So Good (An Alpha Dogs Novel)

by Nicola Rendell

  Fletcher groaned, and I heard what sounded like him thumping the drywall softly with his fist. “So, how are we gonna play this? I’ll pretend you got allergies, yeah?”

  The bro code was totally intact. “Yeah, definitely.” I tried to hide my sniffle. Didn’t fucking work. Of course, even I knew the tears streaming down my cheeks had fuck-all to do with the bear or Brad Pitt. It was like my heart had been shredded, like I was in the middle of some ancient Greek goddamned catharsis. I felt like I was grieving for something I’d never known I had, but definitely didn’t have anymore.

  Rose. Marie. Madden.

  “Got it,” Fletcher said, and his steps creaked down the staircase.

  He was a guy who took a few seconds to get the pulse of a situation before he made a move—and that’s exactly what he did. He looked at me and at the tearstains on my T-shirt. So I didn’t have to look at him through blurry, stinging eyes, I looked at Captain and Cupcake, snoring softly in a big, furry pile, her curled up in a ball inside him. Big spoon, little spoon…

  Oh Christ. It was like Anthony had unleashed the beast inside me—the ugly-cry beast. I gritted my teeth and watched the credits roll. I tried to hide my sob with a cough.

  “Whoa,” Fletcher said. “This about Rosie?”

  I rubbed my face, spreading my tears over my stubble. “Maybe you should come back, dude. I gotta do some deep breathing or something.”

  Fletcher eyed me for another long second and then shook his head. “I’m not going anywhere, man.” He sat down in the recliner next to mine. He paused the movie, mercifully sparing me from an orchestral reprise of the theme song, which I was pretty sure would have put me in the fetal position on the floor. As the room went silent, I felt like I could breathe again. Sort of. If not for all the snot.

  “Take a minute.” He sounded like he was telling me to walk off an injury in flag football. He flipped over to the Sox game and pretended like everything was totally normal, totally cool. He grabbed a Kleenex from a box and handed it over without looking at me. I pressed my palms to my eyes so hard I saw flashes. While the Sox brought out their pinch hitter, Fletcher said, “If you need somewhere to stay…my house, your house, all that shit.”

  “Thanks, man. I just…” I wiped my tears away with my thumb and forefinger. “I had to let her go. I don’t know what made me think it would ever work. If we’re talking leagues, she’s in the pros. I’m fucking around in intramurals.”

  “You’ve always felt that way about her,” said Fletcher. “Since we were kids, you’ve been talking about her like she’s royalty.”

  I dug my fingers into the muscles at the back of my neck and took some deep breaths. It was totally fucking true. There were women, and then there was her. No fucking wonder I was down here in the dark, weeping like a baby.

  Suddenly, there was a very familiar rumble and an equally familiar squeak. My heart shot into my throat. I’d know that sound anywhere: it was her, in her Bug, lurching into a parking place, getaway style. I’d seen it a million times and gotten my coffee all over my crotch because of it more than once. Fletcher glanced at the window well on the far side of the man cave and then back at me. And then the doorbell started ringing, over and over again, like some midnight prank. I could imagine her doing it, holding her finger down on that button so that the first chime went on and on and on.

  “I can try to cover for you, dude, but she’s seen your truck, and we both know she’s not leaving.”

  Dinnnnnnnnnng-ding-ding-ding. “I see your truck, Max!” Rosie yelled. “You know I’m not leaving!”

  “Called it,” Fletcher said as the catcher ran out from home to catch a pop fly by third.

  “I need to talk to her. It’s good,” I said. I hurled myself off the recliner, grabbed one more Kleenex, and headed up to face her.

  She was always beautiful, but when she walked on the shore, she was one of those sirens that would make a man beach his boat on rocks he’d always known were there. She pitched me a hundred different ideas—I could come with her, we could swap weekends, or even do every other weekend if I didn’t want to come to the city at all. People did long-distance all the time. But in spite of how fucking beautiful she was, and how logical all those plans were, I stood my ground. The reason wasn’t because I hated the goddamned city, but I wanted her to be able to fly free. She was wild like that, and I didn’t want to hold her back.

  I took her in my arms as the waves hissed along the sand, over our toes. “This is your big moment. You need to be free to grab it.”

  “I don’t want to be free from you,” she whispered. “I never want to be free from you, Max. These last two weeks…”

  I untangled a tendril of hair from between her lips, caught on the sea breeze. “Best of my life. But listen now, beautiful. I mean it. You’ve been dreaming about this for forever. I’m not gonna stand here and complicate it. You go. I’ll be waiting.”

  Now it was her turn for tears. They shimmered in the sunlight, and her blinks got quicker and more urgent. She glanced away from me, into the sand, and then she slipped her fingers into the pockets of my jeans.

  For an instant, I felt like I was looking at the two of us with X-ray vision, because in that pocket, it was waiting for her. The ring. Only a few more inches and she’d find it. I’d never been a guy who believed in signs or coincidence or that anything was meant to be. But she’d made a romantic out of me, and I started thinking like I never had before. All this magic had started with a chance peek into a skylight, and at least once every day since, I’d looked up at the sky and thanked God that it had. She was the one who made me happy, fucking happy in my bones, for the first time ever. She was my epiphany. She was my hope.

  So I left it to hope. If she found it, I’d ask her. If she didn’t? I’d wait.

  Her hands were small, tiny compared to mine. The ring was in my left pocket. The fingers of her right hand moved down, down, down.

  “I don’t want to lose you, Max.”

  “You won’t.” One more inch, beautiful. Just a little more.

  But her hands were too small, my pockets were too big. It wasn’t meant to be. So I pulled her to me, and I kissed her as hard as I’d ever kissed her. We stood there long enough to sink into the sand and until the tide started to come in over our feet. “You gotta go to New York, Rosie.”

  “I’m terrified,” she said, so softly that I almost missed it. “I’m terrified I’ll fail. I’m terrified I’ll be fired. I’m terrified I won’t be good enough.”

  How wrong she was, she’d never fucking know. “I get that. I do. But you have to try.” I tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear. “Bite those stars, like your fireflies do. Do it for me. Just try, okay?”

  Her lips trembled, and she slipped her arms around me, pushing her cheek to my chest. “Okay.”

  44

  Rosie

  One week later, I stood in front of a badly warped full-length mirror in an Airbnb in Washington Heights—chili mango pops!—that Max had insisted on paying for. I’d picked it out myself—the location across town from Gray Moose, the neighbors didn’t speak English, and the maximum water pressure was equivalent to the dribble from a very old public water fountain. Yet it was quiet, clean, they allowed cats, and it was cheap, which was what made it bearable for me to let him foot the bill. The whole setup was adorably miniature—the stove was half-sized, the fridge just as small. European Lilliput chic. Even the mugs were tiny. The only thing that wasn’t miniature was the window, and the long red curtains that Julia swung from like King Kong, or like one of those guys on those extreme obstacle course game shows who get stuck halfway up the Velcro wall and can’t get down.

  Even though it was morning, it was dim in there. My view was of a brick wall barely two feet away, and as far as I could tell, actual sunlight never touched the window panes. I turned on a lamp, and a cockroach skittered under the bed.

  I resisted the very real urge to scream like a ninny and took a steadying breath. To the ever-growi
ng list of things I needed to get, I added cockroach traps. Was that a thing? God, I hoped that was a thing.

  I touched up my lipstick and tried to look confident, chic, and perfectly convinced that I deserved this job. I was exactly none of those things. I was nervous, petrified, and missing home and Max so much that it made my heart ache, burn, tighten up in my chest and stay that way for minutes on end. Like a charley horse from love.

  Julia paused her endless attack of the drapes to study the radiator, which sounded like there was some industrious little mouse living inside it, knocking on the pipes from time to time. I checked my phone and saw a text from Max, wishing me good luck, followed by a selfie he’d taken with Cupcake.

  Cue the heart pain. I actually had to press my hand to my chest.

  But I lifted my chin and grabbed my umbrella and rain jacket. I debated whether or not to wear my galoshes—though they’d be good for this weather, they were dark green, smudged with Maine mud, and not exactly snappy, so I decided to stick with my heels. Sensible, black, profesh. To complete the illusion that I had any idea at all what I was doing, I rummaged through one of my suitcases and found an old shoulder bag I hadn’t used in years and years—it was a fancy thing, shiny patent leather with silver accents, far too fancy for Truelove. A Marshalls purchase, in fact. From my gram. The last time I’d used it was for a job interview at a different publisher’s, two years ago, which I didn’t get. I dusted off the edges, put my things inside it, and gave myself the final once-over. Then I gave Julia a pat, a treat, and a scratch between her ears and headed out the door.

  I hit the down button at the elevator and waited. I tried to make a mental map of the city—I needed to go uptown, maybe. I thought—but it all meshed together in my mind. Streets became avenues, and I never knew if I was heading for higher numbers or lower ones. Everybody else seemed to know, like salmon with an instinctive understanding of a river, but not me. Put me on a street corner in Manhattan, and I was as confused as a dizzy hamster. Put me underground, and I was absolutely confounded.

  The elevator door rumbled open. I took my spot in the back corner and checked my phone to decide how best to get to the train. Up? Down? Over? And why did Sixth Avenue have another name, why? One floor down, a tiny lady with a huge rolling shopping basket joined me. She didn’t look up, and she didn’t smile, and we both looked at the plastic floor with its raised circles as we rode down to the slightly grimy old lobby.

  Out on the street, I dodged some muddy spray from a passing bus and headed for a corner deli to get at least something small to eat. The last thing I needed on my first day at work was my stomach growling so loud that it stopped conversation. But inside the deli, just like outside on the street, everybody else seemed to know what to do except for me. They all knew what counter to use, when to order, when to pay. For a while, I just hung back and tried to learn the ropes. As far as I could tell, there were no ropes, so I bit the bullet, stepped forward, and ordered a breakfast sandwich.

  “You pay yet?” the guy behind the register asked. He had brown hair and a blond hairnet and a teardrop tattoo under his eye.

  Lost salmon. Completely lost salmon. “No. Should I?”

  “That’ll be ten.”

  Somehow, I restrained myself from shrieking, Ten dollars for a sandwich! I tried to keep the outrage off my face, and I dug through my wallet for the money. Even this made me feel like I was awkward—everybody else was so quick with everything, and I felt people getting impatient behind me. And of course, I only had $9.10 to give him. Of course.

  “Sorry…I’ve only got…” My blush was coming, and it was coming hot, fast, and embarrassing.

  The man behind the counter glared at me and scratched his hairnet impatiently. My heart sank. “You just visiting?”

  “No,” I said, “Job. New job. Today.” Oh, good job, Rosie. Very good. Single-word answers. So sophisticated. “Sorry.”

  Slowly, his face transformed from stern and hard-set to soft-eyed and grinning. “I gotcha covered,” he said and reached right into the tip jar, grabbing a dollar. “You keep that dime for luck, sweetheart.”

  “Thank you,” I told him as I took my sandwich from him, warm and delicious-smelling, wrapped in waxed paper. “So much.”

  “Good luck at the job,” he added softly and warmly, and then turned his head away and bellowed a ferocious, “Next!”

  I wolfed down the sandwich as I walked—it was amazing. The bagel itself was a religious experience, and whatever was happening with the eggs and the bacon, my God. I swam along with the business-casual salmon and wiped the crumbs from my mouth and the front of my blouse. I pulled out of the stream and stood by an abandoned shopfront, which, oddly, had an enormous display of dusty pool noodles in the window. I looked at my phone. Downtown. I needed to go downtown. I stared at the subway entrance. 168th Street Station, it said, followed by a blue A, a blue C and a red 1.

  The subway was yet another undeniable reminder that I didn’t belong here and that everybody else was playing by a rule book I still hadn’t gotten to see. Not once in the few days I’d been in town had I actually put my subway card into the slot the right way on the first try. So again, I hung back and watched. They were like finely tuned machines, these New Yorkers. I watched a guy go through the turnstile as he put in his earbuds while drinking a smoothie, and he didn’t even look at the slot where he had to put it in. I watched a woman pushing a stroller of twins and FaceTiming at the same time zoom right on through. It was like driving to Boston. Everybody else knew all knew about the E-ZPass, and there I was in the cash only lane, counting my dimes and nickels.

  But I could do this. I knew I could. I just knew it.

  Chin up, I approached the turnstile. I took my card out. I put it in like I was positive it should be, took a step…and proceeded to slam my thighs into the locked bar.

  I tried to back out, but there was a line forming behind me. I tried again and again and got nothing but sore thighs for all my attempts. Coming in the opposite direction, a smartly dressed guy in horn-rim glasses looked me in the eye. For an instant, I felt cowed and embarrassed. Just a small-town girl way out of her depth. Except, instead of brushing past me, though, he stopped. And smiled. And reached over the turnstile, flipped my card around—strip down and to the left!—and said, “That’s the way.”

  I was so relieved that I took a moment to myself by the wall, next to a homeless man sitting on the ground with a clean, empty tuna can in front of him. He smiled at me, and I smiled at him, and I gave him the dime that I had in my pocket. “That’s honestly all I have.”

  “Appreciate it,” he said and grinned.

  Yes. I could do this. I was figuring it out. I might not be a Manhattan salmon yet, but I was learning to swim.

  But I wouldn’t make the mistake of putting my subway card in my wallet, definitely not. It needed to be somewhere that I wouldn’t lose it and that I could get to it quickly. And so I opened up my bag to put my MTA card somewhere within easy reach—in the built-in coin pocket. I undid the tiny zipper, looked inside…and there it was.

  The other half of the broken heart necklace.

  I turned it over in my palm, and I was filled with butterflies again. All this time, all these years, that was where it had been. I ran my thumb over the smooth edges of the break with its hard corners. I grabbed my phone from my pocket and took a picture for Max.

  Look what I found! Getting on the train. Xoxoxoxo

  I fell in line with all the native Manhattan salmon, clutching the necklace in my fingers, feeling like maybe I really could do this after all.

  45

  Max

  As I turned off my chop saw, my phone buzzed in my pocket. Wiping the sweat and the sawdust from my face, I gulped down some water and pulled it out to take a look. Even from the tiny thumbnail shot, hard to make out because of the sun glare, I could see what it was. The necklace—she’d found the goddamned necklace. I wiped my hand off on my jeans and unpinched my fingers over it to make it
bigger, and that also showed me the soft, delicate, lovely skin of her hands. There, on the shiny silver plate, barely tarnished at all, were the letters that completed mine. I undid my necklace and put it on my phone screen, zooming in on the half in her hand to get them to be the same size.

  Max & Rosie

  Forever

  Goddamn it, yes. That was it, exactly what I’d needed to see to cheer me up from missing her so much. I put my phone on my knee and refastened my necklace around my neck. I looked out into the yard and at the For Sale sign swinging in the breeze. I looked at the petunias she’d planted in the old wooden boxes I’d made for her grandma years ago. A million different colors, no rhyme or reason, just pure happiness in flowers.

  I missed her so much that it made me feel sick.

  Cupcake helped, though. I’d set up a makeshift pen for her in the shade of the magnolia, made of four metal garden stakes and some plastic fencing that came on a roll. She chased her fuzzy hedgehog around and then rolled in some drying magnolia petals. I reached down and gave her tummy a scratch. I stepped over the fencing and lay down in the grass with her. She climbed up on my chest and stood with her paws on my pecs, looking down at me.

  “Hi,” I said and gave her a scratch under her collar.

  But in my pocket, I felt my phone buzz again. At first, I thought it had to be Rosie, maybe even sending me a photo of her wearing the necklace. From the pattern of buzzes, though, I knew it was a phone call. I held it up with one hand, angling it against the glare. A local number, but not one I knew offhand. I hit speaker and answered the call.