“I’ll see you soon,” he repeated, and he waved through the open window before he took off. I watched my plastic totes in his truck bed bounce a little as he went.
“Was that Everett Ford?” a woman called to me from the sidewalk, and I realized that I was standing in the middle of the street. He had double-parked, as he’d said he would. As he’d also prophesized, no one had bothered him about it.
“It was him,” I said as I removed myself from the flow of traffic. And then, just because I felt like it, I added, “He’s my friend.” Because he really was—only a good friend, someone who cared about you, would offer up his house. I would make it worth his while, I decided. I would make him glad that he was friends with me, and he wouldn’t want to drop me and move on like everyone else seemed to do.
When I reached his beautiful house, I unloaded my car by shoving my belongings into a tight pile in a corner of the garage so I wouldn’t take up too much space. I didn’t want to bring anything inside because I didn’t want to pollute his stuff with the noxious odor of mine. The lack of smell was the first thing I noticed when I went in. The second thing I noticed was how quiet it was. It wasn’t the same dead stillness as in my apartment, where the stinky walls had seemed to close in on me. I opened a window and I could hear the sound of the waves carried by the fresh air. It was…
My phone erupted and I reached into my pocket to get it. I’d left the sound off since the fire because I hadn’t been very interested in communicating with anyone, but I’d turned it up again before the drive out here. Now that I was someone’s guest, it was a reasonable thing to do, in case Everett wanted or needed something from me.
But this message wasn’t from him. I read the words on the screen out loud: “West Texas bakes in the summer.”
Apparently, my mother had moved states again, or at least the person who had her phone was reporting on a different location.
“It’s like a dessert.”
That made me feel pretty sure that these texts really were coming from my mom. She had never believed me about the difference between “desert” and “dessert”…but anyone could have made that mistake, so I questioned her again, like I had done before.
“What’s my middle name?” I typed. Then I waited. She had been the one to give it to me and while she still thought it was funny, I had hated it forever. For high school graduation, I had begged them not to say it before I had to walk across the stage. The principal had explained that they couldn’t change things for one student because then everyone else would have special requests, too. I had skipped the ceremony anyway, so they hadn’t read my name aloud. For a while, I’d been saving up for a name change, but more pressing needs for the money had outweighed that.
I waited a while longer, staring at the screen, and then I gave up. If it was my mom, I wasn’t sure what kind of game she was playing and if it was some whacko stranger? Then I didn’t need to be involved. But just as I put the phone away, it sounded off with the loud whistle that always made Jannie jump when she heard it. I looked at it again and saw the word on the screen.
“Bullet.”
And that was correct, my full name was Zoey Bullet Harmon. I’d been born in the back seat of a car because my mother hadn’t had time to get to the hospital. Apparently, I’d shot right out like a bullet and she’d been inspired. Once I’d gotten old enough to realize how awful it was, I’d been pretty angry. Mom had never acknowledged that my middle name wasn’t funny but—but the argument wasn’t important right now, because hardly anyone knew that about me. I’d even kept it from Willow for years, so this really was my mom texting. My mom, who had taken off and left us destitute, was the person who had been sending strange tidbits of information about various states, as she apparently traveled across them without a care in the world except for weather conditions.
“Moving on soon. Traveling is expensive,” she said and listed local gas prices.
I became enraged. “What are you doing?” I typed furiously. “You left us and now you’re off seeing the US with some boyfriend and you think I’m interested in updates?” I was breathing hard when I sent it and I waited, glaring at the phone.
She left me on read. After a few moments, I looked away from the screen and instead, I stared through Everett’s window. It made a frame around Lake Michigan, where the sparkling waves rolled onto the beach. My breathing returned to normal and the headache above my eyes started to ease. Terrible things had happened: we lost the house, I had failed in my career, my sister had left me to be with the guy who’d nearly gotten her killed, and everything I owned now smelled like it had been tossed around the bottom of a fire pit. But somehow, here I was. I was ok.
I was ok. Things were going to be ok. I had said that a lot but I looked at the waves and for the first time in a while, I believed it.
Chapter 11
“Everett.Really.Everett?Really?Everett!Really!”
Somehow that speech sounded familiar. I nodded calmly and picked up my sister’s phone and also her glass so that I could wipe underneath them. Jannie wasn’t too concerned about the cleanliness of the bar, but I liked to keep my area neat and non-sticky. I had given Willow some water because it had seemed like she was about to overheat.
“Really, Everett,” I agreed. “I’m staying with him to save money so I can get a place of my own.”
“I can’t believe this, Zoey! Have you gone batshit whacko?”
I thought for a moment before I answered. “I don’t think so,” I told her. She shook her head at me and threw up her hands.
I had been very surprised to see her come into the bar tonight with no accompanying boyfriend. For the last few months, I had been alone with her only rarely and I found myself looking againat the door and wondering about Boyd. “How did you get here?” I asked.
“I drove,” she answered shortly, and my jaw went slack.
“You already got your license?” It didn’t seem possible.
It wasn’t. “I don’t exactly have it yet, but when I heard what you were doing, I had to come.” She picked up her phone and waved it at me, but it had gone to sleep while she was haranguing me over my choice to stay with Everett. I knew what had been on the screen before, though. There was a whole lot of stuff about the Woodsmen on social media and people around here avidly followed all of it. Right now, one of the hottest topics was who would be the team’s starting quarterback. The head coach was going to announce his decision tomorrow, although everyone seemed to feel like Everett had it in the bag. I sure hoped so.
All that hype and excitement around the team and the possibility that he would lead it had also led to a big uptick of interest in his personal life. There had been various deep-dives into his relationship with Eris, including their custody battle. I’d started to listen to one of the podcasts centered on that but hadn’t been able to continue after I’d heard the story of how they’d first met at a party, and then how they’d been caught togetherin flagrante delictoin an elevator. In case it hadn’t been obvious to her listeners, the podcaster had gleefully explained that they’d been naked and presumably about to have sex, but then she’d sorrowfully concluded that there were no pictures. She’d also admitted that there was no proof that any of that happened and that it might have been only a PR stunt. And then I’d turned it off, all of it. I hadn’t looked up his name again.
That was why I hadn’t seen the latest gossip, but my sister had. She had stormed into the bar tonight, her gait smoother and faster than I’d seen since before her accident. I hadn’t had time to say anything about how she was walking perfectly (she liked superlatives) before she had slammed her phone on the bar top. I’d winced, knowing how much that little piece of tech had cost since I had bought it, and she had started right in on the issue that had brought her here. Her phone, which (thankfully) wasn’t damaged, had displayed a new post about Everett Ford, Woodsmen quarterback, and his new girlfriend, a local woman he’d met and was already shacking up with in his beautiful rental home (at least they didn’t give away the address).
“Zoey, does this mean you?” Willow had asked me.
