He was taking the full month off from work—perks of a family business—and frequently came by to tempt her with coffee breaks and other kinds of breaks. Rae’s productivity had been cut in half, but her positivity had increased threefold.
“He feels like home,” Rae said, meaning it. “Or at least the home I used to have.”
She’d felt a masochistic letdown when they’d kissed—Dustin’s lips were no longer the last ones on hers—but had decided that while that might be a poetic way to live, it wasn’t a practical or even a pleasant one, so she was focusing very hard on not focusing on the cloud-cloakedthen, just the sun-drenchednow.
“This life looks good on you,” Ellen said. “Not just good—radiant. Would you think about moving back here?”
“Maybe one day,” Rae said. “But not now.”
“Because …?” Ellen prodded.
“Because of a lot of things. You, first of all. And work. And the Scramblettes. And Percy’s Pizza.”And the breathgiving view of Manhattan from a Williamsburg rooftop, she thought but didn’t say.
“Look, you know I’d be crushed if you left New York,” Ellen said, taking Rae’s sandy hand in hers as they lay side by side. “But you’ve been wanting to find a new job anyway and have more time to write. And let’s face it, the Scramblettes are pretty much fried eggs at this point. And I’m pretty sure Indiana has at least one decent pizza place.”
Rae felt like she was sinking into the sand beneath her. Dustin’s face flashed through her mind—an errant missile, not a symbol. “Moving back here would be regressing an entire decade, back to my high school self.” She shivered at the thought.
“That’s not true. Sometimes you have to go backward to go forward,” Ellen said in her most Zen voice.
“Don’t go all yogi philosopher on me,” Rae said. “I’m not moving back to Indiana for some guy.”
“Stu isn’t some guy,” Ellen said. “He’s a keeper.”
“I know he is,” Rae admitted, warmth radiating down to her core as she thought about how cozy the world was from underneath one of his hugs. “Let’s not project into the future, okay?” she said. “I’m trying to stay present.”
“No projections,” Ellen agreed. “I was right about the thongs, though, wasn’t I?”
“You’re right about everything, Elle-belle,” Rae said, and they flapped once more in the sand.
Then, standing up without stepping on their wings, they chased each other into the water, squalling like ocean sea gulls that had accidentally flown to an inland lake and liked it so much they decided to stay.
“What about now?” Stu asked, as they ate cinnamon rolls for breakfast on the back porch of the cottage, which overlooked the lake. The morning light bounced off the water, transforming the blue into gold. It was the last weekend in August, and summer was arcing to an abrupt end. “Will you agree to do long-distance?”
“It just doesn’t make sense,” Rae said, for probably the eleventh time now. “I mean, I live inManhattan.” It might as well have been Mars the way she said it.
“Only a two-hour flight,” Stu said. “And you said it yourself—you see yourself coming back to Indy soon.”
It was true, she had said it, one night while they were stargazing on the dock, wrapped in argyle blankets she’d found in the closet of her parents’ old bedroom. She’d been giving more thought to what Ellen had said. Why was she still trying so hard to make it in a placeshe’d never belong and didn’t think she even wanted to belong? In New York, she was fighting against the world. Here, she was flowing with it.
“I’m not moving back hereyet, though,” Rae said. “I still have this thing called a job back there. Lots more deals to close.”
“You can keep working from your NASA control center,” Stu said. “And I’ll keep delivering whipped-cream coffees.”
Rae had set up an elaborate work-from-home office in her cottage bedroom, with multiple computer monitors, noise-canceling headphones, and an ergonomic keyboard.
Stu liked to joke that Rae was secretly directing alien spaceships and that the banker line was just a boring ruse so no one would catch on.
“I need to get back into the real office,” she said, though the idea of being suffocated by that misdirected stress made her blood pressure rise. It was like bankers thought they were doctors or something and that lives were on the line every second of the day and night. They freaked out about a mismatched decimal point like a heart surgeon might freak out about the electricity going out in the middle of an operation.
Being physically separated from the rat race had given her more perspective to see it for what it was—a tiny, upside-down snow globe where everyone sprinted around in circles, completely clueless they were trapped inside a glass sphere because they never ventured far enough from their shiny skyscrapers to bump into the wall.
Ellen and Aaron joined them on the back porch. Ellen was getting restless to get back to city life but said she could see herself getting a summer home here down the road. Rae had broken her stay-in-the-moment rule as they let themselves picture it—the two of them sipping chardonnay from elegant wine glasses, their husbands at the grill, their kids chasing each other through the yard, fearlessly leaping off the dock. That outcome felt terrifically, and terrifyingly, in reach from this lake view.
It was easy to envision Stu as the husband in this scene—Rae would slip back into life here, he’d slip a ring on her finger in a couple years, she’d be married by thirty and everything would end up in its place despite her best efforts to run away. She liked this story. It was the kind of movie she’d turn on in the background when she wanted something light and happy that didn’t make her think too hard.
“Ellen,” Stu appealed. “Tell Rae she’d be crazy not to keep dating me.”
“You’d be crazy,” Ellen said, reinforcing the message with the look she gave Rae.
