by Hazel Kelly
It only took me a few hours on the interstate to get to Glastonbury, and as soon as I turned onto the off ramp, I felt like I could breathe again.
At the light, I tried to ignore my left ring finger, which seemed to almost be taunting me with the fact that it wanted something different. But its silent jeers weren’t enough to make the rest of my body feel guilty.
However, I did feel a little bad about blowing off work, and my boss hadn’t exactly been gracious about it. But I always took the shittiest shifts and that was- fingers crossed- my job security taken care of.
As I cruised through the city center, I couldn’t help but feel uplifted by all the friendly faces and the quaint vibe of the colorful town. If New York was an over the top triple fudge Sunday, Glastonbury was an unassuming Nilla Wafer.
Sure, some people are all about the big and decadent, and I’d been trying to become one of those people for years. Unfortunately, I was always in the mood for a Nilla Wafer, and that was the point of difference on which the Big Apple just couldn’t compete.
The cities were like night and day, and the evidence was everywhere.
While waiting at a crosswalk, the family crossing the street smiled at me. All of them. It was evident that the mom had made clear the lesson that you always make eye contact with the driver so you can get safely across.
In New York, the rule was to always keep at least one person between you and the closest bumper.
A few minutes later, I saw I woman drop a piece of paper, and two people took off after it to help her steal it back from the wind.
In the city, you had to hold onto your possessions so tightly the wind would never get ahold of anything in the first place. And if it did, you better hope it wasn’t important because your shit was as good as gone.
Five minutes later, feeling no less panicked than when I found the ring but breathing much better, I pulled my little two door Chevy into my Grandma Helly’s driveway.
Her house hadn’t changed much since I’d first come to live with her when I was thirteen. Except for the flag by the front door, which she changed every month into whatever the brightest seasonal eyesore she could find was.
At the minute, a jumbo duckling waved in the breeze, providing such a bright flash of yellow it was surprising the sun even bothered showing up.
On my way to the door, I felt a pang of guilt that I hadn’t been up in a year, but hopefully my negligence would be forgiven in light of my surprise visit.
I knocked and rang the bell, but there was no answer so I walked around to the back door.
The scene I found made my heart grow two sizes.
Grandma Helly was in her gardening knee pads in front of an upturned Frisbee full of fresh milk. In front of her, three cats were lapping away while she blabbed to them like they were there not for the milk, but for an audience with her.
“I hope I’m not interrupting,” I said, stepping onto one of the irregularly shaped stones that formed a giant Celtic pattern on the ground in the back garden.
Her face lit up when she saw me. “Laney!” She rose to her feet like a woman half her age. “What a nice surprise.”
We met halfway across the slate stones, and she gave me a smothery grandma hug that was strangely grounding. Then she leaned back and admired my face like it was the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and she’d waited her whole life to behold it.
“Glad to see you, too, Grandma,” I said. “I hope you’re not too busy for another thirsty visitor.”
“Not at all, and don’t mind them,” she said, waving a hand towards her furry guests. “You know me. I don’t even like cats. Let’s get a cool drink, and you can tell me everything.”
I smiled. She was always insisting people tell her everything even if there was nothing going on. I’d forgotten how much pressure it could be to keep her entertained. Not that she wasn’t always ready to jump in with a story of her own, many of which were complete fabrications.
“There’s not much to tell,” I lied, unsure of whether I was ready to discuss that morning’s incident out loud.
“Don’t give me that bull,” she said, holding the screen door open for me. “You didn’t come all this way because you’ve got nothing to talk about.”
I walked through the mudroom into the kitchen. “I see you’re still into crystals.”
“Crystals are into me,” she said, opening the fridge door. “Now for what we’re going to get into you.”
“Water’s fine.”
“Nonsense,” she said. “I just made lemonade this morning.”
“Perfect.”
“Are you hungry?” she asked, setting a frosty looking pitcher on the counter.
My eyes bounced around the flat crystals that hung in front of the kitchen window like stained glass. “Is that pink one new? It’s pretty.”
She furrowed her thin brows. “You’re attracted to the pink one?”
I shrugged. “Yeah.”
She took a deep breath and pulled two tall glasses down from the cupboard. “You want to tell me what’s on your mind?”
“Not food,” I said. “To answer your question.”
“Are you sure?” she asked, pouring two glasses. “I won’t even make you clear your own dirty plate. As a special treat.”
I laughed. “That’s very thoughtful of you, but I’m fine for the minute.”
“Suit yourself,” she said, shaking her head and setting the glasses down on the stone coasters I’d unstacked.
“I’ll let you know if I need something.”
“Please do,” she said. “You deserve a bit of pampering. I know how hard you work in that diner.”
“If only I had more to show for it.”
“Is that what this is about?” she asked. “Are things bad at work?”
“Not any more than usual.”
“Is it your boyfriend? Have you guys had a disagreement?”
“No.” I scrunched my face. “But I kind of drove here to prevent one.”
She clasped her hands in her lap. “Tell me everything.”
“I’d rather talk about how great the garden is coming along first.”
“The garden isn’t going anywhere,” she said, leaning back in her chair.
“Or get filled in on the Glastonbury gossip I’ve missed out on since my last visit.”
“You’ll enjoy that more after dinner when I’ve got a drink in my hand. Besides, you know I think gossiping during daylight hours is tacky.”
I took a deep breath and looked in her kind eyes. “The truth is, Grandma, I don’t want to burden you.”
She threw her eyes to the sky and then leaned forward, placing one of her soft hands on mine. “Honey, I’ve lived thirty five lives in the last four hundred years. I promise I can handle it.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Are you sure you want to know?”
“I’m sure,” she said, resting her chin on her hands. “Tell me everything.”
Chapter 4: Connor
I whistled up the stairs. “Sarge! You coming or staying?”
A moment later, the young golden retriever appeared on the landing.
“Staying?” I asked.
He laid down at the top of the steps.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” I mumbled, closing the door behind me and picking up the basket of fresh tomatoes I’d left on my front step.
It had been almost a year, and it still felt weird closing the front door of my house without calling good bye to my parents. Fortunately, Sarge had made the place feel a little less empty.
I made my way down the sidewalk and over to the house next door, wondering what compelled Helly to put up those godawful flags.
I liked a bit of color as much as the next guy and animals were my thing, but a giant cartoon duckling waving in the wind was a bit more fun than I needed to have on the average walk to my mailbox. Or her front door.
I knocked and rang the bell, deciding if she wasn’t home I’d just leave the basket on her back porch.
But just as I was about to step down from the stoop, the door opened.
My heart stopped when I saw her.
It was all I could do not to drop the tomatoes.
At first, we just stared at each other, me and the girl next door, the girl I’d once wanted everything with, the girl who broke my heart like it was nothing.
We stared at each other like we were kids again and had only just discovered that the opposite sex was interesting.
But neither of us said anything.
It felt like an eternity, even though it was probably only a few seconds.
Then again, that’s all it takes for everything to come flooding back, all it takes to irritate the scars of a broken heart.
A few seconds was all it took for her to change my life the first time I saw her, too, and I could almost feel it happening again: the earth shifting below my feet, the clouds parting, the hormonal adolescent confusion setting in.
“Laney,” I said. She hadn’t changed a bit. Her hair was still the same dirty blonde, her eyes the same pool blue. Even the way her short black t-shirt hung off her breasts was familiar. So much for spending all those years trying to forget what she looked like.
“Connor.”
“What are you doing here?” I asked, wondering why I couldn’t have come in my uniform or, at the very least, a clean goddamn shirt. What had I done to deserve her catching me in my college sweats with a basket of fucking tomatoes?
I considered backing all the way down the driveway, disappearing around the corner, and letting her think she’d imagined the whole thing. Of course, then I would be far away from her again. And I’d tried that. It was even harder than being near her.
“I was going to ask you the same question.”
I raised the basket. “I was just going to drop off some tomatoes for Helly.” It sounded even less cool when I said it out loud.
“Tomatoes?” She stared at the basket but didn’t reach for it.
I nodded. “They’ve sort of taken over.”
“Taken over what?”
“My backyard.”
She squinted at me.
“Or rather, what was formerly my parent’s backyard.”
She furrowed her brow. “You moved back home?”
“My folks moved to Florida.” I couldn’t tell if she wasn’t happy to see me or if she was just similarly shocked. Not that that made any sense. The odds were good we’d run into each other eventually. But I never thought-
“You look good,” she said, her eyes softening.
I did my best not to blatantly check her out. “So do you.”
“Do you want to come in?” she asked, stepping back to open the door wider.
“Inside?”
She laughed. “Yeah. For a drink or something?”
Inside? What kind of moron was I? As if she meant back into her heart. Cop on, man. “Sure.”
She closed the door behind me, and I set the tomatoes on the bench in the entryway. Then I followed her into the kitchen, the air seeming full of static everywhere we went. Should I have hugged her? She didn’t try to hug me. God this was awful.
I couldn’t believe Sarge abandoned me at a time like this. It was like that little jerk knew I was walking into something awkward.
“So,” she said, pulling two glasses down from the cupboard.
I pulled a chair out from the small round table and sat down. “So?”
“What have you been up to?” She pulled a pitcher out of the fridge and turned her eyes back on me.
I still couldn’t tell if I was happy to see her. “Since when?”
“Since I last saw-” She stopped herself. “Since college.”
“I went to vet school,” I said.
“In Cali?”
I nodded.
She pursed her lips. “Why didn’t you stay out there?”
“I like the blondes on the East Coast better.”
She cast her eyes down and brought the drinks over.
“Thanks.”
“Thank Helly when you see her,” she said. “She made it fresh this morning.”
“Seriously, though, I missed this side of the country. It’s homier here, and I’m not exactly surfer dude material.”
“You look the part.”
“Don’t get me wrong, I learned to surf and everything. I’d just rather snowboard.”
“And your folks’ house?” she asked.
“I bought it from them when they told me they were moving.”
“I thought they liked it here?”
“They did,” I said, laying a hand on the table. “But my mom’s got Alzheimer’s.”
“Oh my god, Connor.” The color drained from her cheeks. “I’m so sorry.”
“I didn’t mean to upset you-”
“No, I’m glad you told me.”
Frankly, I wasn’t sure why I did, but it’s hard to keep secrets from someone you used to tell everything to, someone whose own secrets you used to keep. Still kept.
I leaned back in my chair. “My dad wanted to stay here where things were familiar. He thought that might help her hold on a bit longer.”
Laney nodded.
“But my mom didn’t want to lose it in front of her friends. She said she’d rather lose it in front of people whose opinions didn’t matter to her. That and she said if her days were numbered they might as well be sunny.”
Laney’s glassy eyes smiled. “It was sweet of your dad to do what she wanted.”
“I know, especially when he would’ve had so much more support here. But he could tell she’d made her mind up.”
Laney took a sip of lemonade and licked her lips.
My body fired in all the ways it shouldn’t have. “On the plus side, she forgot she was a smoker.”
She raised her eyebrows. “I didn’t even realize that could happen.”
“Me neither. But two weeks ago she came across a pack and accused my dad of smoking Slim Cuts behind her back.”
“What did he do?” she asked.
“He said he was really sorry and that he didn’t know what got into him, and then he threw them away.”
“And that was that?”
I nodded.
“Every cloud, huh?”
“Yeah,” I said, thinking of the pain in my chest I felt as a result of seeing her again. “Every cloud.”
“Cheers,” she said, lifting her glass.
“To what,” I asked, following suit.
“To your parents,” she said. “May the Florida sunshine find them in good health and fine spirits.”
“Thanks,” I said, clinking my glass against hers. “I’ll drink to that.”
Chapter 5: Laney
He was even more handsome than I remembered.
Not that I tried to remember often.
If anything I did the opposite.
After all, I still believed breaking up with him was the biggest mistake of my life, which made it kind of weird to have small talk with him at my grandma’s house over lemonade.
It was like no time had passed, and yet, at the same time, there was a tangible tension in the air between us.
I don’t think the wall to wall crystals were making the whole thing any less surreal.
And there were so many questions I wanted to ask him, but the answers to those questions were none of my business any more. Or at least, the last time we’d spoken, I’d made it clear that he should go about his business without me.
I felt sick just thinking about it.
“What about you?” he asked.
“What about me?” I asked, wishing he would just talk, that he would just instinctively know all the questions I had and let me listen to his voice, a voice that at one time was the only thing I would’ve dropped anything to hear.
“Well I know you went to art school because your grandma told me.”
I nodded. “I did, yeah. In Boston.”
He raised his eyebrows. “And?”
“I loved it,” I said. �
�It was the best thing I’ve ever done.”
“And you’re still there?”
“I’ve been in New York since I graduated,” I said. “Because I like to make things extra hard for myself.”
He smiled.
My heart didn’t know if it should stop or skip a beat.
“What are you making lately?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I’m cleaning up other people’s art.”
He tilted an ear towards me.
“Mostly the art that children make with the ingredients of their breakfast.”
He nodded. “I see.”
“It’s only temporary, though.”
“How long you been at it?” he asked.
“Almost two years.”
He looked at me like he could see through all my bullshit. It was a familiar expression, one I hadn’t seen in a long time but remembered well.
He used to make it a lot when we first met, when he’d sense that I was hiding things from him, which I was. But it wasn’t personal. I was hiding things from everyone back then, myself included.
But he always got the truth out of me. Always. For better or for worse.
I don’t know what it was about him that made me trust him with my most buried thoughts and hopes and secrets, but it was intoxicating to have someone in my life like that as a teenage girl.
Hell, it was probably intoxicating to have that at any stage in life, but I hadn’t found it since.
In fact, I’d lied to Henry about everything. I don’t know why. He probably could’ve handled the truth. I guess in the beginning it was just fun to be who I thought he wanted. He liked that version of myself and so did I.
But it wasn’t authentic.
It was a show, a show I couldn’t promise him I’d always have the energy to put on. And that was why I had to figure out how to break up with him when he’d literally never put a foot or a word wrong since I met him.
Though sometimes I wished he’d be a little bolder in the bedroom.
“So you aren’t exactly using your degree?” Connor asked.
“What are you the degree police?”
“No. Sorry. I don’t mean it like that,” he said. “I just mean I’m surprised. You’re such a fantastic artist.”
I swallowed.