“Thank you for choosing me to rescue you, Ollie. And thank you for rescuing me back.”
Knowing I need to get up or I’ll stay crouched down like this with him forever, I give him a kiss and stand, opening the door and finding Roshni sobbing.
“Oh no,” I say, somehow managing to laugh.
“I heard everything,” she whimpers. “That was ridiculously beautiful. And I know he’s going to have an amazing, pampered life, but that was really freaking sad.”
I pull her into a hug as she continues to cry. “I know. But sometimes we have to do really sad things for the ones we love. It helps us know that it was real.”
And that makes her cry harder. “Can you please not say things like that to me right now? Are you trying to kill me?”
I laugh again as I pull her in tighter, and a few seconds later, she’s managed to relax as she steps back to wipe her face.
“Okay,” she says, leaning down to scoop up Ollie. “So, all of this is fine, and you and I will be having dinner together next week.”
I nod my head in agreement. “Yes, we will. And I’ll also be obsessively texting you, because not seeing you on a daily basis feels like a fate worse than death.”
“Agreed, and you better.” She steps forward then, allowing me to give Ollie one more kiss before they disappear into the stairwell, saving me from the experience of watching them wait for the elevator. I walk back into the studio, and once the door is safely closed, I collapse onto the floor and cry for an hour.
When I walk up to my dad’s house three days later, I can already see piles of boxes through the sheer curtains covering the windows. Not in a rush, I stand on the sidewalk and gaze at the two-story wood Colonial in front of me, knowing it very well might could be the last time I’ll see it with my dad inside. The last time that I’ll walk in with it still being my home. A tight, squeezing sadness starts to pass over me, so I quickly step forward as a means to evade it.
It doesn’t work.
When I get inside, packing mode is in full swing. You can tell which boxes were packed by my dad and which were packed by Cassie. My dad’s boxes are sealed airtight with heavy masking tape, and highly descriptive labels are attached to all sides. Cassie’s boxes are filled to capacity to reduce waste, and the top lids are folded into each other, not requiring any tape, and are labeled with one-word descriptions scribbled on one side.
“Hey, hey,” I call out, my feet echoing on the hardwood floors.
My dad walks in from the kitchen with his label-maker in hand, wearing navy slacks and a short-sleeved button-down, as per his typical Sunday attire. “Winnie,” he says with a smile. “You’re here.”
“I’m here.” I give him a hug, and he patiently pats my back until I’m done.
“How’d your interview go?” he asks.
Mentally reliving my meeting with the West Lane Theater Board of Directors this morning, excitement and pride immediately appear on my face.
“It was awesome,” I tell him honestly. “They offered me the job, and I accepted.”
“Oh, Winnie, that’s wonderful!”
I dip into a modest curtsy. “Thank you, thank you. Enough about me, though. So, T-minus how many days until the big move?”
“Two weeks,” my dad answers. “Cassie’s in the attic now, on the lookout for any long-lost mementos.”
“Is it the colony of squirrels she’s been secretly feeding and harboring up there for the past sixteen years?”
Dad lets out a quiet laugh. “I wouldn’t doubt it. But it’s also possible that it’s more along the lines of some old books.”
“That was going to be my second guess.”
“I’m sure it was.”
I smile and turn to look around the nearly empty living room that’s littered with boxes, thinking of the hundreds of shows I performed and the millions of movies I watched in these four walls. Lazy mornings and late nights. Barreling out the door on my way to school and lounging on the couch when I was sick. All of it happened here, andhereis about to be gone forever. It feels like I’m on a theme park ride, and I don’t want to get off. I want to stay on and go again, but I know that I can’t.
“Do you think I can go sit in my room for a bit?” I ask my dad, knowing it was the first room they packed up.
“Sure. Stay up there as long as you want. We’re ordering out for dinner in an hour.”
“Sounds great.”
