdosincere. But just this once…I allow it.
He snorts, probably at the tone of my voice, but I think he’s thrown for a loop. “Why, so you can have your own room?”
I have to hold back a “no.” The impulse surprises me.Nois the truth because that would mean I’d be alone down here, stewing in the sludgy feeling of being exiled. At least with him, I have something to focus on. Someone to commiserate with. Someone who, after tonight, maybe doesn’t hate my guts.
If he’s as good a person as Grandma says he is, then maybe he’s someone worth getting to know.
“That would be a perk,” I joke to cover up my other thoughts. “But, honestly? Because I feel like shit right now. Absolute shit. And I wouldn’t wish this feeling on anyone.”
“Not even me?” he asks, clearly still beating himself up over playing a prank that caused my anxiety attack.
“No,” I’m quick to say this time. “Not even you.”
I hear his smile. I don’t know how. I just do.
Maybe I even see it, shining above me like a wavy, ombre sunset over an imagined ocean that helps me drift, like an unanchored yacht, to sleep.
Chapter 9
An alert buzzes my phone on my walk into town:
Snowstorm Warning in Effect This Evening
The weather has been blustery, wind whipping up, giving this town’s name real context.
On every street I’ve walked down, people are stockpiling cases of water and canned goods in their trunks like the apocalypse is upon us. You’d think living in a place like this where storms are frequent people wouldn’t freak out so much, but that’s obviously not the case as a woman in a Patriots hat carries three gigantic bags of dog food out of a pet store, a precarious balancing act as a yellow Labrador Retriever on a leash pulls her forward.
Me? I don’t have time for a weather-related meltdown. I’m on a mission.
I clear the notification and tap back into my Google Maps walking directions. I don’t remember which street Grandma’s shop is on. All small businesses seem to look the same to me. Cheerful window displays. Garland on the streetlamps. Sickeningly festive, but I have enough patience to ignore them today. Especially since I might be in the business of helping them soon.
The Havensmith College buildings loom large toward the south, peppering the skyline with tall dormitories and a classic bell tower. To the east, fog is rolling in from the hills I trekked down. I’m so mesmerized by it all that I hardly notice when I step into a crosswalk painted the colors of the Pride flag.
I stop in the middle of the road, perplexed by this lovely display of solidarity and celebration. Has this always been here?
