SWNOVELS : Chapter 16
MILES IS ON his way out the door when I get home, a piece of toast clamped in his mouth and his keys, phone, and water bottle clutched in one hand.
“Running late?” I guess, holding the door open so he can slip out.
He nods, plucks the toast from between his lips. “Had to give Julia a ride. To a date.”
“She’s been here, like, three days,” I marvel.
“I know. Guess she met him at BARn.”
A few seconds tick by in which neither of us seems to have anything at all to say. It’s the first time we’ve been alone in the apartment together since Julia showed up.
I break first: “Anyway! I’ll let you go.”
“Right. See you later.” He turns to go but almost immediately does an about-face. “I forgot to mention, I can’t do this Sunday.”
“Oh.” I try not to look crestfallen. I try not to be crestfallen. It’s honestly probably for the best if we spend a little less time together. “No worries.”
“The thing is,” he begins.
“Miles, really, it’s fine,” I promise.
“No, I know, it’s just . . .” He pauses. “I’m committed to this thing Saturday night.”
I nod eagerly, like I’m not only personally invested in but also thrilled by his having plans.
“But I have two tickets,” he says. “So I was thinking maybe you’d want to go with me?”
“Oh,” I say.
I must take too long to go on, because a slight smile tugs at his mouth, his eyes sparking with humor. “There’s no pressure, Daphne,” he says. “If you don’t want to—”
“No,” I say. “It’s not that.”
It is exactly that.
“I just might have to get some work done,” I say.
The work being, not finding myself alone with Miles Nowak on a Saturday night and incapable of maintaining the friendly boundaries we’ve established.
“Sorry,” I force out. “Maybe next time.”
He nods. “Sure,” he says. “I’ll see you later.”
I nod too. “See you.”
He pops the toast back between his lips and disappears into the stairwell at the end of the hall.
I shut myself into the apartment and wait for the full-body regret to simmer down.
It’s for the best. I’m stuck here for at least fifty-three more days, and I’m not going to blow up my life again in that window.
I drop my bag and shuffle deeper into the apartment. Julia’s shoes are in the front hall, her clothes everywhere in the living room and bedding still wadded on the sofa. The bathroom counter is smeared with makeup, and she’s left two separate hair tools plugged in.
Minus the fire hazard, I don’t mind. As a kid, I was so jealous of my friends who had siblings. My best memories were all of movie nights with Mom or our long Saturday morning wanders through kitsch shops and record stores, but so much of my childhood was sitting in an otherwise empty apartment, longing for the kind of noise, clutter, permanence that comes from having a family, rather than just one overworked mother.
Julia might be a slob, but having her stuff everywhere makes the empty apartment feel a little less lonely.
I unplug her flat iron and clean up a bit, then take a shower and make some Easy Mac. While I eat, I email potential sponsors along with a few higher-profile authors we hosted back at the Richmond library to ask whether they could record videos to air as we meet our fundraising goals throughout the night. Then I check my phone calendar against the wall calendar. To my surprise, Miles has added his winery shifts in blue, and Julia (I presume) has added in scratchy red, across this Thursday: COMMIT MURDER.
Underneath it, I scribble as small as I can: Call FBI about Julia.
Then I get in bed and try to read, without any success. Then I try to watch an action movie and quickly realize it’s not fun to watch that sort of thing alone, so I take to scrolling social media, seeing college friends’ summer pregnancy announcements, a Richmond coworker’s recent trip to Thailand to see family, and then, without any warning, there she is, on my screen.
Petra.
And sure, that’s jarring enough. But it’s not what makes me fling my phone across the room, pulse racing.
It’s who posted the picture. It’s who else is in it.
The tiny woman with her, arms wrapped around Petra, both of them beaming in front of decimated plates of chocolate waffles on an orange-checked tablecloth.
I only saw the image for a second, but it’s seared into my mind.
How could it not be, when I recognize the tablecloth, the waffles, and even Petra’s beaming friend?
I crawl across the bed, heart in my throat, and brace myself before flipping the phone face up again.
Cooper posted the picture. I don’t need the geotag—RICHMOND, VIRGINIA—to know where the shot was taken. It’s our brunch spot. The one he, Sadie, Peter, and I used to go to most Saturdays.
Peter and Petra are visiting them.
I can’t breathe. My clothes feel too tight, my skin hot and itchy. I stumble to the window and my arms have gone too weak to open it on the first try. When I finally do, there’s no breeze to break the heat, anyway.
It’s one thing to be replaced by an ex. It’s another to feel like your whole life has been handed over to someone else.
I think I might be sick. I even go into the bathroom, just in case.
This is your fault, a voice whispers from the back of my mind. You’re the one who built everything around him.
Moved to his hometown. Let Sadie’s and my relationship get absorbed by the four of us, our weekly girls’ nights becoming double dates, our weekend trips replaced with couples’ vacations, our conversations unfolding in our group chat instead of on long phone calls. I’m the one who put all my eggs in the incredibly awkward basket of willfully befriending Scott and the rest of Peter’s Waning Bay buddies instead of making my own—never mind how hard it is to make headway into a group who’s mostly interested in rehashing shared memories. Moved into a house that belonged only to Peter.
Miles was right. I need to stop fixating on how much I’ve lost, and focus on building something new. I already knew my old life was over. Sitting here and simmering in it won’t do me any good.
I close the toilet and sit atop the lid, pulling up my messages with Ashleigh. You said you had a hobby I could borrow? I type.
Every fourth Wednesday of the month. AKA tomorrow, she writes. You in?
What is it? I ask. All you said is it isn’t “organized exercise.”
Still true, she replies. Don’t show up in raggedy sweats.
Is it DISorganized exercise? I ask.
That’s certainly closer, she says.
Great, I say, and then I text Miles too. Maybe it’s a mistake, maybe it’s not smart, but being “smart” hasn’t paid off well for me thus far.
I’m in for Saturday, I tell him.
For one thing, the man who answers the door to the bilevel five miles outside town isn’t a stranger.
He’s a seventy-something-year-old dead ringer for Morgan Freeman, as long as you ignore the full Red Wings–branded sweatsuit and matching slippers, which don’t strike me as a particularly Freemanesque sartorial choice.
“About time you showed up!” he greets us and steps aside to let us into his home.
“Harvey!” I say, too stunned to move.
“Sorry we’re late.” Ashleigh tips her head toward me. “Daphne’s fault, obviously.”
Harvey snorts. “I know I’ve got a youthful glow, but I wasn’t born yesterday. Come in, come in. Shoes off. Everyone’s back in the breakfast nook.”
I slip my loafers off next to Ashleigh’s knee-high boots and we follow Harvey down a narrow, wood-paneled wall toward the sound of smooth jazz and the potent smell of cigar smoke. Every inch of the walls is devoted to at least three generations of family photos, ranging from recent shots of his granddaughters’ soccer tournaments all the way back to time-faded wedding portraits of him and his late wife.
“So how long has this poker night been going on?” I ask.
“Literally since I was born,” Ashleigh says, “but I wasn’t allowed to join until I was eighteen.”
“You’ve known each other that long?” I say, surprised. They’re friendly at work, but I’ve never once gotten the sense that they actually know each other.
“Since she was two feet tall,” Harvey tells me now.
“So eighth grade,” I say, and he hacks out a laugh.
“Harvey has this whole thing about ‘not showing favoritism’ at work.” Ashleigh makes finger quotes. “He even made the district manager do my job interview rather than just hiring me.”
“Wouldn’t you hate wondering whether you’d really deserved it or not?” he asks.
“Not really, no,” she says.
Harvey moves out of the hallway, so we can slide into the breakfast nook after him. “Look who decided to finally show up,” he says, “and she brought us a new fifth!”
“Trial basis only,” Ashleigh says. “We’ll see if she can hold her own. This is Daphne. Daphne, this is—”
“Lenore!” I say, shocked anew to spot tall, gangly Lenore from the asparagus stand, tucked back in the chair closest to the room’s bay window. And right beside her, the final participant in poker night, tiny and dark-haired: “Barb!”
They’re both wearing the same visors as when I met them. Both have matching cigars hanging out of their mouths. Lenore yanks hers out from between her lips as she stands to greet me. “What a nice surprise!”
Ashleigh looks between us. “You know each other?”
“We’ve met,” I say, right as Barb chimes in, “She’s our friend Miles’s new girl!”
Small towns.
“How do you know Miles?” Ashleigh asks.
Right as I say, “Oh, we’re just friends.”
Right as Harvey says, “Who the hell is Miles?” and sinks into one of the cane-backed dining chairs. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard Harvey swear. Still less shocking than the Red Wings slippers.
Lenore asks Ashleigh, “How do you two know each other?”
“Daphne works with us at the library,” Ashleigh replies.
“Who’s this Miles fellow?” Harvey says.
“Miles is my roommate,” I clarify, at which Lenore and Barb exchange a knowing look.
Ashleigh slings her huge purse onto the floor and drops into the chair beside Harvey, leaving me to take the one next to Barb. Harvey plucks a cigar from a small wooden box in the center of the laminate table, then slides the box toward us.
“No, thanks,” I say. Ashleigh pops one right out, reaching for the cigar cutter in the box’s lid. “So how do all of you know each other?” I ask.
Harvey starts to shuffle. “Oh, we all go way back.”
“Grace Episcopal.” Lenore nods like, You understand.
I don’t.
“My mom was the priest there,” Ashleigh explains. “My stepmom, technically, but my dad died when I was tiny, and my mom married Adara when I was six, so she was a parent to me for basically as long as I can remember.”
A sadness flutters through the room. Harvey sets his hand atop Ashleigh’s and gives it a squeeze. “She was a good woman.”
“The best.” Lenore exhales a perfect ring of smoke toward the open bay window. “Great poker player too.”
Before I can ask—or decide if I should—Ashleigh says curtly, “Stomach cancer. Five and a half years ago.”
I think of my own mother and feel like my chest might crumple. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”
“It’s hard.” She cups a hand around her cigar as she lights it. “When we lost Adara, Mom really needed to be somewhere new, so she moved out to Sedona, where her sister lives. Mulder and I miss both of them a lot, but at least without Mom and Adara in the game undercutting me, I can finally take these geezers for all they’re worth.”
Lenore scoffs. “Good luck.”
“She taught me everything she knew,” Ashleigh says, hands up, cigar dangling from the corner of her mouth like a Hunter S. Thompson character. “I’m the heir apparent here.”
“Would’ve been,” Barb replies, “if you’d been the kind of kid who listens to a damn word your elders say.”
They ooh. They aah. They trash-talk. They keep accusing each other of putting off the inevitable, until finally we play the first round.
I quickly fold, nothing but a pair of twos in my hand. Harvey celebrates his winning royal flush by shuffling into the kitchen and coming back with a bottle of nice scotch. He pours a little for each of us and Barb puts a new record on.
“Round two,” Lenore says, rubbing her hands together.
By the end of the night, I’ve lost forty bucks, won eleven of it back, smoked my first cigar, and promised to go to Harvey’s seventy-fifth birthday party, which isn’t until October—three and a half months from now—but for which planning has already commenced.
“We’re going to rent a party bus and go down to the casino!” Barb tells me, eyes sparkling from laughing, drinking, smoking, and soundly kicking our asses at the card table.
“Assuming I don’t kick the bucket before then,” Harvey says.
“Oh, no, we’ll still rent the party bus,” Lenore puts in. “It’ll just be a funeral instead of a birthday.”
“Going out in style,” Harvey says.
“Should we make sure you’re wearing your signature look?” I ask, gesturing toward his getup. As soon as I’ve said it, I feel that familiar oh shit dip in my stomach, unsure whether the joke crossed an invisible line.
But Harvey’s coughing out a laugh along with a cloud of smoke. “You can come back,” Harvey tells me; then to Ashleigh, pointedly, “Bring her back.” Then, to me again: “Just don’t expect special treatment at work.”
I cross my heart.
At the front door, we all exchange hugs farewell, then Ashleigh and I slip on our shoes and step out into the quiet cul-de-sac. Most of the other houses are either totally dark or have one lone bulb glowing beside their front doors, but if Ashleigh’s to be believed, poker night is just getting started.
“Share a cab?” she asks, swaying slightly on the spot as she summons one on her phone.
Neither of us is fit to drive. “First a hobby, then a cab,” I say. “What’s next?”
“A deadly secret,” Ashleigh deadpans.
At least I think it’s a joke.
“That was really fun,” I say. “I haven’t been to a party since . . .” I think for a moment. “My engagement party, I guess.”
“You thought that was a party?” she says. “We really do need to get you out more.”
I shrug. “I’ve always been kind of a tagalong, I guess. Only lately I haven’t had anyone to tag along after.”
“You’re not a tagalong,” she says. “You’re a we-girl.”
“Like a wee lass?” I ask.
“No, like, We love that restaurant. We always vacation there. We don’t really like scary movies. A woman who’s more comfortable being a part of a whole, who never goes anywhere without a partner.”
“Shit,” I say. “You’re right.”
“Of course I’m right,” she says. “I’m wise.”
The first we was my mom and me, then it was Sadie and me, then Peter. I’ve always cleaved to the people I love, tried to orient my orbit around them. Maybe, I realize, I’ve been trying to make myself un-leave-able. But it hasn’t worked.
“I don’t want to just be a part of we,” I say. “I want to be an I.”
“You’re already an I. It’s just about how much you embrace it.”
“I guess,” I say.
Ashleigh appraises me. “You held your own tonight.”
“Yeah, well, I have a feeling they went easy on me,” I say.
“Oh, they treated you like you were made of glass,” she agrees, her head cocked and gaze appraising. “But you’re not so delicate, Vincent.”
“I’m not.” It feels true, at least right now. I’m not so delicate. Lonely, hurt, angry, a little bit whiny? Sure.
But not delicate.
Maybe I could handle staying here, where my life fell apart. Maybe I could start over, making something my own this time.
The cab pulls up.
“Ashleigh?” I say.
“Hm?” she says.
“Thank you,” I say. “Really.”
She rolls her eyes. “We needed a fifth.”
I shake my head. “Not just that. For being my friend. For still giving me a chance, after the last year.”
Her ever-blunt features soften. “You know,” she says, “I needed one too.”
“I’m glad it could be me,” I tell her.
“Right back at you.” The cabdriver flashes his lights at us, and with our arms slung over each other’s shoulders, we wobble down the driveway to meet him.
For reasons I don’t completely understand, I feel like I could cry.