It felt like a bookend, thatyeah, confirmed by the silence that stretched behind it, and Dell decided to let it lie. His own mind wandered in the quiet, as the road approached McMinnville, as the traffic piled up. He fucking hated this part of the drive, an endless stretch through suburbs, the peace of the Coastal Range gone too fast. He focused on letting his mind wander, to anywhere that wasn’t here. Anywhere that avoided the reality of Dell soon being in Portland, of his own volition.
He traveled to Michigan instead.
Dell had already forgotten half the names Mae had just filled the last hour talking about, but it made him wonder. What names Dell would list, if Mae turned the question around. Asked him about his own friends.
Mae already knew Liv.
She didn’t know about Luca, not really, even though he knew he should tell her more about him soon, if hopefully in a better manner than he’d told Luca about her. But was Luca truly a friend, anyway?
His chest hurt with the answer.
He’d had friends, back in his Portland days, but looking back, any of the decent ones were really Lauren’s friends. He wondered if they’d even mourned his absence much, after he left in the abrupt way he did, but he stopped that line of wondering real quick. There wasn’t a point, especially this long after the fact, to wonder shit like that. The co-workers he’d gotten to know, the wide community of real estate agents in the city had been friendly but largely superficial. There was a small portion of folks he’d have a beer with again.
But when it came tofriendship, the kind of bond Mae clearly felt with all these people he was about to meet—Dell wasn’t sure if he’d had any of those since the UP.
It had felt logical to him for most of his adult life. That there simply wasn’t anything else exactly like childhood to connect you to another human being. That there was a rawness, a realness that you lost once you became an adult. And Dell was a person who’d felt like an adult since he was about fourteen.
Still, for the first time in a long time, he let himself think about Ryan, about Chris and Waylon. The rest of the guys from the baseball team. Wondered what they were up to, these days. If Chris and Waylon were still in the UP. If Ryan was still in Chicago.
“Hey,” Mae said, and Dell blinked back to the present. They were already cruising through Tigard, on the outskirts of the city. His skin prickled. “Did Bay Books ever make the cut? For who you follow on Instagram?”
For a half second, Dell didn’t respond, still mentally navigating back to here, to the fact that he was about to be in Portland. A fact he’d somehow been real good at ignoring, even as the miles passed by.
And after that half second, once Mae’s question actually sank in, he still didn’t respond, feeling caught out. He’d waited a day or two, so as not to be obvious. But he figured she already knew. That he’d followed her that very first week, when she’d told him the username.
“Yeah,” he said. “You did.”
She turned her head toward her window, but he still caught her smile.
seventeen
“Hey now.”Jackson took one of Dell’s hands in his, lifting it toward his face, turning Dell’s palm to better examine his nails. “These are real nice.”
“Jackson.” Vik hit their husband on the shoulder. “My man. This one is not for us.”
Jackson frowned, still inspecting Dell’s fingers. A fierce blush was sweeping rapidly up Dell’s neck, and Mae bit her lip, unable to keep her eyes from it.
“I can still look.” Jackson’s eyes flicked to Dell’s. “As long as it’s okay with him.”
“Um,” Dell said.
“Let’s start the tour!” Vik clapped their hands, and Jackson finally let Dell’s hand drop. “This, as you can see, is the kitchen. And moving through here?—”
“That’s a beautiful dog.” Dell stopped five seconds into the tour to point to a picture on the wall of Daisy, Jackson and Vik’s old pitbull. And, well, if Delldidn’twant Jackson’s adoration, complimenting Daisy wasn’t the way to go about it.
Jackson stopped alongside him in the hall. “She was the best dog.”
“I’m gonna show Mae where they’ll be sleeping,” Vik called, dragging Mae away. “Catch up with y’all in a sec.”
“Vik,” Mae said as she was hauled into Vik’s office, where the loveseat folded out to a bed. “You know I know where I’m sleeping. I’ve slept here like, a bunch of times, even if it’s always an awful decision for my back.”
“I know.” Vik let go of Mae’s arm with a shrug. “But I wanted to give those two a moment. And ask you how the drive was.”
“It was…” Mae stared at Vik’s desk. “Good.”
“That’s seriously all you’re going to give me.”
“Listen, it was! I…talked about Jesus, a little.” Mae shifted on her feet. “I got sad.”
