“But again, in person, I want to say I’m sorry. I’m sure Quill didn’t appreciate the visit.”
“No.” She curls her knees to her chest. “He didn’t.”
James hears the words she keeps inside, that her punishment for his poor decision was worse than his imagination could conjure.
“So you really can’t leave?”
Nelle’s fingers tighten on the windowsill. “No.”
“We can always hang out like this, I guess.”
“I’m just trying to be honest with you. I’ve never really talked to anyone but Father before,” she says. “I’m not trying to scare you off.”
“I’m not scared,” James lies. He is fucking terrified. But when he looks at Nelle, he doesn’t see a monster or a demon, only curiosity, excitement, and, further, sadness and anger. “I do believe you. I think.”
Believing her makes him want to throw up the gas-station coffee he chugged an hour ago. His mom always called his stomach a beehive, reactive to every little poke.
Nelle drums her fingers on the sill. “In your letter you said you find me intriguing.”
James’s cheeks go hot.
“I find you intriguing, too,” she says.
The moon emerges from behind splitting clouds. Nelle’s freckles glow like stars on her cheeks and nose, her brown eyes are like melted chocolate, her lips so full he could write a poem about them.
“Do you want to come back tomorrow night?” Nelle asks.
James hesitates. Of course he wants to, but whether or not he should is a different decision.
“If you’d rather pretend you never met me, you can do that, too. I’ll understand.”
His lungs fill with summer air. How much longer can he survive doing what he should and never what he wants?
“Tomorrow,” he says, unsure if his echoing is an agreement to return or merely an attempt to process what she said.Everythingshe said. The ink, the glass, the secret about Quill. The question itself:Do you want to come back tomorrow night?
Nelle glances over her shoulder again. “I think I hear him. Good night, James.Tomorrow.”
Before he can respond, she lifts her healed hand and pulls the window shut.
Driving home, the trees feel foreign. The town square smaller. The shadows in his neighbor’s windows scarier. Under his too-hot comforter, as James falls asleep to the hum of cicadas and frogs, he wonders if his life has been irrevocably derailed.
Chapter 7
To make up for his late article, James is at the newspaper office on a Saturday. The clock slugs toward noon, until a mere ten minutes stand between him and his lunch break. Though it’s not like Nancy regulates when he leaves his desk. Or the building. She is always in and out in a pair of chunky clogs, clutching a camera, her purse swinging like a pendulum over her shoulder, moving at a faster pace than everyone else in lazy little Lincoln. She once insisted they take a lunch break together and told him all about growing up in Chicago. When he asked her what she thought about New York, she shuddered and said, “Too many people.”
After a bite at Lindsey’s Smokehouse, James spends two mind-numbing hours scrolling through the layout for next week’s issue. He adjusts and aligns gray squares where photos will be placed. Drags out text boxes and double-checks for grammatical errors before pasting them onto the page. Across the dusty workroom, Nancy drops into her rolling chair, acrylic nails clicking against her keyboard.If you’re working today, then I’m working today,she texted back earlier. Thrown off by the change in routine, he forgot to bring her coffee, so she drinks from a ceramic mug, leaving red lipstick on the rim.
She scans the screen, probably planning editorial notes on James’s latest article. Or flat-out changes she won’t consult him about. She is the editor, after all, and she likes to remind him of that fact. She pausesfor a moment, sips her coffee again, and brushes a frizzy, reddish-brown strand of hair behind her ear. Peacock feathers dangle from her earlobes.
James’s focus crumbles as the words on his screen blur into the shape of Nelle’s name, letters sliding away like streaks of her black blood, the ink on his hands, on the grass, on the side of the house, on his shirt, his shoe ...
As he left her house last night, he resolved to never set foot there again. To move on with his life, finish his degree, possibly even go to medical school, and grind toward a reliable job.
All of which begins with forgetting about Nelle.
Which he seemingly can’t do. He scrolls through a folder of images from an awards banquet at Lincoln High School, but all the students’ smiling faces morph into Nelle’s. He closes out of that tab and focuses on the newspaper layout, on transferring finished articles. But the words smudge like fresh ink and becomeNelle Nelle and Nelle went to the Nelle at the Nelle on Nelle—
James slams his fist into his keyboard, and a spurt of random letters appears in the middle of the wordSaturday. He deletes the error with six furious jabs.
