Second First Impressions: A Novel

I’d know that door knock anywhere, always in the same pattern and cadence. “Coming.” I open my door and Teddy’s there, holding grocery bags in each hand and my mail in his mouth. “I couldn’t use my key,” he says through his teeth.

“What have we got here?” I take the envelopes out of his mouth. Now he’s freed up to give me a hello kiss, and he sure does.

“I brought a bunch of stuff you’re running low on.” He begins to unpack the bags into my fridge. “Did you finish your essay?”

“Yeah, I turned that in earlier. Now I’m sitting here thinking about something really hard.” I stack my textbooks away and sit back down at my laptop. “Have you ever had something that you held on to for a really long time for sentimental reasons?” I’m looking at my home page for my forum, Heaven Sent You Here.

“Sure, of course. Sentimentality is my bread and butter.”

I look at his tattoos and smile. “It’s time I admitted a secret. I was the administrator of a really big online forum.”

He’s finished unpacking the groceries and brings a wooden board over to the table. He’s made a tiny cheese platter. “What’s this forum? No. Don’t tell me. It’s for Heaven Sent.”

“Yeah. I’ve been running it with my friends since we were fifteen. But with the Pastor Pierce court trial, no one can feel the same way anymore. I think it might be time to close it down.”

Teddy leans over and cuts into the piece of cheese and hands me a preloaded cracker. When he sees the screen, he remembers something and laughs. “I’m a member of this.”

“What?”

“Back when we lived at Providence, I joined up so I could impress you. No wonder you were always watching the exact episode I needed to keep up. I just thought you were magical and perfect.”

“I’m okay with you thinking that.” I watch as he begins making another little cracker-and-cheese combo, knowing it’s for me. And sure enough, he’s putting it in my hand before I’ve eaten the first one. “Slow down.”

“I can’t slow down with you,” he argues. “You make me want to speed up everything.”

He’s been asking me to move in when my lease here ends. I do love my little studio apartment up on the fourth floor, and with the back pay from PDC I can afford it. But Teddy’s apartment is closer to college, and his bed is the comfiest place on earth.

His bed is like quicksand, though— if I get in, I can’t get out.

I nibble my thumb. “Do you think I should close it down? The other admins have told me it’s up to me. This was a lot of time. A lot of memories.” I look at the home page, which has barely changed since I was fifteen.

“I don’t think you need it anymore,” Teddy says. “You’ve let go of a lot since you left Providence, and it’s only been good for you.” He’s meaning how I’ve been seeing a therapist and I don’t need to recheck door handles until my palm is sore. “But you can leave it up. It won’t do any harm just sitting there.”

“It’s getting negative.”

I hate the posts about the actor on trial. It reminds me, too, that I’m going to have to be a witness in PDC’s case against Sylvia Drummond. It didn’t look good for her when the photographs of her disembarking the ship in a fancy outfit hit the news cycle. Her face was contorted in fury, and when she eventually called me, I was prepared to defend myself. And I had Teddy beside me, holding my hand through that call, and Rose Prescott by my other shoulder.

My parents are now sure that Sylvia was the one who took the church money.

“I got a text from Mel,” Teddy says with his mouth full of cheese. “She’s asked us to come and help set up for the Christmas party this year.”

“Of course we will.”

Mel ended up finding her dream job. She runs a full activity program for the residents of Providence, but it doesn’t stop there. She travels across six retirement sites, coordinating a variety of craft sessions, outings, and dance parties. Every workday for Mel is different. She loves old people. And most importantly, she visits both the wealthy residents of Providence, and the stripped-back struggling residences downtown, spreading her sparkle.

I say to Teddy, “It’ll be sad to go back, though.”

A quiet settles over us and when Teddy looks at me, he’s got memories in his eyes. He says gently, “She died happy, and it was because of you.”

Renata Parloni’s funeral was outrageous, and she would have loved it. Dubbed a HOT OR NOT magazine publishing pioneer by newspaper obituaries, her ceremony was attended by fashion designers, magazine moguls, and leggy models who peeked furtively at Teddy in his suit. He was too busy holding Aggie’s arm to notice, and besides, I was on his other arm.

When the priest said that Renata was survived by her wife, Aggie Parloni, a ripple of applause went through the room.

Renata was outrageous in life, and in death, she did something even more outrageous. That thing she’d always joked about. She’d written me into her will. When Aggie told me, it was like the hundred-dollar-bill incident from a lifetime ago. I tried very hard to not take it. I didn’t deserve it. I tried to slip it back, but it was no use.

Renata had decided that I was one of her beneficiaries, and now here I am. In a lovely little apartment in Fairchild, exhausted from a full day of study and work. I’m an intern at the Reptile Zoo and while I have a long, long road ahead of me in my dream to one day become a veterinarian, I am tackling the journey just like a golden bonnet tortoise: one inch at a time.

“I think I need to let a few old things go,” I say to Teddy, and I go to the admin screen of Heaven Sent You Here. There’s a deactivate page button. “If I hit this button, there’s no going back.”

“Would you want to go back?”

I think over the question seriously. I wouldn’t have a tattoo of a tortoise on my shoulder blade. I wouldn’t get to look at that red number 50 that Teddy put on the back of his hand as a reminder of how we found each other at Providence. I wouldn’t be in love, and I wouldn’t have someone love me.

“No, I wouldn’t go back,” I say, and I press the button, and it’s okay. Heaven Sent supported and nourished me during that time of my life that I was alone and old before my time, but I don’t need it now.

“Aw,” Teddy says, linking his fingers into mine. Give. He always, always gives. “I’m really proud of you.”

“It’s growing back so fast.” I put my free hand into his hair, which is tied back into a messy knot at the nape of his neck. “Your crowning glory. But I hope you’ve realized by now that you are not your hair. You’re a business owner.”

“I’m a tattoo artist,” he replies, but he’s smiling. He’s shocked us all by being very, very good at paperwork. Who knew that underneath this chaotic surface was a hidden administrator, dying to be given the opportunity? It’s such a turn-on. He grins at me now. “Just thinking about my hair has made you horny.”

“Teddy, surely you know by now you could be bald and I’d want you.”

“Don’t tell Daisy at Christmas, she might get out the clippers.”

“That reminds me. This Christmas, can I take you home to meet my churchy parents?” I repeat the dating advertisement I wrote for myself, all that time ago, when I was lonely and internet dating felt like a good idea for about two seconds, and then a further two months.

(I should also mention, Melanie is shopping the Sasaki Method manuscript around to literary agents.)

I continue, trying to remember my secret advertisement. “I’m looking for a patient, safe cuddle-bug soul mate.”

“Well, you found him.” Teddy gets up and presses a kiss against my temple. “Let me get some food into you. Oops,” he says and pulls on my cardigan. “You’re buttoned all crooked. There. All better.”

He goes into the kitchen and as he dishes up my dinner, he says, “Of course you can take me home to meet your churchy parents. And they will love me. They’ll think I’m God’s gift. I’m everybody’s type.”

It’s true. He is.

And he’s mine.