“That’s because it’s girls only. Boys have to keep out.”
He gives me a look of genuine confusion, and something about his face—the furrowed brow, the slight head tilt, like a golden retriever encountering a math problem—makes me laugh before I can explain.
“This was my space. Teenage years, college summers. When I was sixteen, I got so angry at my parents that I moved out here to punish them.” The memory surfaces with a bittersweet clarity. The day they missed my school awards ceremony. I told them I won four separate honors and they still didn’t bother to show. Nothing was ever good enough to get their attention. “I packed a suitcase, made a dramatic speech about needing independence from their approval, slammed the front door of the main house, and marched across the yard in the rain. Very cinematic. Very sixteen of me.”
“How long did the rebellion last?”
“Four years. I lived out here every summer through college.” I pause. “The problem was that my parents didn’t notice. Or if they did, they considered it a successful transition to self-sufficiency. My mother sent the housekeeper over once a week with fresh towels. That was the extent of the search party.”
Something crosses Saylor’s face—not pity, thank goodness—but recognition. The look of someone who understands aparticular kind of loneliness because he’s lived adjacent to it, even if his version had different furniture.
I type the four-digit code that’s etched into my memory, and the lock clicks.
“Your code is one-two-three-four?” Saylor scoffs loudly. “That’s so lazy I wouldn’t even think to try it.”
“Mhmm. That’s why it’s brilliant, right?”
The door opens and the early two thousands hit us like a freight train.
Pink. So much pink. The walls are hot pink, which I chose when I was sixteen because it was the exact opposite of everything in the main house—the creams, the neutrals, the tasteful restraint that my mother treated as a moral philosophy. In here, I was allowed to be loud. And apparently, at sixteen, loud meant pink.
Boy band posters cover one wall. *NSYNC, Backstreet Boys, a Destiny’s Child poster that I will defend until death. Movie posters on another—Legally Blonde,Mean Girls,aKill Bill: Vol. 1print that feels incongruous with the pink but was entirely intentional because I’ve always had layers. There’s a leopard-print beanbag chair in the corner. A lava lamp on the nightstand. Shelves lined with CDs and burned mix-CDs with handwritten labels in purple Sharpie—“Summer Vibes ’04,” “Songs 4 Driving,” “Whit’s List,” and “HIDE FROM MOM,” which I’m assuming was my trap music phase.
It’s an eyesore, truly. Everything—the bedspread, the throw pillows, the fuzzy rug—looks like it was purchased during a single, rebellious, transformative trip to Hot Topic.
Saylor gasps. Not a polite intake of breath. A full gasp, the kind that involves his entire chest expanding and his eyes going wide and his mouth forming a shape that is equal parts delight and disbelief.
“Oh my God.”
“Don’t.”
“Celeste.”
“Do not say a word.”
“This is the most incredible room I’ve ever seen in my life. Very telling. Your good taste didn’t kick in until adulthood, hm?”
I grab the nearest fuzzy pink pillow from the bed and hurl it at his head. He catches it, laughing, and holds it against his chest like a trophy.
“I was sixteen,” I defend, trying and failing to suppress my own smile. “Sixteen-year-olds are allowed to have aggressively terrible taste. We grew up with MySpace, okay? It was a different time.”
“MySpace?” He quirks a brow.
“It’s like talking to a puppy,” I grumble. “You really aren’t registering our age difference, are you?”
“Know what’s so sexy about women your age?” Saylor asks, catching me completely by surprise.“Nothing”sounds too self-deprecating, so I don’t say it. “They usually have experienced enough that they know what they want. No games. No bullshit. They are so sure of themselves, not because they’re arrogant and think they can conquer the world. Simply that they know what’s worth conquering within the world. I find that incredibly alluring. The sureness. Like the sureness you’ve had about Whit and the baby. I really like that. You never stop to question whether you should do the right thing.”
Like honey to a dry, achy throat, his compliment soothes me and saves me from all the symptoms of being unseen. Being around Saylor feels like standing in quicksand, waiting for the fantasy to swallow you up whole. But that’s the point.It’s a fantasy.Every romance book, movie, story eventually ends with happily-ever-after because the truth is depressing. Saylor could love me today. But in five years? In ten? When I drop my child off at college, I’ll be almost sixty. Is he going to be using wordslike hot and heavy when my crow’s-feet become more noticeable and my hair has more streaks of gray than I can pull out one by one? I trusted a man with that kind of devotion once. With growing old together. But with Greg I didn’t grow. I just got older.
“Are you going to whisper sweet nothings in my ear all night, or are you done?”
“Done? Not even close. But I’ll pace myself.”
I look around the room. Nothing in here is sheeted off. There’s a layer of dust, but it’s thinner than the main house. The guesthouse is better sealed, smaller, and the memories preserved in here feel less like artifacts and more like friends you haven’t seen in a while. I run my hand along the shelf and my fingers leave tracks in the dust, uncovering CD cases and picture frames and a ceramic mug I made in a pottery class that reads “Future Fashion Icon” in crooked letters.
“Care to give me a tour of memory lane?” Saylor asks.
“Sure.”
