Book Lovers, page 31
“Maybe I won’t even get the job,” I say.
“No,” Libby replies with force. “Don’t try to fix it. Don’t choose me over you, okay? We’ve done this for years, and it’s almost broken us. It’s time to just be sisters, Nora. Don’t fix it. Just be here with me, and say it fucking sucks.”
“It does.” I scrunch my eyes tight. “It fucking sucks.”
I didn’t know the power of those words. They fix nothing, do nothing, but just saying them feels like planting a stake into the ground, pinning us together at least for this moment.
It sucks, and I can’t change that, but I’m here, with my sister, and somehow we’ll get through it.
You can take the city person out of the city, but the city will always be in them. I think it’s the same for sisters. Anywhere we go, we won’t leave each other. We couldn’t even if we wanted to. And we don’t. We never will.
* * *
Brendan meets the home inspector at the house, but Libby and the girls stay back with me, giving him some much-needed quiet after his weeks as a solo parent.
They’re not moving in earnest until November, a month before Number Three’s due date. Until then, Brendan will be back and forth, getting the house ready.
Two and a half months. That’s how long we have left together, and it’s going to count.
We spend the morning wandering the woods, trying to keep the girls on the trail and googling “what does poison ivy look like” every forty-five seconds, never getting any closer to a concrete answer.
We take them to the fence, and the horses clomp over eagerly to be petted, despite our lack of bait. “I guess we know where you and I stand,” Libby jokes as the girls’ little fingers swipe down a chestnut mare’s pink snout.
Afterward, we take the tin buckets from the cottage’s cabinet out to the blackberry thicket at the edge of the meadow and pick and eat plump berries until our fingers and lips are stained purple and our shoulders are sunburnt.
By the time we arrive home, our knees smudged with dirt, Tala is fully asleep in my arms, sticky and warm, and we pour her onto the couch to keep napping. Bea leads us into the kitchen to explain the art of blind baking a pie crust for the blackberries—she and Brendan have watched a lot of Great British Baking Show this month—and I still feel like a city person, through and through, but maybe it’s possible to have more than one home. Maybe it’s possible to belong in a hundred different ways to a hundred different people and places.
34
THE GIRLS ARE tucked into the air mattress in the upstairs bedroom (I’ve been relocated to the foldout couch), but Brendan, Libby, and I stay up late, picking over the leftovers of Bea’s blackberry pie.
Someone knocks on the door, and Brendan kisses Libby’s forehead on his way to answer it. “Nora?” he calls. “For you.”
Charlie’s standing in the doorway, his hair damp and his clothes perfectly wrinkle-free. He looks like a million bucks. Actually, more like six hundred, but six hundred very well-appointed dollars.
“Up for a walk?” he asks.
Libby shoves me out of my chair. “She sure is!”
Outside, we wander across the meadow, our hands catching and holding. It’s been years since I’ve held anyone’s hand other than Libby’s or Bea’s or Tala’s. It makes me feel young, but not in a bad way. Less like I’m powerless in an uncaring world and more like . . . like everything is new, shiny, undiscovered. The way Mom saw New York—that’s how I see Charlie.
When we reach the moonlit gazebo, he faces me. “I think we need to consider an alternate ending.”
I balk. “We already sent the notes. Dusty’s been working on edits all week. She’s—”
“Not for Frigid.” He lifts our hands, holds them against his chest, where I can feel his heart speeding. His eyes bore into me. Black-hole eyes. Sticky-trap eyes. Decadent dessert eyes.
“We take turns visiting each other,” he says seriously. “Once a month, maybe. And when you’re able, you come here for holidays. And when you can’t, I get my sister and her husband to fly out and be with my parents so I can get up to New York. We video call and text and email as much as we’re able—or if that’s too much, I don’t know, maybe we skip all of that. When you’re in the city, you’re working, and when we’re together, we’re together.”
My stomach feels like it’s overstuffed with drunken, glittering fireflies. “Like an open relationship?”
“No.” He shakes his head. “But if that’s what you’d prefer . . . I don’t know. We could try it. I don’t want to, but I will.”
“I don’t want that either,” I tell him, smiling.
He releases a breath. “Thank fuck.”
My heart twists. “Charlie . . .”
“Just consider it,” he presses quietly.
It didn’t work for Sally and Clint. For me and Jakob. Charlie and Amaya. Even if I can overcome my travel anxiety, even if Charlie doesn’t mind talking me down in the dead of night, how am I supposed to deal with the constant fear of losing him? The anxiety every time he cancels a call or a visit falls through? Waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the day he finally says, I want something different.
It’s not you.
I want someone different.
A slow, excruciating heartbreak unfolding bit by bit for weeks.
I’d take a swift beheading over that death by a thousand paper cuts, every time.
“Long distance never works,” I say. “You said that yourself.”
“I know,” he says. “But it’s never been us, Nora.”
“So we’re the exception?” I say, skeptical. “The people it just works out for.”
“Yes,” he says. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
His eyes rove over me as he regroups. “What else can we do, Nora? I’m open to notes. Tell me what you’d change. Get out your fucking pen, and shred it all up, and tell me how it’s supposed to end.”
It actually hurts to smile. My voice sounds like it’s scraping over broken glass. “We enjoy this week. We spend as much time together as we want, and we don’t talk about after, and then I leave, and I don’t say goodbye. Because I’m not good at them. I’ve never really said one, and I don’t want to start with you. So instead when I kiss you for the last time, neither of us draws attention to it. And then . . . I get on a plane and go home, incredibly grateful for the life-ruiningly hot man I once spent a month with in North Carolina.”
He stares at me, his eyes focused and brow furrowed as he absorbs what I said, his lips pouting. It’s his Editing Expression, and when it clears, he shakes his head and says, “No.”
I laugh, surprised. “What?”
He straightens, steps in close. “I said, no.”
“Charlie. What’s that even mean?”
“It means,” he says, eyes glinting, “you’ll have to do better than that.”
I smile despite myself, hope thrashing around in my belly like a very determined baby bird with a broken wing.
“I’ll expect notes by Friday,” he says.
* * *
The rest of the week, we’re running. Libby’s working on the fundraiser ball. Brendan’s finishing the final phases of the mortgage process. Charlie’s at the register, and Sally’s in and out nonstop, getting everything ready for the virtual book club with Dusty.
There’s a new sign in the window, reading MAKE GOOD CHOICES, BUY GOODE BOOKS, and a poster of Dusty’s face advertises both the book club and the Once in a Lifetime Blue Moon Ball.
Volunteers transform the town square, and technically I’ve called off for the week, but some things won’t wait, so I do my best to squeeze in bits of work in between giving the girls piggyback rides and cleaning up my résumé for Loggia.
I’ve always thought of myself as a creature of survival, but lately I’ve been daydreaming. About a new job. About Charlie. About having everything, all at once.
So in that way, maybe this place did transform me. Just not into a girl who loves flannel and pigtail braids.
When we’re together, Charlie and I don’t keep our distance or circle each other warily. We give in to every moment we can, but we don’t talk about the future. When we’re apart, though, we keep the story going over calls and texts.
You’ll spend Christmas in Sunshine Falls and I’ll spend New Year’s Eve in the city, he says.
We’ll get up early and train hop until we find a mariachi band, I say.
We’ll go to town hall meetings and involve ourselves in public feuds, then go back to the cottage and have sex all night, he says. And, We’ll do a taste test of all the dollar slices in the city.
We’ll get to the bottom of the cubed-ham salad at P.S., I say.
I believe in you so deeply, Nora, he says, but not even you can unlock the secret of that great mystery.
I’ll be so busy, I remind him. For the first couple months when I get back, I’ll be cramming in time with Libby and the girls—and, if I get the Loggia job, tapering off my agency work, off-loading my clients to another agent. Then there will be the learning curve of stepping into a new role.
Busy doesn’t scare me, Charlie says.
This, I think, is what it is to dream, and I finally understand why Mom could never give it up, why my authors can’t give it up, and I’m happy for them, because this wanting, it feels good, like a bruise you need to press on, a reminder that there are things in life so valuable that you must risk the pain of losing them for the joy of briefly having them.
Sometimes, I write to Charlie, the first act is the fun part, and then everything gets too complicated.
Stephens, he replies, for us, it’s all the fun part.
It hurts, but I let the dream go on awhile longer.
* * *
No one will ever convince me that time moves at a steady pace. Sure, your clock follows some invisible command, but it feels like it’s randomly spouting off minutes at whatever intervals suit it, because this week is a blip, and then Friday night arrives.
Another heat wave breaks, ushering in fall weather, and we set up the tent and air mattress again. While Libby and Brendan walk into town to pick up quattro stagioni pizza, the girls and I lie on our backs, watching the sky darken.
Bea tells me about everything she and Brendan have baked over the last few weeks. Tala regales us with a tale that is either the nonsense ramblings of a toddler or a faithful retelling of a Kafka novel.
After we’ve eaten, Libby suggests Brendan take the king bed to himself tonight, and he says, mid-yawn, “Oh, thank God.”
When he kisses the girls good night, they’re so sleepy they hardly react, except for Tala reaching her little arms up toward his face for a second before letting them flop down on her tummy.
He kisses Libby last, then gives me a side hug (world’s worst hugger), and I feel a bigger crush of love for him than I did the day he married my sister.
“What the hell,” Libby whispers, laughing. “Are you crying?”
“Shut up!” I toss a pillow at her. “You broke my eye muscles. I can’t stop it now.”
“You’re crying because you love Brendan so much,” she teases. “Admit it.”
“I love Brendan so much,” I say, laughing through the tears. “He’s nice!”
Libby’s laughter escalates. “Dude, I know.”
Tala grumbles and rolls over, her arm flinging across her eyes.
Libby and I lie back side by side and hold each other’s hands as we study the improbable number of constellations.
“You know what?” Libby whispers.
“Probably,” I say, “but try me.”
“Even if you can’t see them back in Manhattan, all of those stars will be over you too. Maybe every night, we look up at the sky at the same time.”
“Every night?” I say, dubious.
“Or once a week,” she says. “We get on the phone, and we look up at the sky, and then we’ll know we’re still together. Wherever we go.”
I swallow a rising lump. “Mom will be with you too,” I say. “Just because you’re leaving New York, it doesn’t mean you’re leaving her behind.”
Libby snuggles closer, resting her head on the divot of my shoulder, the smell of crushed blackberries still lingering in her hair. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“Just,” she says, “thank you.”
For once, I don’t dream about Mom.
35
THE CENTER OF town is a wonderland of string lights and bunting, long tables covered in pretty gingham cloths and loaded with pies. A dance floor sits in the square, and a branded Coors truck sells beer behind the gazebo. Next to it, Amaya and Mrs. Struthers hawk donated wine, every glass poured with a heavy hand. I doubt they have the permits for most of this stuff, but then again, Libby made it sound like just about everyone at that town hall meeting was involved in one way or another in making this happen, so there’s a small chance this is all aboveboard.
Brendan, Libby, the girls, and I stop by Goode Books to catch Dusty’s event, but the place is packed and we don’t linger long. Charlie and Sally arranged all the new furniture—along with the old folding chairs—into rows in the café, with Dusty’s videoconference projected onto the far wall and her audio playing through the shop’s speakers so that even the overflow of visitors could hear while they shopped.
The girls are bouncing off the walls, so we take them over to Mug + Shot’s pop-up soda shoppe for frothy pink cows.
“This is a huge mistake,” Libby notes as she passes the red-soda-and-ice-cream-plus-whipped-cream concoctions to Bea and Tala.
“A delicious one, though,” I point out.
“And,” Brendan adds, dropping his voice, “they always crash after a sugar blitz.”
Back in the town square, we gorge ourselves: on popcorn, on chocolate pie and rhubarb, on sugar-dusted pecans that make me think of cold mornings in Central Park, and on one local wine that has to be the worst I’ve ever had, along with another that’s actually pretty good.
We dance with the girls to pop songs Bea somehow knows better than Libby or I, and as the night wears on and total darkness falls, bringing a slight chill with it, Tala falls asleep in Brendan’s arms while he and Clint Lastra are talking about catch-and-release fishing spots.
Brendan’s never fished in his life, but he’s determined to try, and Clint’s happy to get him started.
Libby’s going to be happy here, I think as I watch them from a distance. She’s going to be so fucking happy, and that will make the distance bearable, almost.
She and Bea slip off to see if they can find some sweatshirts or blankets in Brendan’s rental car, but I hang back, watching Gertie and her girlfriend, the bickering couple from town hall, and a dozen other pairings sleepily sway on the dance floor.
I spot Shepherd in a gap in the crowd, and he gives me a sheepish smile and wave before ambling over. “Hey there,” he says.
“Hey,” I say. After an awkward moment, I begin, “I’m sorry about—” right as he’s saying, “Just wanted to say—”
He smiles again, that handsome, leading-man smile. “You go first.”
“I’m sorry if I misled you,” I say. “You’re a great guy.”
He gives another warm, albeit vaguely disappointed smile. “Just not your kind of great guy.”
“No,” I admit. “I guess not. But if you’re ever in New York and you need a tour guide—or a wingman . . .”
“I’ll look you up.” He stifles a yawn with the back of his hand. “Not used to being up this late,” he says apologetically. “I should turn in.”
Of course he’s a morning person. Life with Shepherd would be a lot of slow, romantic sex with intensely loving eye contact, followed by watching the sunrise over the valley. He will, no doubt, be part of someone’s happy ending. Maybe he belongs to someone already, in a way that can’t be explained.
For someone else, he will be easy in the best way.
As if the thought has conjured him, Charlie appears a few yards behind Shepherd, and my heart lifts, warm and reliable as Old Faithful.
Shepherd catches me looking away, a sunflower finding its light source. He follows my gaze straight to Charlie and smiles knowingly. “Have a good flight, Nora.”
“Thanks,” I say, blushing a little at my own transparency. “Take care, Shepherd.”
He walks off, pausing for a moment to talk to Charlie on his way to the edge of the town square. Smiles are exchanged, Charlie’s a bit wary but not so guarded as that day outside Goode Books. Shepherd claps him on the shoulder as he says something, and Charlie looks toward me, that geyser of affection erupting in my chest again at his faint smile.
With a few more words, they part ways, Shepherd making his way to the fringes of the crowd and Charlie coming toward me with his smile tugging wider.
“I heard you might be cold,” he says quietly. He holds out a bundled-up flannel shirt I hadn’t noticed him carrying. I glance toward where Libby and Bea have rejoined Brendan, and Libby flashes me a quick smile.
“Wow,” I say. “Word does travel fast here.”
“Once, in high school,” he says, “I went to a barber on a whim and got my head shaved. My parents knew before I got home.”
“Impressive,” I say.
“Demented.” He holds the flannel up and I turn, feeling like a delicate socialite in an old black-and-white movie as he slips it over my arms, then turns me back to him and starts buttoning it.
