Because she also remembered his comment about her havinga hell of a rude awakeningin this place. Like because she wasn’t from here, she had to be some naive, leftie joke.
Dell McCleary was still just another asshole. Just one with pretty hands and a pretty house.
Mae turned to place her things against the wall.
“I’ll start looking for another place tomorrow. But thank you.”
“I’m happy to have the space used.” He moved past her toward the door, tapping a smart thermometer on the wall with a thick knuckle. “Adjust the temperature however you want. Text if you need anything.” He tugged a key off his key ring, placed it on the table next to the door.
Mae stared at the Pendleton blanket instead of his face.
“Thank you,” she said again. Because Jodi and Felix had raised her to be polite. Because she had learned, through a decade of queer social work, that you often couldn’t get the things you wanted without keeping your cool.
With a nod, Dell closed the door behind him, leaving her alone in a space that was almost confusingly wonderful and inviting. A space she had to admit was worlds more comforting than an empty building.
A space that could only be made better, she thought, by all of the plants she had left behind.
six
Mae wasawoken by a high-pitched bark.
Clutching a blanket, she blinked at an alarm clock on a bookshelf in a room that was not her own.
In another blink, reality permeated.
Mae’s head fell back against the pillows as she stared at the ceiling. She shouldn’t have been so surprised by a few barking dogs. Lord knew Portland was a city practically composed of barking dogs. She’d had to eventually leave the first apartment she’d lived in, after she’d moved from Brooklyn years ago, because the dog next door never shut up.
Still. Even a familiar noise could be unsettling when you were in an unexpected place.
Mae knew Greyfin Bay itself wasn’t unexpected, even if the bed she slept in was. But she was reminded in that moment how different it was, waking up in a new place when you weren’t just on vacation. When it wasn’t actually an Airbnb.
When you had abruptly decided to carve yourself a new home.
But it didn’t feel like home.
At least not yet.
Early morning sun shone through the wide windows that took up the opposite wall. Mae gave herself exactly five minutes to look at the misty forest beyond the glass, the gnarled yet sturdy trees—the crinkled grays and the deep greens—and let it weigh on her chest.
She lived here.
She was on the coast, without an end date.
She lived here.
For five minutes, Mae let her new reality sit there on her ribs, more terrifying than freeing. And then she got up and shoved it away. She ignored how the tiny house she was currently occupying was even more charming in the daylight. She ignored the truth that she had slept better in Dell McCleary’s guest bed than she had in weeks, months even. A fact that seemed almost impossible in the face of the mountain of uncertainties, of futures she could only hope for instead of predict—a coastal range of anxiety—that composed her new life. But somehow, under Dell’s Pendleton blanket, she had slept like the dead.
She pulled clothes for the day out of a suitcase, unplugged her phone from the charger, washed her face, and steadfastly ignored the fantastic array of mugs she discovered in the kitchen. The kitchen meant for Dell’s mother.
Today would be a coffee day, she decided, grabbing her laptop bag. She was normally a tea drinker, but some days required extra fortitude.
She contemplated revisiting Ginger’s, the café across the street from her store.
“My store,” she repeated out loud to herself in a whisper. It felt different, now that she had the keys. Now that she’d danced inside of it.
She wanted to make acquaintances with the employees of Ginger’s, and the bar next door, all of her new neighbors. But there was someone else she wanted to see first. Someone who had promised she actually brewed the best coffee in town.
Renewed by having a plan, she swung her bags over her shoulder, locking the door of the tiny home behind her.
