“Fine.” I might regret talking to him after all.
He rises from his chair and opens the fridge to pull out the orange juice, and the motion of the door produces just enough wind to send my taped-up sample of lemon-printed wallpaper fluttering to the floor. He bends and scoops it up, studying it like he’s committing to memory every sunny yellow curve, every green leaf.
“What’s this?” he finally asks.
“Just a wallpaper sample. It’s been hanging there for months. I’m surprised the Scotch tape held on so long,” I say.
He glances up. “You still considering it?”
“No…yes? I mean, I love that wallpaper. It’s so bright and happy. I can imagine it perking me up on even the darkest day of a Midwestern winter. I definitely want that wallpaper.”
“I could help you put it up. Since you’re letting me stay.”
I shake my head. “Oh god, no. You don’t need to earn your keep. And anyway, you’ve already done more than enough by picking my drunk ass up in Spencer. I just…I don’t know, I haven’t really been able to commit to anything in here yet.” I stand and walk past him to deposit the now-empty fruit salad Tupperware in the sink. On my way, I pluck the wallpaper from his hand.
“It would look good,” he says. “It’s a good choice.”
“Thanks,” I say, sticking the sample back on the wall with a mental note to find another piece of tape. I love this wallpaper. I loved it from the first moment I saw it. Iwantthis wallpaper. I just…I don’t know if I want ithere. Which makes no sense, because this is my house. My kitchen. I have no idea where else I’d put it. I just need to suck it up and order the rolls, break the seal and put it up. Grace is right—I need to start focusing on myself and my future. And I should start with this wallpaper.
I turn away from the sink and see Dan studying me in very much the same way he focused on his drawing. It makes my skin prickle. His lips part like he wants to ask me more about the wallpaper, but I say, “I’m going to shower. Seven a.m.?”
He nods. “Seven a.m.”
CHAPTER 15
DAN
It’s a hazy Monday a week later when I pull into the parking lot of Gene’s Gym, the sky turning purple as the sun rises.
But Carson isn’t looking at the horizon. She’s peering through the windshield at the double doors of Gene’s like there’s a combination root canal/colonoscopy waiting for her inside.
“Are you okay?” I ask, shutting off the engine.
She nods very hard for way too long. “Yeah, totally! Totally, totally fine,” she chirps. When I raise an eyebrow, she sighs. “It’s just that at this moment, my nervous system seems to think I’ve traveled back in time to middle school gym class.”
I laugh, but she doesn’t. “There won’t even be that many people in there this early. Gene’s isn’t that popular. There’s nothing to be scared of. “
I can practically hear her eye roll. “Uh, saysyou. You look like you were designed in a lab to be in there. I look like I star in some jerk’s TikTok about what a disaster I am in there.”
I clench my jaw, the thought of some asshole tormenting her making me want to tear the doors off this car. “This gym has a no filming policy, and even if they didn’t, if I saw anyone filming you in there, I’d remove their teeth from their head.”
Her cheeks turn pink, but she still looks skeptical, and I haveto remind myself what it was like to be new at the gym. I was in college when I first started going. Jameson dragged me there after much protestation. Growing up, my brothers were always in the weight room at school, Archer and Felix for hockey and Owen during baseball and track season. But I never took to sports growing up. I figured one of us had be unathletic, and that was me. I was the quiet one, the serious one, the one who would rather stay home and play video games than get up early for practice. I was the kid in gym class who was happy to be hit early in a dodgeball game so I could sit in the bleachers and flip through the paperback I’d smuggled in. My only goal in high school was to get the hell out of Cardinal Springs, and sports were not part of that plan.
When I got to Princeton, I assumed my real life would begin. I was in a new place where nobody knew me. Everything had to get better. But that first semester, my classes kicked my ass, and the social thing didn’t go much better. I couldn’t figure out why it was so easy for everyone else to make friends and find their place. I’d see groups in the dining hall laughing and talking, people spread out on blankets in the quad, and gaggles trudging from house party to house party together. Where had they all met? Had I missed some kind of make-a-friend event where they’d all exchanged numbers? The only person I managed to talk to in the first month of freshman year was Jameson, and that was only because he was my roommate.
But after six weeks, Jameson finally had enough of me rotting in my extra-long twin bed between classes, my laptop cooking me as I watched Netflix and perused message boards. He dragged me to the gym, walked me through the space, showed me how to use every machine and dumbbell, and make me lift.
But I don’t know how to tell Carson about my pathetic social trauma, or maybe I don’t want her to know just how awkward I can be, so instead I say, “I wasn’t always built like this. I worked up to it by going there.” I point at the double glass doors, and she sighs again.
“Fine.” She climbs out of the car, plants her feet on the cracked asphalt of the parking lot, and squares her shoulders, her brows knitting together in determination. Her lips move as she gives herself a silent pep talk, and then she gives the slightest nod. “Let’s do this.”
I take her to the front desk, where a barely awake teenager stands behind a desktop computer that probably predates him. I flash my laminated membership card.
“And I’ve got a guest,” I say, nodding to Carson.
The sleepy teen says nothing but pulls a sheet of paper out from beneath the desk, nodding at a chipped mug full of mismatched pens, most of them missing their caps.
“This place is delightfully low-tech,” Carson says while she fills out the bare-bones release form. “No app? No key tag to scan? No influencers in candy-colored spandex?”
