“I’ve never... I’m not usually the kind of guy... I was broken when I moved here. I didn’t realize how broken I was until women were stopping me at the grocery store, asking me for my number at bars, inviting me to parties. That was because of your stories. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make me feel good. That’s all that bridesmaid was. As soon as she kissed me—” he lifted his eyes to Alice’s, and her heart caught “—it was like the spell was broken and I knew she wasn’t the one I wanted to be kissing. None of them were.”
Duncan stared at Alice, trying to interpret her thoughts when she had no idea what she was feeling. She was panicked, torn, still angry, almost forgetting why. Then she didn’t have time to think because he leaned forward and kissed her. She shut her eyes, letting herself get lost in his lips, slightly scratchy against hers, insistent but patient. And then she was struck, more immediately and potently than by his kiss, with the need to vomit.
Alice pulled away and grabbed the books. “Please,” she barely managed to say over the bile collecting in her throat. “Just leave me alone.”
She threw the door shut and sprinted to the bathroom, making it to the toilet just in time. She wondered if Duncan was still outside, if he could hear her heaving. She leaned back against the wall, shut her eyes, and steadied her breath. Dehydration, insomnia, voicelessness—she assumed she’d experienced all the turmoil her body had to offer. Vomiting was a new one, somehow more cleansing. When her stomach settled, she stood up and tossed the red books he’d given her into the back of her closet. She couldn’t risk discarding them in the trash, the chance that someone might read them. Then she opened three windows on her computer and settled down to write those clients new stories. After they were finished, Alice took them to Santa Barbara Bookbinders for Howard to bind. When those books looked identical to Duncan’s, when the stories immediately led to love, Alice knew she was right to avoid Duncan and the complications that came with him. She was always better off on her own.
“Alice, it’s obvious you two like each other. So he kissed that bridesmaid,” Gabby said, walking backward up the steep slope so she was facing Alice. She was infuriatingly fit, able to keep up a conversation while Alice struggled for breath let alone words on their hike, which made it difficult for Alice to argue back. “It’s not like you haven’t made plenty of bad decisions trying to avoid your feelings for someone.”
“I don’t have feelings for him.” The words came out too forcefully on account of the physical exertion required to speak. “I don’t want to at least.” Alice stopped to catch her breath, looking out over her city below.
Gabby trotted down the hill and put her arm around Alice’s shoulders. “It’s okay to be hurt. And confused. Just give it some time.”
“There’s nothing to give time to. I told him I didn’t want to see him again, and I meant it.”
Alice could sense Gabby’s disapproval, but her best friend remained quiet. “If he hurt me this much already,” Alice whispered to the vista, “imagine how much worse it would be if there was something more between us.”
“You don’t know that,” Gabby pleaded. Alice glanced at her best friend, looking away to a crowd of hikers trudging up the hill when she could not endure the disappointed look on Gabby’s face.
Alice let out a little yelp as she spotted a familiar figure charging up the hill. She never liked running into people, something that was difficult to avoid in a city as small as Santa Barbara. Small talk made her act awkwardly, and she never knew how or when to end the conversation. When she saw Skylar drawing near, her body panicked, wanting to flee. There was nowhere to go. Even if she forged ahead, eventually they would reach the top, and there was only one way back down. At some point their paths would cross. Instead she froze and clutched Gabby.
“What is it?”
“Skylar,” Alice said.
“Who?”
“Remember that musician I dated a few years ago?”
“No.”
“He took me to Cold Spring Tavern?”
“Oh.” Although Gabby had never been a part of Alice’s Sunday trips with her father, she knew all about the tradition. “You just went on a few dates. What’s the big deal?”
“He’s with one of my clients.” Sure enough, he was hiking beside Beatriz, a woman whose fitness rivaled Gabby’s. It was her obsession, an addiction really, although Beatriz did not describe it to Alice this way. She was self-conscious not about her body which was sculpted and powerful, but about the undeniable fact that her strength intimidated men, that it telegraphed all the ways she didn’t need them. Love shouldn’t be about need, so Alice had written her a story that taught her to want instead, and after reading it, she’d met Gavin, a former football player who had had his glory years and had no interest in joining her at the gym. Better yet, he wasn’t threatened by her power. Their independence had given her a new kind of strength. Yet here she was, hiking beside Skylar. Momentarily Alice wondered if they were simply friends, until Beatriz grabbed him by the shirt and planted a decidedly unfriendly kiss on his lips.
“Oh, Alice,” Gabby said, watching them make out.
“That’s not who she was with after my story.” It made no sense. Skylar smoked cigarettes. His tattooed limbs looked absurdly thin in mesh shorts. And was he actually wearing Converse sneakers on a hike? Meanwhile, Beatriz looked as fit as ever, rippled abs exposed between a coordinated sports bra and athletic pants. Gavin had been the perfect fit for her. How could she be with Skylar? How could Alice’s story have failed?
“I can’t let them see me,” Alice said, turning her back to the trail as their lips unlocked and they continued their ascent.
Gabby shielded Alice so she was mostly obscured from the trail, not that it mattered. Beatriz and Skylar clung to each other as they hiked, heads nestled together, eyes only for each other and the occasional wayward rock.
“That was a little dramatic,” Gabby said after they passed.
“I didn’t want to have to talk to either of them.”
“Yeah, but you were practically ready to jump off the bluff. Alice, should I be worried about you?”
“That’s not who she’s supposed to be with.” Alice briefly filled her in on Gavin, how well suited he and Beatriz had seemed. Carrie, too, how she also had not found immediate and lasting love after reading Alice’s story.
“Is it possible that you don’t understand how your stories work as well as you think you do? Maybe it’s more complicated than you think. Love always is.”
But Alice had never been interested in the complications of love.
“Besides,” Gabby said, resuming their hike toward the apex of the trail. “They’re happy. If it was with the first person she met after your story or the second or the tenth, isn’t that what’s important?”
