by Amelia Wilde
“How’s your dad doing?” Max asks it casually, but he’s the kind of guy who actually cares, so I don’t give him some bullshit response.
“He’s doing better. It’s weird.” I look down into my beer, then gaze out around the bar. I’ll never admit that I’m looking for Zelda. That I’m always looking for her. But she’s never here. “He was really heading downhill, but he’s rallied.”
“Well, with his favorite son by his side…” Max knows a little bit of what happened, so he’s careful not to cross any lines.
“I’m his only son.”
“Right. That explains it.”
He might have a point.
“Speaking of—”
Max downs the rest of his beer, and I follow suit. “Gotta’ get back?”
“I should check in, yeah. Linda will be worried.”
“About you?” Max laughs a little. “What could ever happen to a tough guy like you?”
The silence tells me Aunt Linda’s not at home when I come into the house. But it doesn’t matter. I know exactly where she is.
I go around the block the opposite way so I don’t have to cross in front of Zelda’s house, knock on my dad’s door for show, and go in. In the living room, he’s propped up on his hospital bed, laughing out loud. Linda sits on the couch, laughing along with him.
“Sawyer!” She smiles up at me. “Nice of you to join us.”
“You look like shit, son.” My dad’s eyes are on me. I scan over his face. His eyes look less sunken this week. I don’t know what’s happening, but something is.
“Some greeting.” I flop down on the couch next to Linda.
“He hasn’t been sleeping.” Linda says it with pursed lips.
“Jesus, do you tattle much?” I give her a little nudge with my elbow.
“Why not?” My dad’s eyes are locked on me, searching.
“It’s nothing.”
“It’s his girlfriend,” Linda stage whispers. I don’t recognize this dynamic between them, but something has been thawing the last few weeks, blooming. It’s the kind of hopeful shit Zelda would be all over. An ache pulses in my chest.
“I don’t have a girlfriend, Dad. Don’t listen to her.”
“You did, though.”
I sigh. “Yeah. I did. But she’s done with me now.” I try to turn my gaze to the TV, which is playing something on mute, but my dad stares at me until I look back.
“And this is a good thing?”
He’s looking right at me, seeing right through me.
“No.” Sometimes you can’t stop an honest reply.
“Then do something about it, son.” He shifts his weight against his pillows. “Before it’s too late.”
Chapter 45
Zelda
I’m sprawled on my couch when the knock on the door jerks me out of whatever sad story I’ve been imagining while I watch some comedy show on TV. I’ve totally lost the plot—several episodes have gone by while I’ve been lying here, and I have no idea what’s going on.
I have to get up and put the last touches on my final project that’s due before I earn my degree. It’s all that stands between me and freedom, because after I submit it, I’m done.
I can go wherever I want to go.
And I have plans, too. I have a three-month trial position as an archivist at Stanford, all the way across the country. I start in two weeks.
If I can submit this project.
It’s fifteen minutes of work, but my body feels so heavy that I don’t even want to get out of bed most days. It’s all I can do to drag myself in for my shifts at the library, pretend I’m fine, and then come back home to spend my evenings on the couch.
The knock comes again, more insistent this time. “Zelda, I know you’re in there.”
Carly.
We never did meet for lunch, although she’s texted me every single day since then. I just don’t have the energy for it. I just don’t have the spark.
I miss him so much.
“It’s better this way,” I say out loud.
“I can hear you,” Carly calls.
“What did I just say?”
I still haven’t forced myself up from the couch. “I can’t really hear you, but I know you’re in there.” She pounds on the door, probably with the side of her fist. “Let me in!”
I push myself upright with a sigh. I’m already wearing sweatpants. They’re the same sweatpants I put on every day when I get home. Sweatpants and some ratty t-shirt from college. I kept a few of them around just for occasions like this.
Occasions when I find myself wallowing for three weeks.
It was okay for the first few days, but I lost momentum fast.
I pull open the door.
“Zelda.” Carly’s tone is scolding. “What is this?”
“What’s what?”
“It’s six o’clock in the evening. The weather is beautiful.” She’s wearing a sundress that looks like it transitions perfectly between day and night. “It’s June. You’re leaving in two weeks.”
I cover a yawn with my hand. “It’s not you.”
“No way,” Carly says, shaking her head. “No way. Get into the shower.”
“What? No. I’m in for the night.”
“I’m putting my foot down.”
Without breaking eye contact, I raise my hand slowly to the door and start shutting it. If I can just get it closed before—
Carly slaps her hand against the surface.
“Careful. That’s a brand new door.”
“Don’t you dare try to shut me out.”
“Fine. You can come in if you want, but—”
She sighs heavily, then pulls her purse off her shoulder and tosses it inside. The next thing I know, she’s stepped into my apartment, hooked her arm through mine, and is bodily walking me backward—backward!—toward the bathroom.
When we get to the door, she pushes me inside. “Take a shower.”
“I took a shower this—” The lie dies on my lips. I might not have taken a shower this morning. I can’t really remember. My hair was kind of flat, so it was easy to put up for work, but…
“Get into the shower. I’m choosing an outfit. We’re going out.”
Forty-five minutes later, we’re sliding into a booth at the Cellar, a little restaurant downtown that connects through a set of double doors to Greenville’s swankiest bars.
“You’re really pulling out all the stops.” I smooth my dress over my legs.
Carly shakes her head. “It’s a nice place. You need to go to a nice place.”
A waitress bustles over, and Carly orders two glasses of white wine. As soon as the woman turns her back, she folds her hands together on the tablecloth and looks me in the eye.
“Is this a job interview?”
“What is going on with you?”
I look up at the ceiling. “Carly, don’t. I’m just—I’m just a little overwhelmed with school, and—”
“Lies. All lies.”
“You interrupted me. I was finishing up and sending in my final project.”
“You were lying on the couch again. I heard the TV.”
“I was—”
“Zelda. You’ve been sulking for weeks. You never want to go out. You’re—” She waves her hand at my face. “Underneath the gorgeous make-up job I did—”
“Thank you for that.”
“You’re welcome. Underneath it, you’re pale and sickly looking, but I don’t think you’re actually sick. So, ’fess up.”
I look at her, my face totally blank.
She waits.
I blink.
She waits.
Carly narrows her eyes.
I take a breath, look down at the tablecloth.
“Seriously.”
“Seriously.”
“Zelda, this is ridiculous. If you don’t want to tell me, that’s up to you, but I don’t think this is end-of-school blues or whatever you’re pretending it is, and I—”
“I’m
still in love with Sawyer.” The truth bubbles out of me and I can’t contain it, but my first instinct is to clap my hands over my mouth.
“Sawyer, bar man extraordinaire? With the tattoos? The wise-ass?”
“That’s him.” An ache comes to my throat. I wish the wine was here so I could swallow it down, but instead I look off toward the painting on the wall next to our booth. It’s of a farm scene, completely perfect, a sunny day. I hate it.
“Okay.” Carly is brisk and businesslike. “Let’s call him.”
I look at her with wide eyes. “Not. A. Chance.”
“Why not?”
“I’m done with him. I’m done with him, and it’s for the better.”
“Then why are you crying?”
“I’m not crying.” An ill-timed tear spills down my cheek, and I wipe at it with a sharp twist of my hand. “I just—” Damn it, with the quivering chin. “I miss him. Things might have changed, so…”
“What, did he turn over a new leaf just for you?”
I start to shake my head, but then I think about the time we spent together. How he went to see his dad. How he wanted to get out of his job. How he didn’t fight back when Domino came to attack him, even though I know he wanted to.
“Yeah.” My reply is soft. “He did.”
Carly leans across the table, her face serious. “You need to talk to him.”
“I can’t.”
“You have to. You’re leaving soon. And this?” She runs her hand through the air in front of my face. “You can’t start a career like this. You can’t start your life like this.”
I nod. “I know.”
But what if I have no other choice?
Chapter 46
Sawyer
“Too late.” I mutter my dad’s words to myself before I realize I’m saying them out loud, and the woman in the aisle next to me shoots me a quick glance, her eyes quickly returning to the cases of beer in front of us.
I don’t know what the hell to choose.
I wanted something to take home to Linda’s tonight because I don’t want to go to the bar, and I don’t want to sit on the couch with nothing to drink. I was looking forward to it until that visit to my dad’s house, in a way. I was going to sit, and sulk, and miss her.
But now I feel jittery, filled with a strange kind of energy I can’t get rid of. I know it’s hopeless. It has to be hopeless. But he seems to think it’s not too late.
He doesn’t know anything about this.
Well, maybe he doesn’t. But maybe he does. Maybe it doesn’t fucking matter what my dad knows. Maybe what matters is that the world without Zelda is a painful place, and I hate living there.
I hate being here without her.
I could move, but that wouldn’t solve the problem. I know, because even when I was in the city, I was always looking for her. Every woman that passed by on the sidewalk with blonde hair shining in the sun made my heart jump up into my throat.
It is too late, in a way. It’s too late because she saw what the consequences of being with me are. Were. And I don’t know how to prove to her that it’s not like that anymore. That it won’t be like that ever again.
I shake my head. She’s not going to see me, anyway. She’s not going to answer my calls, or my texts, and I’m not going to be the kind of man who harasses a woman for the rest of her life just because he misses her like he misses his own soul.
“Fancy meeting you here.”
The voice from the end of the aisle isn’t Zelda’s, but it pricks something in the back of my mind.
The woman striding down the beer aisle in Greenville’s best grocery store is none other than Zelda’s friend, but I’ll be damned if I can remember her name. Caroline? Something like that?
She gives me a little grin, her dark curls spilling over her shoulders. If Zelda didn’t exist, I’d be all over her, but looking at her now, the only thing I feel is a stabbing regret in my gut. “It’s Carly,” she says, coming up level with me and searching across the top shelf, where they keep the six-packs.
“Carly. Hey.”
“Hi.”
She finds the beer she wants and pulls it down, then turns toward me. “Going to a party?”
I let out a breath that’s more of a sigh. “No.”
“Neither am I. It’s been a long night, though.” She narrows her eyes at me. “I’ve been trying to convince my best friend to call you.”
My heart hammers against my ribs, and I’m instantly tense. The store could crumble down around us right now and I wouldn’t notice. “What?”
Carly looks toward the ceiling, then back at me. “She’s been a wreck for weeks. I finally got fed up.”
“A wreck how?”
“You know.” She looks over at the shelf full of beer again. “She spends her evenings sulking on the couch. I think she’s putting off submitting her final project for grad school so she can just keep sulking for the rest of eternity.” She gives a labored sigh. “It was an effort just to get her out of her sweatpants tonight and get her out to dinner.”
It breaks my damn heart to hear that Zelda hasn’t been happy, but it also fills me with a kind of crazy joy. I’m not the only one. I’m not the only one who hasn’t been successful at convincing myself that this is fine. She’s not fine either.
It’s not hopeless.
“What are you grinning about? I’d have thought you’d be…sad.” Carly’s eyes glint in the fluorescent light.
“You’re sure nothing else happened?”
Carly’s grin gets wider. “Yeah, hot stuff. All the wallowing is because of you.”
I cover my mouth with my hand, running my palm over the stubble that’s risen there in the past few days.
“Wow. Did I just make your day?”
“Yeah. You did. And—” She adjusts the six-pack on her hip. “I’m sorry I was a dick to you at the bar that time.”
Carly waves a hand in the air. “What were you going to do, fight against your obsession?”
I laugh out loud.
“I’ll leave you with that,” she says, then turns on her heel and goes. “I hope I’ll run into you again sometime, Sawyer.”
“You will.”
“You sound confident.” She tosses the words over her shoulder as she turns the corner.
There’s nothing I can do but laugh.
I turn around three times in the beer aisle, completely unable to decide which way to go. What was I here for again? Right—beer. I grab the closest six-pack to my hand and tug it off the shelf. I’ve been standing here long enough that I should buy something just so they don’t think I’m the kind of guy who loiters around the alcohol aisles, but I don’t even read the label.
I have so much to do. I have so much to do.
I have to figure out a way to convince Zelda that I’m in this, that I’m in this for her, that we can do this together. That I’ll do anything for her.
At the checkout, Carly is in front of me in line. “You’ve got a fire under your ass.”
“Thanks to you.”
“It’s a good thing, too.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, she’s going to California. You knew that, right?”
My stomach plummets to my shoes. “What?”
“She got a job at Stanford. A trial thing, three months. But tonight she told me she was pushing up her flight so she could get out of her earlier. She leaves in two days. First thing in the morning.”
I take a deep breath and let it out. That’s not as much time as I was hoping for, but it’s enough. It’s enough. I just have to get out of here.
I have to get started.
This is my last chance.
If she gets on a plane without me—
She won’t. She can’t.
I abandon the beer at the checkout and head for the exit.
“Good luck!” Carly calls after me.
I raise one hand in the air, waving at her as I go, heading for the biggest day of my life.
/> Chapter 47
Zelda
The conversation with Carly did something to me, but I’m not sure it’s what she was going for.
I don’t care.
I realized I was starving when our food came—starving for the noodles in a delicate butter sauce topped with chicken so tender it melted in my mouth, but starving for more than that, too, starving to start everything. And not in Greenville.
Carly was right about one thing. I can’t start my life like this. I can’t start my life wallowing in Greenville, in my parents’ basement, afraid every night that a drug dealer from the city will make a reappearance. Even though I’m certain he won’t—my mom called the police station and asked for more frequent patrols around our neighborhood, and if the police sent him running last time…
By the time I was done with the food and my second glass of wine, I knew what I had to do. It was like the meal had wiped away the tired, dragging feeling that had haunted me since I walked away from Sawyer that night.
“Wow.” Carly looked me up and down as we walked back to her car. “You look like a changed woman.”
“I am a changed woman.” I’d looked her in the eye then. “Thanks for dragging me out of the house.”
She’d waved me off. “It’s no problem. If I don’t, who will?”
I will.
I will, and I’ll do it now.
When she dropped me off at home, I called the airline and rebooked my flight for one that left in two days, the earliest I could get. I texted Carly the news first. She must have been busy, because her reply was just !!!!!
Then I’d gone upstairs to where my parents were ensconced in their den.
“I’m leaving early.” I announced it in a voice so proud and determined I hardly recognized it as my own.
“Early where?” My mom had put her novel down in her lap.
“To Stanford. I’m not going to stay another two weeks. I want to leave…well, as soon as they can rebook my flight.”
“Really?” Her eyes had gone wide. “Have you packed?”
“I’m not taking much with me. I just wanted to let you know.” I’d given her a big smile. “I’m going to start right now.”