“Oh. Okay. Yeah, come on in. I was just watching…” Emmy’s voice trailed off. What was she watching? She couldn’t call itThe Mr. Woodwork Show. She gestured at the screen. “I don’t know what it’s called. A guy with a mustache is making chairs and stuff.”
“Oh my God, I love public access TV! Have you watched any of the quilting shows? I can’t get enough of them. They’re so cheesy, but I can’t help myself. I eat them up like… well… cheese. Really good melty cheese on a crispy cracker. I’m going to shut up about cheese now.”
Emmy found herself laughing as she closed and locked the door behind Bright. “It’s okay. I get it. My sister used to watch crochet tutorials on YouTube. She doesn’t even crochet. She just liked watching other people do it.”
Did May still watch those tutorials? Emmy wanted so badly to ask her. She would have given anything to be able to talk to her sister about anything at all.
“Your sister has good taste,” Bright commented without an ounce of sarcasm.
Since she didn’t want to think about May for a while—it hurt too much—Emmy decided to see if Bright would unwittingly provide a distraction.
“Did you want to watch with me? Or… did you need to talk to me about something?”
“I would love to watch with you. I came out here because I was curious. Will told Jared, who told me, that you were doing some work on the place. I wanted to see it for myself. You’ve got the touch, that’s for sure.”
Emmy blushed at the compliment. “Thank you for saying that. It’s just a hobby.”
“Not everyone excels at their hobbies. You do.”
Since that was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to her, Emmy felt herself warming toward Bright. She even felt a slight sting of guilt over her manic pixie dream girl comment the other day.
“I was thinking about grabbing something to eat,” she said, hiding behind the shield of small talk. “Just snack food of some kind. Do you have… allergies?”
“I’m happy with anything,” Bright said. “No allergies. Bring on the snacks.”
Emmy went to grab the bag of tortilla chips Will had bought at some point. She found a jar of salsa—unopened—in the cabinet with the canned and jarred goods. She didn’t know if Will’s need to organize bordered on obsessive, but it did come in handy. She remembered when he’d gone to find her a spare toothbrush, he’d had a sectioned organizer under his bathroom sink with toothbrushes neatly grouped together in one compartment. Meanwhile, back in herworld, Emmy wouldn’t have been surprised to find tortilla chips in her fridge and spare toothbrushes at the bottom of her purse. At work, she managed to keep things organized, but her home was another story.
“Chips and salsa,” Emmy announced as she walked back into the den. “I hope you can handle spicy food because this salsa is medium, not mild.”
Bright had already made herself comfortable on the sofa. “Wow, medium? That’s pretty intense, but fortunately I’m a big fan of spicy food.”
Emmy settled on the couch and opened the bag of chips. Then she spent a companionable forty-something minutes sitting and snacking with Bright.
“You just moved here, right? What brought you to Cobalt?” Emmy asked.
“A stolen car.”
Emmy immediately hit the mute button on the remote, then turned to Bright with wide eyes.
“Okay, not exactly stolen,” Bright amended with a laugh. “I was in my second year of law school when I realized I hated everything about my life, including my boyfriend. I broke up with him, dropped out of school, and started tending bar at a colorful little pub in Concord. It was the first time in my life that I’d worked for money. My parents had paid my tuition, bought me a car, and given me a stipend—that’s what my dad called it—for expenses. Needless to say, they were not happy when they learned I’d dropped out… a full nine months after the fact.”
“Oh shit. Not so close with the parents, huh?”
“Not so much.” Bright crunched down on a chip. “They didn’t find out until the tuition check they sent for the firstsemester of my third year got sent back. They’d still been putting their allowance—because that is what it was, no matter what my dad called it—in the account they’d opened for me, but I didn’t touch it after I dropped out.”
“What did they say when they found out?”
“Oh, we’ll gloss over that part. Let’s just say certain words were put out there such as ‘ungrateful’ and ‘lazy’ and ‘unmotivated.’”
“Ouch.”
Bright shrugged. “I’ve mostly gotten over it. Anyway, I told them I was sorry I’d disappointed them, but I couldn’t be the daughter they’d planned to have. They responded to that by cutting me off financially and threatening to sue me for repayment in full of the tuition money they’d wasted on me.”
In that moment, Emmy hated Bright’s parents. She’d completely forgotten that neither Bright nor her parents were real people. She was too caught up in the story.
“I’m so sorry,” Emmy told Bright, reaching out to touch the other woman’s hand.
“Thank you, but I got through it. I figure they threatened to sue as a kind of ironic punishment. After all, if I’d finished law school, I would have been able to… represent myself or something. Anyway, I’d retained enough knowledge from my classes to hit them with some complex jargon about countersuing. I lied and said I had connections with lawyers who would represent me pro bono. They backed off, and I soothed their egos by telling them to take back all the untouched money from my ‘stipend’ account. Which they did pretty much immediately. That night, I packed up all my stuff—not that I had much—and hit the road. I spent some time finding myself and getting over what I felt was a prettyhefty parental betrayal. Then, I must have been just a few miles outside of Cobalt, a cop pulled me over. Apparently, they’d reported the car stolen. I hadn’t even thought about how they still technically owned the car. They didn’t put my name on it even though they’d bought it for me, their adult daughter.”
