There’s a deliberate, heavy pause on the other end. He’s letting me replay those words back to myself, so I can hear exactly how they sound. Petulant, defensive. Ungrateful. I run a hand through my hair, tug at my starched collar, open my mouth to offer the apology I owe him.
But then a throat clears behind me, and even that small noise—it’s cool water over all the parts of me that have been infused with unpleasant warmth.
“Jae,” I say into the phone. “I’m sorry. I’ll call you Monday, all right?” I hang up with a wince.
Out here in the waning light, Greer’s skin is dewy, the skin under her eyes faintly purpled either with fatigue or smudgy makeup. Her dress is wrinkled, and the gardenia is drooping slightly in her hair. She’s somehow more gorgeous than when she came down those steps, somehow more herself than she was before. There’s a constellation of expression on her face: part concern, part disappointment, and a hundred other nuances I wish I knew well enough to decode.
“I was just heading back in.”
“I thought I’d—” she begins, setting her hands at the sides of her dress, tangling her fingers in the layers of fabric. “I was checking to see that it hadn’t happened again.”
“No.” I’m embarrassed, but it’s different. There’s another texture to this rough shame, like if I rub in another direction, I’ll feel the soft gratification of her checking on me. “I’m not having an easy time inthere, though.”
“Is it crowds?”
I shrug, wishing there was an easy answer. “Sometimes. Sometimes it’s being in one place. Being stuck. Being—obligated.” As soon as it’s out of my mouth, I can hardly believe I’ve said it. Something so true, but also something that makes me sound like such a selfish asshole. A new wave of heat flushes to my neck.
The sound she makes, her chin tipped down, is a soft, knowinghmm, a lower register than her speaking voice, and I feel that flush of heat transform into something different. I clear my throat, seize on asafer subject.
“How’s school?”
She lifts her eyes to mine, and it’s not so safe, I guess, because a shadow passes over her face. I hate that it’s dark enough out here to keep me from seeing the blue of her eyes. The music in the tent thumps louder, and she lowers them again. “I graduate in August.”
“A summer graduation, huh?”
“It’s a smaller ceremony. They’ll actuallycall my name.”
“Greer Garson Hawthorne,” I say, and the side of her mouth curls upward, a sneak preview smile that’s gone as quickly as it came.
“You’re leaving tomorrow?” She gestures toward my phone, the movement of her hand making the gauzy top layer of her dress lift gently before settling again. I watch every frame of that movement. I wish I’d stayed in the tent to see if she’d have danced to this pop song I knownothing about.
“I don’t know,” I answer, which is—absurd. Absolutely absurd. Basically, no matter where I am in the world, I’malwaysleaving tomorrow.
“Maybe—” she begins, then stops, tunneling her fingers back into her dress. “Never mind.”
“No. What?” I think about that morning in the café, her face like it is now, half-shuttered, but a whole room, a wholehouseof meaning behind it. I was so damned greedy for her to talk to me that morning. To say anything at all, even if it was more of what I didn’t want to hear.
The thumping song ends, the muffled, microphoned voice of the deejay barely audible to us out here before a slower strand of music starts up. Greer turns her head toward the tent, her chin still tipped down, and in profile, I get to see the way her nose turns up a little at the end, a fine, delicate slope. She wears her hair so short that you can see everything about her face if you’re paying attention. You can see all the sharp angles and all the soft curves.
When she speaks again, she’s quieter, adjusting her voice to the new sounds in the air, blending in. “Maybe if you did stay in one place for a little while. If you stayed here, since you’re already in town.It might—help.”
There’s a trace of something in what she’s said—something simultaneously needful and accusatory. From anyone else, the suggestion would annoy me. Ithasannoyed me, in the past.
“My sister,” I say, running a hand through my hair. “I don’t want her to think—” There’s too many complicated things to account for. I don’t want my sister to think something’s wrong with me. I don’t want my sister to think my staying in town, even for a little while, could turn into something permanent. She’s wantedthat for years.
“Kit’ll be on her honeymoon,” Greer says, as though she’s heard my thoughts. No doubt she knows all about the arguments Kit and I have had about my rare visits, my trouble staying put. No doubt after that morning at Boneshaker’s she heard all about my refusing Kit’s offer of a share of her lottery money, my explosive reaction to the suggestion I make this place my home base. “No obligation.”
“Like a test, you mean.” I tuck my phone backinto my pocket.
“I didn’t say that,” she says quickly, almost guiltily. “It doesn’t work like that.” I think of her brother, the one she’d said had panic attacks too. She probably knows all about how this works. “But maybe getting some rest would be good. The pace you work at, I’m sure it doesn’t help with this. You might be better able to handle things if you hadsome time off.”
“Time off,” I repeat, like I’m trying out how to pronounce something in a brand-new language. “I don’t much like not having anything to do.”
I’ve made it sound casual, almost as though I’m making a joke at my own expense. But the truth is, Ihatenot having anything to do, which is why I’ve continued to take jobs over and over again, when I know I’m not at my best. It’s why I’ve lied about rough conditions and fevers and hangovers I never really have. It’s whyI’m not sending any more work for a whilefeels like a damning sentence from a judge rather than support from someone who cares. Right now, the tension that’s been stalking me all night ratchets up to a breath-shortening degree.
But across this small patch of grass between us, Greer stays quiet for a long moment, her own chest rising and falling evenly. Beautifully, hypnotically. When she speaks again, it’s on one of her delicate exhales.
“Well,” she says, her eyes meeting mine. “I might be able to help you with that.”
