“This is soyou,” he says of my space.
I think so too. The far wall, where my bed sits, is painted in horizontal black and white stripes. My headboard is a saturatedteal, almost identical to the color of the ocean outside the window. My linens are white, and there’s a graphic black-and-white rug covering most of the hardwood floor. Gabi helped me decorate two summers ago, after convincing my sister that the pink explosion she’d chosen when we’d moved to the Towers was too juvenile. With a tight, Tati-approved budget, Gabi and I ordered the bed and the rug online, then went to Pensacola with Maggie to shop for everything else. We painted the stripes ourselves after watching how-to videos on YouTube.
Sorrow knocks me off-balance. I’ve thought about Gabi a lot this afternoon—too much. Being fired wouldn’t hurt so badly if I could process it with her. If she was still around to act as my champion, Tati’s beastliness might stop deadening pieces of my soul. She’d love my little nose piercing. Before, she would’ve had her belly button done in solidarity.
God, I miss my best friend.
Henry steps over mountains of clothes and beach towels scattered across the floor. I spend a second worrying about whether the disorder bothers him before convincing myself that it doesn’t matter. He likes me, flaws and all.
He checks out my bookshelf, which is stuffed with a bunch of fantasy series, plus Nora Roberts and Curtis Sittenfeld novels I lifted from my sister. My Delphina books are there too. I have three complete sets of the trilogy: the dog-eared paperbacks my parents originally bought me (the copies I continuously reread), plus the movie tie-in paperbacks and a pristine set of signed hardcovers. The author appeared at a book festival inTallahassee a few years ago, and Gabi’s parents drove us all the way there so we could hear her speak, then spend hours standing in her signing line—totally worth it.
Henry draws his finger across the hardcover spines, which in combination form the image of a shimmering mermaid tail. “Whoa,” he whispers.
“Different from your bookshelf, I bet.”
“A little.” He tosses a grin over his shoulder. “But now I know who to come to when I’m ready to dive under the sea.”
He heads for my unmade bed. He spends a minute standing over it, looking at the rumpled burrow of cotton I sleep in. His back’s to me so I can’t see his face, but I’m dying to know what he’s thinking.
He turns around to tell me: “Not gonna lie, I’ve imagined myself here a few times.”
I smile. “Same.”
I go to him. I pull him down onto the soft sheets. I kiss him, and the disaster that was this afternoon dissipates. We stop only when the pizza arrives. We hear the buzzer, as I told him we would.
We return to my room with dinner on paper plates and glasses of water garnished with lemon wedges, spreading out picnic-style on the floor, which I clear with a few hasty swipes of my foot. I let Henry get through a slice of pizza before I raise the topic we’ve been avoiding.
“So, what went on with your dad earlier?”
He frowns, wiping his hands on a napkin. “Well, he sleptuntil noon. I didn’t even know he was in the apartment until he started snoring louder than a trash compactor. After he dragged himself out of bed, he ate some peanut butter off a spoon and—get this—downed a beer. Not his best showing.”
There are a couple of things I could delve into. First, alcohol does cure a hangover. Damon taught Gabi, and Gabi taught me, and I’ve kept the lesson in my back pocket for the direst of mornings. That said, it’s pretty gross having to pop a top to kick-start functionality. Second, I’ve had a couple of mornings that sound similar to Davis’s, and that doesn’t make me proud. But the first knot that needs unraveling is, “Does he remember fighting with Tati?”
Henry winces. “He didn’t really go into it.”
I put my plate with its half-eaten slice of pizza next to his. “I only got Tati’s side, but it didn’t sound good. The way she tells it…your dad was kind of terrible.”
I’m not trying to make Henry feel bad, but I’m not going to let Davis off the hook—not again. The more time passes, the more I wish I’d been supportive of Tati this afternoon.
You’re exhausting, I told her.
I’d take it back if I could.
“How pissed is your sister?” Henry asks.
I sigh. “She’s been through a hundred breakups and she’s always low afterward, but this feels different. She seemed more heartbroken than angry.”
“She brought him upstairs,” Henry says, red-faced, like he’s embarrassed on Davis’s behalf. “She took off his shoes and sethim up with a trash can.”
“I’m not surprised. Even when she’s mad enough to breathe fire, she’s good at taking care of people.”
He lifts a brow. “I think that’s the first nice thing I’ve heard you say about her.”
“It’s the truth. She wades through shit to make sure the people she cares about are okay. She doesn’t always do it with compassion, but she does it.”
He ponders that for a minute. “I’m sorry my dad made her sad.”
“I know, Henry, but that’s not your apology to make.” His empathetic nature is one of the things I’ve come to like most about him, but it’s got to be awful, shouldering the hardships of others. I reach for his hand and ask the question that’s been on my mind since Tati and I talked in her office. “How often does your dad drink like he did last night?”
