By the time the very first star winked on in the purple sky, she was ready to crawl into the twin bed in her turret and sleep like the dead.
The sheets her mom donated were regular old white spares Avalon recognized from the family linen closet, which meant her mom must have upgraded her condition from “suffering” to “doing okay and probably going to survive.” She was amused by that subtle vote of confidence.
She slept fitfully, though. It was one thing to be under her parents’ roof with the two of them snoring away a few rooms over; here, she was profoundly conscious of being alone in the bed, almost as if she were perched on the end of the world and was in danger of tipping off because Corbin’s hot skinny body wasn’t next to her to stop her.
She dreamed that it was her job to assign unique color names to everything in the world. Furniture and bathroom tile and clothes and hair dye and lipsticks and animal fur. Her deadline was tomorrow morning because all of her deadlines were always tomorrow, forever, and it was already midnight. Corbin was there, pacing manically to and fro, to and fro, nervously pulling his fingers up through the front of his hair in that way he had, over and over, that she’d once thought endearing and she now realized was why the sink in their bathroom was always clogged, and his fingernails were painted a sparkly orange. And Mac was there, too, in the background, shooting pool shirtless, because it was her dream after all. She’d never even seen him shoot pool, which was kind of odd. Boy, had her subconscious given him a fabulous set of abs. Her squirrel, Trixie, was sitting on his shoulder, and her heart nearly broke open with happiness when she saw the two of them together. But with every step she took toward them, the carpet spread wider and wider, like an oil stain, and they got farther and farther away. She stopped trying, remembering her deadline, and had just decided she’d call the sweater Corbin was wearing Bastard Orange when she woke up with a start, heart pounding.
The sunlight squeezing in between the slats of the blinds (homely ones with chipped edges; she’d want to replace them) was benign and lemony.
A split second later she remembered Mac Coltrane was nearby.
And in that undefended moment just after waking, where her reason was too sleepy yet to corral her heart, it was like an entire sun rising in her chest.
It was telling that Corbin was her third thought.
Funny that her job was after that. Her entire life was enmeshed in something she’d created but patently wasn’t missing at the moment.
