It’s not a date. It’s two human beings getting lunch and talking. We’re going to Picnic Point, over by the lake. He’s bringing food.
ME - 8:27am
Sounds romantic!
And isolated.
And like the kind of place a psychopath would take his beloved. Do you have your corkscrew?
ROSE 8:29am
I know it’s difficult to convey tone and attitude through text. But I’m rolling my eyes. Just so you know.
8:30am
I love you. I know everything is crazy and upside down right now. I know the world is topsy-turvy, and everything feels hard. But I wanted to tell you anyway. I love you. Darcy being in town doesn’t change that.
ROUND FIFTY-FIVE
ROSE
I spend hours in Ollie’s kitchen poring over the files Billy left at the house last night. The coffee pot, three-quarters full when Oliver left for the hospital, is now all but empty, and my bladder, full.
Somewhere around nine o’clock, a soft patter taps against the roof, rain falling from the sky, but instead of turning the air cold, it creates an almost sticky warmth that makes jeans and a shirt comfortable.
Which works out well, since that’s all I intended to wear today.
Around ten o’clock, Poppy crawls out of bed and wanders along the hall, completely satisfied in her new home, and content spreading her fur all over. We’re both strays, she and I. But she doesn’t feel guilty for traipsing into someone else’s home and taking up space the way I do.
She doesn’t need me to bend over and scoop her up anymore. Instead, she happily bounds from the floor to Ollie’s unoccupied stool on her own, then from the stool to the counter. She walks over the files and bops her forehead against the side of my face.
I probably should’ve tried harder to train hernotto climb on the counter.
“You hungry, pretty girl?” Setting my pencil down, I straighten my back and lift my arms into the sky, elongating my spine until acrackle, crackle, popechoes throughout the quiet room. My whole world might be on fire. My soul might ache more now than it did when I woke up in Ollie’s hospital, scared and alone. But this, at least, is easy. It’s nice. Having Poppy’s rumbling purr become the soundtrack to my life is pleasure. So I lower my hands and scratch her behind her ears, and setting my feet onthe floor, I push off the stool and head to the fridge to take out the half pouch of cat food I opened yesterday.
I’ve never been to the grocery store in all the time I’ve been in Plainview. I haven’t bought cat food pouches. Or dry cat biscuits. Or milk. Or literally anything. But it’s still here. Still provided by the man who spends too little of his life inside his home, and too much of it stressed about everyone else.
“Ollie really loves us, huh?” I close the fridge and snag a small plastic bowl from the stack that magically turned up soon after Poppy did. Squeezing the pouch empty, the wet slop hitting the plastic with a plop, I toss the packet into the trash can and set the bowl on the floor. Then I slide back onto my stool and drag my sketchbook back out from beneath Billy’s files. I flip through my pages and pages of memories, my dreams, my thoughts, and feelings. Then I go to the very last page and open it up to a long, long list I’ve been keeping since the start.
Bread. Milk. Coffee. A coffee mug, to replace the one I chipped. An encyclopedia—just one volume from the set—since Ollie’s is crinkled and ruined from spilled hot chocolate. A phone. Phone credit. A battery-operated drill. The drill bit I lost with it. Kitty litter trays. Kitty litter… ten bags so far.
I add the newest pouch of chicken and gravy cat food, scratching the words into the page, and when I’m done, I sit back and study the extensive list with a smile. Ollie would be offended if he saw it. He would probably scowl and grumble and tear it up if he got the chance. But I look at it and exhale a soft, happy sigh. Because it’s a kind of time capsule ofus.
This whole book is.
It’s a journey, starting with the chipped mug, a declaration of how ridiculously scared I was back then. And then it makes its way down to cat supplies. Which is a whole new declaration. It’s comfort. It’s settling in. It’s making a home with a man more selfless than any others, and a kitten who needed somewhere to call her own.
Dragging my bottom lip between my teeth, I study the list for a moment more while Poppy jumps to the floor and starts devouring her breakfast. Finally, I flip back to the page I was working on, Liam’s kind eyes staring out at me. The laugh lines flaring across his temples. The wire-frame glasses I can’t get out of my mind.
I flip through my drawings, working my way back in time from one sketch to the next, and with each new image, I remember the dream that came before it. When he turns bad, hurting Ollie in my nightmares, he’s not wearing his glasses. When he’s good and kind and protective, he is.
Which probably means nothing at all, except that I forgot to draw the damn glasses on his face those days.
Still, my pulse quickens, matching the constant pitter-patter of the rain against the roof.
You’re mixing all this up, ya know that?
“What am I mixing up?”
