I turned over the ignition and looked at her door one last time, like I was willing it to open—willing her to run out to me. To come to her senses. But she didn’t. Instead, the mailman trundled up with sagging pants and stuffed her mailbox full of junk and then shuffled off.
Peeling out with the engine damn near redlining, I found myself heading back to the Willows. If she wouldn’t let me be with her, at least I could go back to where I’d gotten so close to her. We’d been in such a hurry that morning, I hadn’t even bothered to shorten the reservation, so the house was still mine to use. It was a far cry from actually being with her—her touch, her smell, her laughter—but it was something, at least.
But when I walked into the kitchen, I felt a gut punch of anguish that knocked the wind out of me. I slammed the kitchen door and braced myself on the countertop. I tried my damnedest to man up, but it was no use. Ten minutes away from her and I was a fucking mess.
What I’d said to her was the goddamned truth. If she’d asked, I’d have given it all up for her. The show, the travel, anything she wanted. But I couldn’t give it up if she wouldn’t be waiting for me on the other side. I couldn’t jump from that cliff without knowing that she was going to be there at the end of the dive.
I couldn’t face this, not here—maybe not ever. Before she’d come along, the thing that defined me was my work. And with her gone, it was the thing that defined me still. So I grabbed my phone, turned it back on, and called Markowitz.
“Powers? What’s the hell is going on? Been getting alerts up the yin-yang to tell you to check in for your flight!”
I looked out at the yard, where I’d imagined her with a garden and a dog. I looked at the island where I’d taken her. I looked at the kitchen table where we’d eaten together for the first time. “Get me the hell out of here.”
For once, he didn’t launch into a bunch of bullshit questions. I heard the sound of him typing and he asked, “One ticket . . . or two?”
I hung my head over the sink and shut my eyes, blocking out the light from the window and all the fucking memories. The ones we had. And the ones we’d never have. “One.”
He let out a groan. “I’m awfully sorry to hear that, buddy.”
Christ almighty, I loved her. I didn’t want to let her go, but I wouldn’t fucking stay where I wasn’t wanted either. “So am I,” I said as I pushed my tears away from my eyes.
There was a little more typing on the other end of the line, before Markowitz finally said, “Savannah to JFK, JFK to Edinburgh. Seven thirty tonight. Gives you two hours before you gotta be at the airport. That good with you?”
I braced myself on the kitchen table and stared at the houseplant that she’d used as a makeshift candelabra on that first night we spent together. “It’ll have to be,” I said to Markowitz and ended the call.
For a few ticks of the grandfather clock, I didn’t move a muscle. I had that feeling like this just all had to be a nightmare, like I’d wake up any second with Lily in my arms. But this was real. It had happened. And another red-hot flash of anger came over me. Without even thinking, I shoved the potted plant off the table, sending it flying onto the floor. Shards of terra-cotta poked out from the dirt and flowers scattered all around the kitchen.
Wreckage from beauty. Misery from happiness.
Whoever said it was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all was completely full of shit.
46
LILY
I curled up into a snotty, tearful mess on my couch and let old episodes of The Powers of Suggestion play back at me from my computer. Every time I looked at him, my entire body ached, right down to my bones. I was sobbing over an episode of him in Hawaii—taking a break from searching for some sort of enormous bat to learn to surf—when finally I just couldn’t take it anymore. It hurt too much. Every smile, every wink at the camera, every adjustment of his wet suit made me love him—and miss him—that much more. Slamming my laptop shut, I buried my face in the pillows. I had made my choice, and I knew logically that it was the best thing. For me, maybe not. For him, definitely. Because the last thing he needed was me tying him down. I was not going to be the woman to clip his wings.
I drifted in and out of sleep, but I was so stuffed up from all the crying that I couldn’t breathe through my nose. Every once in a while, I would startle myself awake with a snort, only to find my face stuck to the cushions with snot and tears and drool. Lovely.
“Love you?” said the General. I poked my head up from the couch and saw him watching me, cocking his head side to side.
The General was obviously mystified at the full-blown wallow that was unfolding in front of him. He’d seen me in all sorts of states of happiness and not so happiness. He’d seen me frustrated with men. He’d seen me angry with men. Lord knew he’d seen me disappointed in men. He’d even seen me briefly go on a furious Google quest over “can nuns have birds in a convent?” But he’d never seen me break down into a weeping mess over anybody or anything.
“Love you too.” I wiped my nose and tried to sniffle. It made a painful sucking sensation in my ears, like I was underwater or had a bad cold. I rolled off the couch and shuffled into the kitchen, where I prepared him a pathetic plate of the only easy-to-prepare vegetable I had in the house—frozen peas. Just like I’d recommended Gabe use for his face when I almost knocked him out. Even peas hurt now.
After microwaving them for ten seconds, I slid the General’s dinner through the flap in his cage. He stared at his wrinkly peas and then at me. “Sad.”
“Very,” I sniffled. I sank back down on the couch and stared at the nearly finished hat I had been working on for Gabe. It was so close to being done. I held the work in my hands, getting ready to tear it apart. But I could not bring myself to do it. I could not get myself to destroy it, not because it was one OK-ish thing that I had made so far but because it was for him. And I didn’t want to wreck it, even if he was gone. Or maybe especially because he was gone.
I fought through the waves of tears and finished the hat as best I could. Right as I was casting off, I heard footsteps on my staircase. My heart somersaulted and cartwheeled, and I turned expectantly, hopefully, toward the door. It was him. It had to be him.
It wasn’t. It was my sister in costume, wearing her heavy-soled Victorian boots that made her clomp up the steps like she weighed 250 pounds. “Lily?” she said, bursting in without knocking, “I thought you’d be on your way to Scot—” She stopped midword. She blinked. “Oh my God, what happened?”
I turned away, looking at the hat in my hands. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Daisy closed the door and came inside, sitting down next to me, with her petticoats rustling. “Is it Gabe?”
At the mention of his name, my lips began to quiver. “It’s all over.”
Daisy seemed shocked for a millisecond before settling into a very scary version of the Glare. “What did he . . .” She set her teeth. “Where is he? How about I go find him and wipe that Crest-sponsored smile right off his stupid—”
I shook my head. “Stop. Just stop.” I pulled the magazine out from under the couch cushions and handed it to her. Even though it was the thing that had brought it all crashing down, I still somehow needed it near me. The thought of it getting ruined in a summer storm or blowing down the street into the gutter was more than I could stand. “It’s not what he did,” I said as the tears slid down my cheeks all over again. “It’s what he is. And what I am.”
Daisy still looked pretty mad. “What you are is wonderful, Lily. You’re caring, you’re kind, you’re funny, you’re smart. And he’d be damned lucky to have you.”
I felt like I was none of those things. Or that even if I were, it wasn’t enough. We weren’t chocolate and peanut butter—we were oil and vinegar. I took the magazine from her, and it fell open to the centerfold. It was him at some sort of animal sanctuary, learning to shear a sheep. Then I turned the page, and he looked back at us in a sharp and expensive t
ux, beaming at the camera. Turning the page again, I showed her the yearbook photo, and Daisy groaned. But then I pointed to the interview, pressing my fingertip to the word travel.
“See? It would never work. You and Boris were doomed. Imagine us.” I held the cover up next to my face.
Daisy took a deep breath and nodded as she held my hand. Her palm felt warm and comforting against mine. All the sadness seemed to drain out of me, and I felt nothing but pure exhaustion. I leaned against her, closing my burning eyes. She wrapped her arm around me and rocked me gently side to side. “How about we get you cleaned up, I get changed out of this ridiculous dress, and then you, me, and Ivan go get something to eat?”
“Not hungry,” I said against her puffy starched sleeve.
“Don’t care.” Daisy gripped me a little tighter. “I’ll take you to get your favorite, how about that?”
I flopped back on the couch and rubbed my face as my sinuses made a sort of worrisome spongy squelching sound. I blinked hard and looked at the clock on the cable box. It felt fuzzy and far away, just as it had on the day when I’d planned to make him dinner. I took the hat from the coffee table and smoothed it on my knee. “What if he comes back? I don’t know when he’s leaving.”
My sister ran her fingers over the stitches. “Do you want to see him?”
Another geyser of grief sputtered up through me, and I struggled to keep it down. Of course I wanted to see him. Always. Now and forever. But I knew it would be the worst thing for me, and I managed a blubbered “Bad idea.”
Daisy wrapped her arm around me again. “Well, then, we can leave his hat for him on the porch, maybe. How about that?”
“OK,” I said, crumpling against her in surrender, wrapping my arms around her and sinking into her starched pleats. “Where are we going? Drs. Fries and Root Beer?” I asked, my voice muffled by her arm.
“Better,” she said and gave me a kiss on the crown of my head.
It wasn’t better; it was Uncle Jimmy’s Secret Ingredient. But I was so busy half-heartedly making Ivan’s baby giraffe dance for him on his car seat while I tried to keep my mind off Gabe that I didn’t even realize where we were until we’d arrived.
“Oh God,” I said as I locked automatically onto the picnic table where Gabe and I had sat. Where he’d pressed his leg against mine. Where I’d felt that warmth and joy inside me—which I’d never feel again. Maybe I really was destined to be a spinster, just like I played at the history museum.
“Told you!” Daisy said. “Better!” She leaped out of the driver’s seat and came around to get Ivan from his car seat. She seemed so proud of herself, so happy, that I just didn’t have the heart to say that anywhere, literally, anywhere would have been less painful for me. Except maybe Auntie Jennifer’s grocery store, which, obviously, I would never be able to enter again without ugly crying so hard that I scared away all her customers. Fantastic.
I pressed the back door open with my shoulder, slumping out with heavy, flat-footed stomps. I followed behind Daisy and Ivan as they headed for the entrance. Jimmy Jr. was still outside pacing, but this time with a huge cigar between his teeth. “Lily!” he boomed.
My wave was a wet-noodle wave, and it actually hurt to smile, like I was wearing an egg-white mask. But I did my best. “Still haven’t figured it out?” I asked. My voice sounded far away, like it belonged to someone else. Someone who had pinched her nostrils with a clothespin.
“Nope.” He placed his cigar on a window ledge. He grabbed a few sauce-splattered menus and led us toward the picnic tables out back. As we got nearer to the tables, he looked over his shoulder at me. He nodded knowingly, with a slow lift of his massive shoulders, like somehow, he just understood. Granted, it was hardly rocket science. There was a very real possibility I still had snot dripping from my nose. But I appreciated his not asking about it, and I was grateful when he led us to the table farthest from where Gabe and I had sat together.
I tried to read the menu, running my eyes over all the usually mouthwatering things, but I felt pretty much nothing. No hunger. No delight. No interest even in barbecue.
“Boy, you are really feeling the feels,” my sister said. She gave Ivan a pacifier and let him crawl on the grass, crouching beside him and looking up at me. I dropped my menu and nodded at her and then let my head rest between my palms. My elbows dug into the raw wood of the tabletop, and two tears splatted down onto the menu’s plastic sleeve.
Within a few moments, Jimmy Jr. brought out my usual tenders with a side order of the sauce. He raised one of his bushy dark eyebrows at me. “That’s the last of it,” he said quietly. “Lord and Uncle Jimmy help us.”
As Jimmy Jr. trundled off, I stared at the table where Gabe and I had sat, and the sadness welled up inside me all over again. Tears tumbled off my cheeks, and my sister grabbed a stack of paper napkins out from underneath their dedicated rock in the center of the table. I pressed them into my eyes so hard that I saw flashes.
“It’s going to be OK,” Daisy said. “I promise. It will.”
I wadded up my napkins and looked at her as the world came back into focus. She dipped one of the chicken tenders in the sauce and held it out to me, same as she would have done to feed Ivan. She was a natural as a mom, and I was so grateful to have her with me. She held her palm underneath it to catch any drips of sauce and held it to my lips.
Biting into the chicken tender, I sniffled hard and was rewarded once again with that sucking thing in my ears. And since my nose was out of commission, I had to breathe through my mouth as I chewed. Like a Clydesdale at the feed bag. I was nothing if not elegant.
But then, between the stuffy nose and the plugged ears, something unexpected happened. I tasted something in the sauce that I hadn’t been able to taste before. It was spicy yet sweet—exotic yet familiar. Star anise, no. Cloves, no . . . On the next big sniffle and openmouthed chew, I had it. Ginger. It was ginger. Not powered ginger. Fresh ginger. That same spiciness that was in my lemonade. And in the fancy bath supplies that Gabe had gotten for me too.
I dropped the tender into the basket and pressed my hands to my face. A noise came out of my mouth that was a rather dreadful combo of a hiccup, a snort, a cough, and a sob.
My sister’s mouth dropped open. “Are you OK?”
Into my tearful palms, I shook my head. I was not OK. I was never going to be OK. In just a matter of days, he’d changed my life. Nothing would ever be the same—not even ginger.
I felt a big hand on my back and turned to see Jimmy Jr.’s concerned face. “Lily?”
“Fresh ginger,” I blubbered into my hands.
“Shut the front door.” He snatched up a chicken tender and tested it for himself. “You’re sure?”
I tried to muster up a smile. But it didn’t last, and within just a few seconds, I was weeping into my stack of soggy napkins once more.
47
GABE
I should’ve been halfway to the airport, but I’d gone back to her house to try to reason with her. Everything about her was perfect to me, except for this decision. Because this decision was bullshit.
The street and the neighborhood had that lazy summer afternoon feel, like people were off doing better things with the people they loved. And fuck knew I wished I was doing that same thing with Lily. I wished that this whole day had never happened. Scotland had been her call, her leap of faith, not mine. But I was paying the price. Maybe that was exactly what dipshits who believed in the one deserved.
She wasn’t home. Her van was parked in the driveway, but her sister’s minivan was gone. And the only thing ringing the doorbell again and again did was get the General to mimic the doorbell from one floor above. Like some kind of hellish doorbell echo chamber.
Next to the door, there was a small package wrapped in white tissue paper. There was no note on the outside, but I saw a few splotches on the paper. Lily’s tears. With my heart in my throat, I picked it up from the porch step and folded back the paper. It was a beanie, knitted fr
om soft gray yarn. Inside it was a Post-it note that said I’m so sorry.
Seeing her handwriting and her words made me feel sick to my stomach—sick for what I was losing without being given a chance to save it. I pulled my phone from my pocket and gave her a call, but it went straight to voice mail. She’d turned off her goddamned phone. Stonewalling me at every turn.
I listened to half her message, “Hi! You’ve reached Sounds Good LL—” before I couldn’t take hearing her sweet voice anymore and ended the call. None of this was fucking necessary, but there was nothing I could do about it—not if she wouldn’t talk to me. I clenched my hand into a fist and braced myself against her doorjamb. I closed my eyes, lowered my head, and let the anger roll right through me. Anger wasn’t something I felt very often—I didn’t get attached to people, because I never gave myself the chance. To be angry like this, you had to give a shit about someone. And about Lily Jameson, I definitely gave a shit.
I was angry that she had decided all this without me, angry that she had crushed me out of fear, and angry that she wouldn’t even fucking fight for what I knew, in my bones, was right. Us. Her and me, together.
But if she wanted to see the back of me, that’s exactly what she was going to get. I wasn’t gonna hang around to get crushed twice in one day, so I took her house key from my wallet, shoved it through the mail slot, and got back in my truck. I tore out of town toward the airport, hauling ass away from Savannah. And away from her.
My meditation mantra had always been, “Fuck that.” But today it was something different. Fuck this. Fuck this pain. Fuck this hurt. Fuck it all.
48
LILY
Seeing my house key on my doormat brought the reality of what I’d done into too-bright focus, like when a flashbulb lights up a darkened room. I crouched down to grab my key, feeling as though everything was now too harsh and raw. The scratchiness of the sisal mat, the coldness of the metal, the sharpness of the teeth—they were tiny reminders of the heart-pinching truth: he was gone and I had only myself to blame. He’d opened himself up to me, and I’d crushed him. And crushed myself too.
Do You Feel It Too? Page 27