eleven
Autumn
Itwasjustlikea call from my dad and stepmom to remind me I was exceedingly happy for the two hundred and thirty miles of distance between us. During our conversation, they asked me the same old questions.
“When are you planning to get an actual job?”
“How long do you think this summer camp is actually going to be in business?”
“What kind of retirement program does a place that survives off predominantly middle-class liberal-arts-degree-holding attendees offer?”
I mentally cringed, squeezing my fists together as I tidied up the workspaces where campers would soon make fresh messes.
My biggest wish at the moment was that I’d get through to them. The more responsibility I took on, the less inclined they’d be to hope that I’d give up this dream of mine andget my life together.Instead, I was twenty-nine, reminding myself that my parents just didn’t understand.
I’d told myself years ago that I was done hiding things that mattered about myself from them, but the conversation left me wondering if I was doing that again. No. I hadn’t mentioned Jamie in our conversation, but I hadn’t done that on purpose. So why did that make him feel like a dirty secret?
Maybe I’d subconsciously left him out of the conversation because I didn’t want to remind them of a particularly embarrassing time in my life when I cried for months on end. I didn’t need to hear about the days I’d holed up in my room to do homework, only leaving for extracurriculars and school until my miraculous turnaround after homecoming when I got my emotional shit together. Or I stuffed the sadness down. That was unimportant. I’d long ago learned that believing in forever was a pipe dream. That sweet words like “I love you” and “I’d do anything for you” didn’t mean shit. People looked out for their own interests, and I reminded myself that over and over again.
In the beginning, my family had been big fans of my and Jamie’s relationship. They’d loved him, which was easy, and they’d loved that we were in speech and debate together, which meant I had someone to help me navigate my new extracurricular activity. I was so anxious about my new surroundings the first few months of freshman year, I’d barely gotten out of the house, let alone gone to things like football games and dances. They’d been worried that I hadn’t made any friends yet. Jamie, however, had been established at school. He’d been popular. And he’d had goals. These were all qualities they’d liked about him.
But things got more serious with time, and they couldn’t handle that with my senior year fast approaching. Suddenly, my parents weren’t big fans of our three-year-long relationship. They were also unhappy with the fact that he’d found a college in Southern California, six hours away from my dream school. We weren’t banking on me getting into Stanford, but I’d appliedto other prestigious colleges as well, and they were afraid that if I didn’t get in and got into another school farther away, I’d turn it down. Putting UCLA on my backup list did me no favors with them either.
But it’d all worked out the way they wanted anyway. And now I was working in a place I loved that didn’t even require a degree, and they were beyond disappointed.
There was also the chance that telling them about Jamie’s life would have resulted in them jumping down my throat even further, especially after learning he’d followed through with his plan. That he was a lawyer with a condo with actual amenities instead of a free-rent cabin in a forest with little more than a kitchenette.
It was pointless to debate with myself. He was only here for a week. This was temporary.Temporary.
“Hey.” Nat looked over her shoulder, pausing as she unloaded some acrylic paints I planned to use for squeegee painting—a new method of madness that involved using drops of paint and a literal squeegee to spread the colors down a canvas. She’d loved my idea and jumped at helping me bring it to fruition.
I wondered if this was what Jamie would want to do when he showed up tonight. I was looking forward to it and tried not to read into things. “You doing okay?”
I recovered. “What? Yeah.”
“I’m ready to craft the living daylights out of this place,” came a voice I recognized. Jamie’s friend Ren stood in the doorway like he’d entered a saloon, sunlight blazing behind his spread-armed form. He walked in with another man I assumed was from their pod, since I’d seen him and Lamar together multiple times. I explained the options to them: candle making, string art, projects that involved wine corks (of which we had plenty, what a surprise), and jewelry crafting. Ren pulled out a ring and flipped it between his fingers. There were always people who sawthe option in the craft activity description and came prepared for one of my favorite activities: repurpose your old wedding band.
I pointed toward the jewelry soldering supplies and headed his way. This was one of my original ideas, back when I’d had more angst about my relationship with my birth mother. My ten-year-old self had realized she hadn’t packed all of her things when she’d left, and I’d been working through my issues by repurposing that shit ever since.
Maybe I was being unfair. Or maybe she should have picked up her phone and talked to her daughter more than twice a year.
I shook out of my anger haze and focused on the people walking through the doors. This was more of a drop-in class. People came and went as they pleased, usually staying for longer than the time allotted. No two sessions were the same, and I enjoyed listening to conversations and seeing the wacky things campers came up with.
“How’s your day been, Janna?” I asked the always chill blonde from my pod as she worked on a succulent cross-stitch. She was quieter, but bits of her personality had shone through in the day that I’d known her.
“Swell. I just came from baking. Kell-i was there too.” Her eyes filled with something dark, her voice going deadpan. “I think I found my nemesis.”
My eyes opened wide as her face didn’t change. I’d never had nemeses in my pod before, let alone foes in the science of baking. I was fascinated.
“That’s… Great,” I said awkwardly as one of my pod members, Diego, came in through the building doors. Yet again, no Jamie. “Hi.” I sounded altogether too cheery, trying to mask the little bit of fear she’d inspired. “The room is divided into sections, and the options are on the whiteboard. But if nothing appeals to you, a list of all available crafts is up front, and I can get stuff out for any project you’re interested in.”
Sitting next to a glass of white wine was Nat, who started pouring essential oils into a soap mold as Ren and the man I learned was Grant grabbed beers from the cooler I’d filled a few hours prior. I walked the room and stopped as Felicia explained soldering to a woman with a diamond ring.
Things were going well, but I wasn’t nervous about that at all. Turned out, adults liked to craft, especially when there was alcohol involved.
Ren plopped down at the jewelry table near the back, just where I happened to be grazing.
I decided to take my chance. “Hey, is Jamie meeting you here tonight?”
