SWNOVELS : Chapter 15
“I LOVE IT,” I say.
“Told you!” Ashleigh bustles past me toward the light-strewn patio of BARn, which I now know is stylized as BARn. My hair is still damp from my post-kayak shower, my shoulders hurt where the straps of my dress rub into my sunburn, and my arm muscles feel like Jell-O. Mixed with wet concrete.
Miles and I didn’t even make it to the island, let alone around it, before I accepted I couldn’t go any further.
That was also when I realized my biggest mistake of the day. I’d saved absolutely no energy for the paddle back to shore. We’d had to stop every few strokes so I could gather my strength, while Miles paddled back and forth in a wide zigzag.
It would be a while before I kayaked again, before sunrise or not.
So far, BARn is much more my speed.
Julia and Miles pile out of the backseat of Ashleigh’s hatchback into the grassy field–cum–parking lot. “Oh my god, a taco truck,” Julia says, hurrying to catch up with Ashleigh as she strides toward the patio.
To the right of the parked taco truck, there’s a dance floor and a stage, a cover band blaring out “The Boys of Summer.” To the right sits a big red barn, its doors propped open, people filing in and out with booze-filled Mason jars and beer bottles clutched in hand. There’s also a partially covered bar jutting out from the side of the barn, every inch packed.
“I’ve loved boyfriends less than I love this place!” Julia calls back to us as Miles is shutting the car door.
“That’s just our attachment issues,” he tells me.
“Oh?” I look over at him. “You share them? That’s nice.”
“She once dumped a guy because he thought Mamma Mia 2 was better than the original,” he tells me.
“Wow, a die-hard fan,” I say.
“She hasn’t seen either movie,” he says. “She just thought having such a staunch opinion about it was a red flag.”
The infamous low chortle sneaks out of me, and his smile is so affectionate I wish I could roll myself up in it like a blanket.
“Well, if nothing else,” I say, “she and Ashleigh-the-Phish-Hater should have something to bond over.”
“Yeah, they’ll probably ditch us by the end of the night,” he agrees.
Our eyes catch. My blood hums. My body warms with phantom sensations, memories from two nights ago.
He brushes his fingertips over my bright-red shoulder. “This hurt?” he murmurs.
“A little,” I admit. “But that’s what I get for trying to be the cool, laid-back girl who doesn’t need to slather every inch of her body in sunblock every half hour.”
We’ve stopped moving, just barely out of reach of BARn’s twinkling lights, Julia and Ashleigh lost somewhere ahead in the crowd. “She might be cool and laid-back right now,” he says, “but she’ll feel less fancy-free when she’s taking monthly trips to a dermatologist.”
“Nah, cool, laid-back girls never face consequences for their spontaneity. It’s how they’re able to keep being cool and laid-back. They’re genetically predisposed to health. They’re not allergic to poison ivy or shellfish, and they never get migraines, even if they only sleep for three hours in a cold tent, and they never burn in the sun.”
“Huh,” he says.
“What?” I ask, right as I spot Julia in line at the food truck, waving us over.
“I just realized I’m a cool, laid-back girl,” Miles says.
I start toward Julia and Ashleigh, toward the safety of a buffer, calling over my shoulder, “I could’ve told you that.”
The band cranks out country covers of hits through the decades, and we dance until my hair has dried all the way through, then until it’s sweaty again.
At one point, Miles goes to get fresh beers—and a cider for me—and comes back wearing a handful of glow-stick necklaces, a sloppy pink lipstick mark on his cheek.
“Of course,” Julia shouts over the music, not interrupting her dancing whatsoever and not even close to winded.
Oh, to be twenty-three.
She jerks her head toward Miles. “Leaves for a beer, comes back with a hickey!”
I think she must mean figuratively, but that doesn’t stop me from scanning his throat as he’s passing out our drinks. When he’s doled them all out, he drops one of the glow necklaces around Ashleigh’s neck, then gives Julia one, which she adjusts to be smaller so she can wear it like a tiara. Then he puts the last two around my neck.
“Thank you,” I shout. The band’s just started in on a cover of “Crimson and Clover,” and half the audience is drunkenly singing along around us.
“My pleasure,” he says.
“I see that.” I flick his cheek just below the kiss mark. I hope that sounded friendly and jokey like I intended, and not incandescent with jealousy.
“Part of a bachelorette party scavenger hunt or something,” he explains. “Can you get it for me?”
I brush my fingers over the condensation on the outside of his beer bottle, then smudge the mark out of his skin. “Can’t take you anywhere.”
He leans in so I can hear him. “If I had a beard,” he shouts, “this never would’ve happened.”
“You could be in the ghost-face mask from Scream and this would still happen,” I say.
He turns in to me, his mouth nearly touching my ear, the spicy ginger and bready tang of beer hitting the back of my nose. “Are you jealous?” he teases.
I push up onto tiptoes, bracing a hand against his shoulder, tipsy enough to play along but not drunk enough to be honest: “It’d just be nice to earn my own glow sticks once in a while.”
He touches my waist. Heat unfurls over me, skull to toes. Automatically, I lean into the touch, and his fingers curl around my hip as he ducks his head again. “The bachelorette party’s still by the bar. I’m happy to introduce you.”
“And miss this song? Not enough glow sticks in the world.” I turn in to him, and my heart thumps, quick and sharp, at the way his dark eyes dilate, the way the corner of his mouth tips up in a wry smile.
Looking at his mouth, I forget what we were just talking about. I swallow a thorny knot and touch the scratchy corner of his jaw. “Beard’s almost back.”
His hand circles my wrist lightly, an electric frisson leaping from him to me. “Petra hated it too,” he says, his voice a buzz, half heard through the music.
My stomach gives a decisive downward jolt. “I don’t hate it,” I say. “It’s grown on me.”
The corner of his mouth ticks higher and his thumb runs along the side of my wrist. “So I should keep it?”
I clear my throat. “That’s up to you.”
“And I’m asking you,” he parries, his smile slightly mischievous but his gaze dark and heavy enough to pinion me to the spot.
The moment feels like a held breath, or a soap bubble, something that can’t last, that has to break one way or another.
And then it does. The song ends, and Julia barrels back toward us, baby bangs stuck to her forehead and mascara ringed around her eyes. “Who’s up for a shot?” she asks, and Miles steps back from me.
“I’ll get them,” he volunteers, and breaks away through the tightly packed crowd, casting one last glance over his shoulder, a hazy look that makes me feel like a Christmas present he’s one sleep from unwrapping.
I’d just taken a sip of lemonade and reached out to accept my receipt from the cashier, and I barely manage to avert my face before spit-taking.
“Ashleigh!” I chide, pulling her away from the counter.
“What?” she says. “That guy’s, like, sixty. I don’t think we’re going to surprise him.” She adds thoughtfully, “Unless of course he’s also sleeping with Miles.”
“I’m not sleeping with Miles,” I tell her.
“Okay, fine. I must’ve misread the signals.” Her tone makes it clear she doesn’t believe it.
The cashier calls our respective receipt numbers, and we grab our food from the counter, then walk toward the picnic tables on the grassy knoll overlooking the public beach.
“One time,” I admit. “Something happened, once.”
A smile spreads across Ashleigh’s pink-painted lips. “I knew it. Tell me everything.”
“There’s nothing to tell,” I say.
“That bad?”
“No,” I say a little too emphatically. At her smug grin, I add, “I just mean, I’m not even sure how it happened.”
“Well, you’re still ahead of me, because I don’t even know what happened.”
“We just made out a little bit,” I say.
“In what context,” she says.
“At home,” I say. “We were watching a movie and, I don’t know, it just happened.”
“What were you watching?” she asks.
“Does it matter?” I say.
“It sets the scene,” she says. “Honestly, Daphne, have you never had a close friend before?”
The last conversation I had with Sadie drifts through my mind like acrid smoke. But strangely, I also feel a slight lift in my stomach at Ashleigh’s implication that that’s what we’re becoming: close friends. “Not in a while, no,” I tell her.
She grabs my elbow. “You know it’s not like my social well is overflowing these days either. I just meant, it’s supposed to be fun to rehash all this, not embarrassing. This is a judgment-free space. We’re twenty yards from the library, for god’s sake. Yesterday I had to ask a guy to stop leading wild pigeons inside with a breadcrumb trail.”
“Again?” I say.
“Not Larry,” she replies. “Different guy.”
“Well, I didn’t have to entice Miles with breadcrumbs,” I say.
“Always a good sign,” she says.
“We were watching a Fast & Furious movie,” I spit out.
“Which one,” she asks immediately.
“I really couldn’t tell you. One with Vin Diesel in it.”
“Would make anyone horny,” she says. “And, what, it was weird?”
“No. It was . . .” I tamp my voice down, lest the food truck operator decide to lean in. “Weirdly good.”
“What’s weird about that?” Ashleigh says. “Miles is hot.”
“It’s weird because I haven’t kissed anyone but Peter in, like, five years, and I didn’t think when I finally did, it would be my ex-fiancé’s new fiancée’s ex-boyfriend.”
“When you put it like that . . .”
“Anyway, we agreed it was a huge mistake,” I say.
“Really?” she says. “Why?”
I shrug. “I mean, for every conceivable reason. We live together. We’re both just getting out of long-term relationships.”
She rolls her eyes. “You don’t have to dive into anything serious. I finalized my divorce over a year ago, and I have yet to make it to a third date with anyone.”
“No, I know that,” I say. “It couldn’t even be serious, since . . .”
Her eyebrow sharply arches. “Since?”
I heave a sigh. I wasn’t going to tell anyone from the library about this until things were more definite, but Ashleigh’s my friend now. I owe it to her. “I’m looking for a new job.”
She stares at me, like she doesn’t understand. “You’re obsessed with your job. Sometimes I catch you just staring at spreadsheets like they’re winning lottery tickets.”
“Okay, that’s a bit of an exaggeration,” I say, “but yes, I love my job. It’s the town I’m less sold on. I mean, I like it as a town. But I only moved here for Peter. My mom’s on the east coast, and . . . I don’t know. I’m just not sure I can hack it here. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”
She shakes her head, sets her bao bun down. “Look, I get it. We’re adults. We have to do what’s best for ourselves. It sucks for me, but I get it.”
“Thanks, Ash. Really.”
She shrugs, picks her bao bun back up, and takes a huge bite. Mouth full, she says, “But if you’re not sticking around, and you don’t want anything serious, then I really don’t see what the issue with Miles is.”
“The issue is,” I begin, “he said it shouldn’t happen again.”
“Huh,” she says.
“Huh, what?” I say, instantly panicking a little.
“Nothing,” she assures me. “That just surprises me. Last night there was a vibe.”
“I think Miles could be alone in a room with a paper bag and there’d still be a vibe,” I say, though, honestly, I’m relieved someone else picked up on it too. That it wasn’t just wishful thinking.
I shake it off. Vibe or not, the bottom line remains unchanged. I’m not going to have a one-night stand with my roommate.
“Can I ask . . .” I trail off, trying to decide how to phrase it. “Is it too soon for me to ask what happened? Between you and Duke?”
“Well, since you just told me about your clandestine roommate hookup,” she says, taking a huge bite of bao bun, “I think we’ve officially graduated from work friends to real friends.”
My heart pinches at the thought. I wish I’d made more of an effort to get to know her sooner. Even before the breakup, it would’ve been nice to have a friend like Ashleigh.
“Duke was my high school boyfriend,” she says, then pauses to chew for a second. “We broke up when we went to college. Then we both ended up back here. Eventually, we ran into each other at the YMCA, then met up at his car in the parking lot, as I mentioned.”
“Got it.”
“So nine months later, Mulder is born,” she says. “And Duke was great during the pregnancy. We weren’t really together, but he was present. And afterward, I think we were just like . . . drunk on our perfect newborn baby, so when he told me he wanted to marry me, I was like, Hell yeah, let’s do it! We’re already a family, you know?
“And for, like, five years, things were good. Then Mulder started kindergarten, and I went full-time at the library. Mulder started taking karate, and gymnastics, and Duke joined a rec hockey team, and . . .” She shrugs. “I don’t know. We still worked okay. But our whole relationship revolved around our kid. Even the other couples we hung out with all had kids Mulder’s age. That’s how we chose our friends. It’s how we chose what shows we watched. It was all we talked about. And once our son got busier, the relationship just . . . stopped feeling like enough for me.
“So we tried doing date nights, and that helped. Just having dedicated time for the two of us. But something was still off. It felt like . . . like we’d reached our final form. Like, I’d ask him to take a cooking class, and he’d say, We don’t like cooking, or I’d be like, What if we moved to Portugal, and he’d be like, We don’t have jobs in Portugal.”
“I mean . . . I hesitate to say this, but those seem like reasonable responses.”
“Oh, totally,” she agrees. “But the conversation just ended there, every time. There wasn’t a What if we visit Portugal in the summer. There wasn’t even a Why do you suddenly want to move to Portugal?”
“Why did you?” I ask.
“I didn’t,” she says, like this should be obvious. “I just wanted to feel less . . . settled.”
I snort. “We should’ve traded lives.”
Ashleigh shakes her head. “There’s steadiness and dependability, and those are great. But settling? Just deciding you already know everything you like and dislike on the entire planet, everything you’re good at, every friend you’re going to make, and every food you’re ever going to eat? The guy wouldn’t even let me repaint our bedroom! I wanted to know new parts of him, and I wanted to find new parts of myself. So I asked him to go to couples’ counseling.”
“And it didn’t work?” I say.
She smiles, but somehow it’s the first flash of sadness I’ve seen on her. “For me it did. But he wouldn’t go. He was willing to be good to me, but he wasn’t willing to be any better. I stuck it out as long as I could. Then one day I woke up, and I couldn’t anymore. So I told him. And a part of me expected him to finally get it. To say he’d do therapy, try. But he didn’t.”
“Shit,” I say. “I’m so sorry, Ashleigh.”
She gives a blasé shrug. “Sometimes it’s terrible, but this was my choice. I think a lot of my friends thought I was a selfish idiot, giving up a pretty good thing just for the hope of a really good thing. But how can I teach my kid not to settle if I’m not willing to fight for the life I want? I tried so hard to love the one I had, and if Duke had tried too, I would’ve held on. But he’s just one of those guys who doesn’t believe in sharing his ‘business’ with a stranger, so therapy’s out.
“He didn’t even want me talking to our friends about it all, so when we separated, it seemed like it was out of nowhere. Everyone took his side, and honestly, even the ones who didn’t still stopped inviting me to things. It’s awkward to have one single person in a room full of couples, I guess.”
A weight sinks through me.
I think about my last conversation with Sadie: You both matter to us so much. It had hurt, to be lumped in with him. But what hurt worse was, I didn’t believe it.
If we both meant so much to her and Cooper, wouldn’t she have called me at some point in the last two and a half months? She didn’t want me anymore, not on my own.
“God.” Ashleigh shakes her head. “Maybe that’s why I’m so starved for gossip. I never felt like I could tell anyone what was going on with us. Damn, I think I’ve had a breakthrough, Vincent.”
“Not to mention, you know my whole last name now,” I say.
“See?” She takes another bite. “Official friends.”