Friday, May 5
The moment I became too sick to keep working at Foster she has a feeling she might just be destined for greatness. But for now, she’s biding her time in the wings, waiting until curtain call when she’ll be unveiled to the world in all her brilliance. Maybe she’ll be an astronaut—or an EGOT winner.
But right now, she’s all by herself on her fourteen-hour flight, and this little girl is starting to feel her smallness. Her youngness.
But saFeLY is there for her. Her bags are insured. Her parents can track her flight. A flight attendant brings her an extra ice-cream mochi. Ice cream still solves many of her problems. One day it won’t; life will become more and more complicated. But right now, everything is very simple. This little girl is safe.
Fade to end card: saFeLY. Life is hard. Travel shouldn’t be.
Yes, this is the script Nadia should be reading to a room full of rapt marketing executives. Instead, Nadia is asleep.
I’d spent hours and hours perfecting that script, polishing each line of dialogue, working with our art director to assemble the perfect mood-board, even curating a playlist made up of Chinese indie rock bands to run in the background while my copywriters performed the script.
I didn’t know I had lupus. I didn’t know it was even a possibility that I could have a disease like lupus, because nothing materially bad had ever really happened to me. I mean that. Sure, I’d had my heart broken. I’d gone through phases of intense personal grief. I’d hated myself, wondered if I was worth anything. I’d pinched the fat on my thigh till it bruised, wondering why I wasn’t naturally slender and waifish.
But all of that felt like part of the Faustian bargain that is living.
Plus, I was ambitious and hungry and I could. That was the best part: when I wanted to, I could just go and do and be. My insecurities and times of sadness had felt like seasons, not sentences.
How I had taken that for granted.
The rashes, deep red swatches that spread from my ears down my cheekbones, were from stress. The headaches were from dehydration and PMS. My brain was distracted and oversaturated, not foggy, and my sluggishness could be more than explained by sixty-hour workweeks. I was grinding myself down—not just on this project but every project.
And when I wasn’t working on writing the perfect script, I was very busy fucking my boss, a demanding and temperamental art director named Kai who looked like a wish.com Oscar Isaac. Our relationship was imploding. Kai was a collector—of objects, experiences, people—and I had a feeling I was keeping him from expanding his palate. Dating him was exhausting and inescapable.
Kind of like my job.
But I was fine.
This was what adults did. This was what work was.
I just needed some time off, a beach vacation where I got to totally disconnect.
The horror that enveloped me when I realized I had overslept for the most important meeting of my career was second only to the migraine that kept me pinned to my bathroom floor for the next forty-eight hours.
“It will never, ever happen again,” I swore, cheek pressed against the cold tile, blinds shuttered against the milky November sunlight. Between phone calls, I would retch into the toilet and force down sips of Coke. “No excuse, I know. But I promise . . .”
There was a lot of we don’t want to do this, but we have to do this.
saFLeY hadn’t noticed I was missing from the meeting; my team had been able to cover perfectly fine without me. Our account manager presented the deck without any issue, aided by copywriters I’d tasked with memorizing and performing the script for the client as if they were at a table read. That was the real issue. I’d gone ahead and handed over proof that I was nothing more than an expensive, unreliable overhead cost that the boss was sick of seeing around the office. All my shine had been rubbed away.
“Take this time to find yourself, Nadia,” Kai had said, leaning across his desk to offer me his hand one last time. He had one of the only offices in the Foster like cymbals crashing together.
Marco called an Uber. Took it with me. Walked home.
What a gentleman.
Did we fuck?
No. We tried. Heaven knows, we tried.
My joints won’t work, so I literally roll out of bed, taking a sheet with me. I keep rolling until I reach the kitchen.
My phone vibrates on the countertop.
Soph. Fuck.
“I know,” I say as soon as I pick up. “I’m late and you’re calling—” I pause to let out a painful, dry cough. “To fire me.”
“You’re fine, actually.” Soph sounds so fucking chipper, I have to hold the phone away from my head. “Farmers market starts in an hour. I’m here early, trying to get us a better spot, but the goat lotion people are fascists. Can you bring me the crate of chard I left in the driveway? Before Frank DiBiase gets to it.” Frank. Notorious little klepto.
I pull my phone away from my face and stare at the time on my lock screen. After way too long, it registers. I actually woke up early.
“Roger that,” I croak.
After we hang up, I spend ten minutes lying on the freezing-cold kitchen floor, sorting through all the various sensations coursing through my body, so copious they threaten to send me into a full meltdown.
Nausea. Okay, a lot of nausea. I really need to eat something.
Headache. Duh. But also, an extra-dull ache radiates from the back of my head. The wall. I cringe at the memory, then groan because even cringing hurts.
Shoulder throb. I’d flipped or fallen or maybe yeeted myself a great distance. I remember that much. Won’t be able to lift my right arm for a while, that’s for sure.
Feet. Destroyed. Wrecked. Useless.
Knees. Forget about it. Might as well have them removed.
With my inventory over, I crawl to the bathroom and run the hottest bath I can tolerate. I have exactly forty minutes to undo hours of damage.
With my car nowhere in sight, I’m forced to bike to work. It is very hard to maintain your balance when you’re pedaling approximately twice per minute.
The vibrancy of my sunny-yellow bike makes me feel like my eyes are being etched with a diamond-tipped drill. The real sun is also an absolute assault. With every tire rotation, I whimper. Two blocks in, I lie down on a public bench.
There’s fight, flight, and whatever the fuck this is.
“Your chard, my liege,” I announce with all the fanfare of a rotten apple as I drop the two overflowing bags of leafy greens onto the table where Soph has already set out cartons of perfectly ripe kiwis, meticulously cared for kale, and fragrant bundles of Italian parsley.
St. Agnes’s Friday morning farmers market brings out the best of Evergreen’s underemployed and retired weirdos. Jeanine Spellman, who picks her nose and then touches every single grape she sees. Steve Donoghue holding down his anti-circumcision booth, week after week, always with a fresh stack of pamphlets on deck. And Carla Catalina, who loves to just be . . . Carla Catalina.
Soph has one of the smaller booths—a tented table right next to the broad stone steps that lead to the church’s lacquered oak double doors, directly across from where the food trucks park. The new sign I painted leans up against the table accompanied by the sandwich board I’ve taken to scrawling with a recipe featuring whatever produce we have an overabundance of.
Last Friday, I shared my sacred tomato jam recipe. Darlene Colli made it for the VA potluck and left with four different phone numbers.
Today, the board is empty save for a few pathetic ovals that—I think—are supposed to be zucchini. My first and only clue being that Soph has half-heartedly scribbled Z u c c H i N I in a shaky script underneath.
“You’re a hero,” Soph declares, mopping their dewy, sunburnt brow with a gloved hand. Then, they pause to take me in—my oversize T-shirt, grubby Nikes, and the unbuckled bike helmet still on my head. “You biked here? Damn. Good job.”
“Yeah, well.” I limp my way over to my usual spot beside Soph. “Save my Purple Heart. I probably won’t make it through this shift.”
Soph laughs and hands me my apron and a pair of gloves. “Hey. Catalina, incoming. One o’clock.” Sure enough, there she is, trolling around the blond couple from Cape May who run an organic honey stand, undoubtedly grilling the lanky husband with questions like, Don’t ya knees hurt from standing so tall all the dang time?
“She’s on one today,” I observe, my voice coming out thick with exhaustion and about two octaves deeper than usual. “She’s going to say something about my hair.”
Carla’s coming toward us at full speed and we must prepare ourselves for imminent attack. The woman is absolutely tearing up the lawn with the front wheels of her walker.
“What happened, Car? Hurt your hip again?” I call out.
“Ugh, Nadia. Let me tell you something,” she begins. “When I moved here in 1965 . . .” Soph grabs my hand underneath the table. Yes, I think. Yes. More. More. This is why I get out of bed. “People actually frickin’ took care of their properties. Now? Cigarette butts, bicycles all over, chairs on their lawn. It was never like that before. These people are degenerates. You wanna sit outside? Don’t you have any chairs in your house?”
“Did you trip over someone’s lawn chair?”
“What?” She looks at me like I’m insane. “No, I broke a toe at aquagym.”
My mouth actually falls open.
“I have your favorite today. White peaches.” Soph swoops in, handing Carla a free sample.
“Thank you, doll. Can I still call you doll?” The last few Fridays we’d dedicated a not-insignificant amount of time explaining to Carla that Sophia now went by Soph and didn’t really love being called pretty lady.
Sensing danger, Soph simply replies, “Nadia cut off all her hair.”
Bitch.
“Oh my goodness, gracious God. I knew you looked different. Nadia Rose Fabiola, how the hell could you do a thing like that to us?”
There’s no Reader’s Digest and I’m barely hanging on as it is. So, I sink into the conversation. I let myself get comfortable. This, after all, is probably something I should practice telling people.
I tell Carla everything. About how weak my hands are sometimes and how hard that made it to scrub my scalp through my dense, tightly curled hair. How I didn’t have the energy to make it to the hair salon so someone else could wash and deep condition my locks. I told her about how it actually felt like my energy was growing out into my hair, instead of flowing down through my body. I wanted to be done, I told her, just for a little while.
She eats like, six peaches while I talk.
But she listens, watery green eyes fixed on mine, the shaky outlines of her lips parting with emotion at the details of my diagnosis. My whole life might be over, but when it was all still alive and going and filled with movement, no one ever listened to me this long. No one ever listened the way Carla does.
After the morning rush, Soph brings me an egg and cheese on a toasted everything bagel and thirty-two ounces of iced coffee. The cup is so big, I have to hold it with two hands. God bless America. I suck down my coffee along with five hundred milligrams of something that will save my life.
I man the register from an Adirondack chair with Soph by my side, generously lifting anything that weighs more than a number two pencil. They’ve seen me like this before; they get it.
“You good to stay till close?” Soph asks as they finish stacking empty crates to be dollied back to their truck.
“Definitely.”
They give my head an appreciative pat. “I’ll meet you at home.”
The churchyard has mostly cleared, only thirty minutes left for folks to shop. Steve is packing it in early and when he takes down his last pro-foreskin poster, I catch a glance of light smarting off a very familiar cascade of hair.
Oh, fuck.
He’s crossing the lawn, hands shoved into the pockets of his joggers, looking as well rested as ever. Meanwhile, I’m fairly certain my left eye has been slowly melting down my face for the last two hours.
What the fuck is he doing here?
“Any peaches left?” Marco asks as he approaches, his voice tired and raspy.
Without making any eye contact, I gesture at the remaining cartons. “All yours.”
Marco doesn’t reach for them. He just stands there, watching me while I pull my gloves off and take off my apron. “So,” he says finally. “How’s your head?”
I press my lips together. What a way to ask. “Um, throbbing.”
He chuckles. “I tried to give you ice.” But then we got distracted trying to google whiskey dick solution. “I watched Sweet November this morning.”
I wince, which hurts. So, I wince again. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. I loved it.” He plucks a golden peach off the top of the pile and sinks his teeth into its tender flesh and suddenly, I have to look away. “You should have warned me. I cried my eyes out. The ending destroyed me.”
The night before comes back to me in a single, blazing flash from my heart to my thighs. I quickly fumble to find ways to busy myself behind the table, even though there’s a plastic bag blowing by Marco’s feet that I should absolutely grab. I need this table between us. “It’s not really a romantic comedy. It’s like a . . . romantic drama with one-dimensional queer characters for comedic relief.”
He laughs again. “Yeah, that part was pretty bad. This peach is amazing.” He spins the fruit around, taking another bite, this one down to the pit. Marco’s wearing a different hat today, and another crisp, perfectly white T-shirt that probably cost more than my entire education (twelve years of Catholic school, plus college). “The woman—Charlize Theron—she reminded me of you.” A smile flickers over his full lips before his tongue darts out to catch a droplet of peach juice ready to slide down his chin. “Her hair’s like yours—short and sort of honey brown. And the way she smiles. Her attitude.”
What the hell happened to “Don’t take it personally if you never see me again”?
I snort, keeping my hands and eyes focused on wiping down our table and closing up. “The only thing Charlize and I have in common is two X chromosomes.” I open the till and start counting out the money. One, two, go away, seven, forty, right now, five.
“Come on.” He laughs, dry and gravelly, filled with real longing. “You know what I mean. You’re both quirky—different.”
I drop the cash back in the register and lock it. “She’s a lot more whimsical than me. I’d never wear that many scarves.”
Marco tosses his peach pit into a trash can and reaches for another. A doughnut peach. They’re my favorite.
“We should do what they did.”
“Get cancer and die?”
“Jesus, no. We should, you know—”
I do know. Of course I know. The plot of Sweet November is incredibly simple and there’s really only one thing the two main characters do together. “You just said you hated the ending.”
“Let me finish.” He chomps his second peach, chewing much more slowly this time. “Okay, so. Us? Right. Me and you? We date for one month. For all of May. Just May. Only May. While I’m here in Evergreen.”
“Ooooh,” I coo, drawing out the oh as long as I can while I fold my arms over my chest. “You’re still drunk.”
“Actually, I am horribly sober and very hungover. In fact, I never want to see another drink ever again.”
“Did you hit your head?” I demand, my voice coming out full and harsh. “Because I really feel like we left things on a very specific and clear note.”
“Clear?” Marco balks. “We were completely incoherent. You did a front flip into a sand dune.”
I scrunch my nose at him. “You’re such a sore loser! I won fair and square.”
“First of all.” Now he’s the one wincing. “I let you win—no, never mind. Forget it. I had fun last night.”
I run my tongue over my bottom lip. “Okay.” I clear my throat. “I did, too.” Way too much fun.
“So?” Marco’s watching me, eyes sparkling, mouth twitching with a little preemptive smile. Instantly, I regret admitting I had fun. I’ve known the man for twelve hours and already he’s pulled so much out of me. “One month, that’s it. You keep your life, I keep mine. In thirty days, I fuck off. No hurt feelings.”
The man is not joking; he’s looking at me with wide eyes and not a single ounce of irony.
“You’re an insane person. And you don’t know me.” I have more in common with Charlize Theron’s character than I’d like to admit—more in common with her than Marco would enjoy. “I could be a very dangerous psychopath. Obsessed with knives. Obsessed with you.”
Marco rolls his eyes. “You are not obsessed with me. I know my demographic. What else do you have going on? You’re working at a produce stand—”
I yank my head back. “Excuse you. Is this flirting? Is this you being charming?”
“Hey, I’m underemployed, too.” His lips pull back and he almost blinds me with a smile. “Admit it, you’re bored here.”
That’s the point, I want to tell him. I have to be bored. If I’m not, I’ll realize just how much I’m missing out on.
Instead I feel a tiny—minuscule—part of myself actually considering this. Maybe it’s the way he’s holding the rest of his half-eaten peach gently between his index and ring finger that has me flashing back to last night, the way he tangled his fingers in my hair. Maybe it’s because I can hear Liv’s voice in the back of my mind. Look, Mom and Dad are worried. Having a boyfriend would really get her off my case. Having a semi-famous boyfriend would extremely get her off my case.
“Is this like . . .” I look around before I drop my voice. “About last night?” I don’t want to embarrass Marco with a reminder of how our night ended. It’s not like I was in any state to, uh, help the situation. I couldn’t fault someone for wanting to prove themselves.
“Oh, no. No!” He snaps his eyes away, suddenly rubbing a hand along the back of his neck. I think he may even be blushing. “That’s not why I want to date. I want to date you because . . . because why not?”
You have no idea. I busy myself bagging up everything left on the table, ignoring this question. “So,” I say, maybe a hair too loud. “Where do you need to be in June?”
Marco snorts. “Back on planet Earth, far away from here.”
Ouch. “Well, isn’t that nice,” I retort, handing him a bag of peaches. “Take these. Free.”
“Thank you,” he replies and every part of him lingers. His eyes drag over my face, his hands seemingly float to take the bag.
I yank it back. “I thought you were a vampire.”
“Still am. I just happened to watch a very compelling movie.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “You know, I hate that you smoke. If you want me to even consider this, you have to stop. And . . . and if you don’t, I’ll call every tabloid and tell them you’re here to spear-hunt whales.”
Marco’s eyes travel over me, his mouth curving up into that smile. That damn smile. Then he lifts his sleeve to reveal his triceps. In the center of his skin is a white square.
A nicotine patch.
Marco grins, firing off all kilowatts, and he actually looks happy. “Already on it.”
Marco insists on walking me to my bike after I pack up my bag. He carries the produce that didn’t sell—two totes of leftover lettuce and a box of nectarines—and I’m extremely grateful for the extra set of hands, considering mine are swollen and useless.
We walk in silence, a crimson sunset dripping off the vinyl-clad row homes and cloaking us in the last of the day’s warmth. We pass the record store where someone has propped open the door with a box of freebie CDs. Willie Nelson’s voice twists on the air followed by the smell of coffee from the doughnut shop next door. Suddenly, I feel like I’ve slipped through a crack in time and found myself back in my childhood. Wandering around Evergreen with my bike for hours, every street feeling like the next page of a storybook where I am the protagonist—a wayward knight; a powerful witch flying on her broom; a thief on the lam.
I spend our walk alternating between two thoughts: Tonight is quite literally a perfect night and Wait, wasn’t there an episode of Dude’s Ranch where someone kisses their first cousin?
“So,” I pipe up, when the silence suddenly feels too saturated. “You have a mullet.”
“Oh. Yeah, I do.” Marco laughs, knocking his hat back with a knuckle and ruffling his free hand through the business part. “Isn’t it awful? It was for a role.”
“Was?”
His mouth falls completely straight, brown eyes pulling away from mine. “I don’t think it’s going to work out.”
“I’m sorry,” I say quietly. From what I know about Marco, he hasn’t worked in years. Not that he needs to. Not that I am personally one to talk. “For what it’s worth, that’s a very impressive mullet. I’d believe you were a constable or a trucker or maybe a white Christian nationalist.”
“Thanks?” He laughs again, furrowing his brow at me. “It’s been a fun experiment. After having to have the same haircut for seven years, it’s nice to take risks now.”
“Can I know what role the mullet was for?”
“For a play. Ever heard of Brokeback Mountain?”
“Of course.” I perk up, like a dog. “It’s my favorite short story, barring a few crucial Alice Munro hits. It just crushes me.” Then, I add, “I sort of like things that make me sad.”
Marco nods. “Me too. I love being sad. I love having a reason to sit on my couch and cry.”
“Do you like to sob or do a wide-eyed, stone-faced thing?”
“Sob. One hundred percent. You?”
“I’m stone-faced every time.”
We’re talking in that higher pitch, increased speed that happens when two people realize they like the same things.
“So, the stage play—”
“Right, they’re doing this Broadway revival with a young director from Edinburgh. I was so excited about it—but they went with someone . . . younger, I think. Everything happens for a reason and all that.” There it is again. The switch in his voice; the distance he so easily puts between himself and his life.
I point at my beach cruiser chained to a parking meter at the end of the road, in front of The Billiards.
“That’s me.”
Marco’s mouth twitches. “Of course it is.”
He helps me secure the leftover lettuce into the crate I’ve MacGyvered onto the back of my bike. His hands are steady and strong, his forearms thick and vascular, muscles flexing with effort.
He steps back and observes his handiwork with his fists pressed into his waist. “Let me know, okay?” This question is directed at my bike’s tires.
“About what?” I ask, buckling my helmet under my chin.
Marco licks his lips slowly, pivoting in front of me, as if he knows taking that exact half step will bring the setting sun into perfect alignment with his eyes, turning them from chocolate brown to crystallized amber. “Dating.”
He brings a finger to my cheek; quick and vibrant warmth percolates in my chest, making my next breath snag. This, he must notice. He holds up his finger. “Eyelash.”
User. Vampire.
I bat his hand away. “Yeah-fucking-right.”
Marco and I go our separate ways with all the balls in my court. Except I know he’s meandering back to the bay-side of the island, to a magazine-spread-ready home with a bathroom in the garage and a panoramic view of the sunset.
Meanwhile, I bike back to the modest, wood-shingled beach shack my siblings and I will squabble over for decades, once it’s passed down to us. The fact that Marco wants to date me? It’s more than opposites attract. It’s farce—it’s sketch comedy. It’s Stuart Little getting adopted by humans.
The Fabiola beach apartment is just three bedrooms at the end of a short, dark hallway attached to a kitchen with a skylight, a sitting area, and double doors that lead to the balcony. Everything is Tuscan-inspired and dated with flesh-toned walls and an overstuffed brocade couch. Years of moisture have caused the linoleum cabinets to peel and buckle. My dad has patched the same leak around the edge of the skylight every year since he bought this place.
But it’s ours. It’s so very us.
A photo of my parents has been secured to the front of the fridge for as long as I’ve been lucid enough to remember coming to Evergreen. My mom is sitting in my dad’s lap in a white plastic chair. My dad’s mustache is pitch black and enormous; my mom’s honey curls are teased into an updo. Tiny orange numbers in the corner read: 08/15/1986. They’re two teenagers, some place in Southern Italy, thinking about what they might have to do to make their dreams come true. They don’t know that one day they will have a regular home and a beach home. They can’t even imagine what it’s like to have enough money to not spend their nights awake, worrying.
Sometimes, when I’m in the mood to wallow, I stare at this photo and think about how deeply I’ve let them down over the last year, how badly I’ve disrupted their first year of retirement.
I get home, drop my bags, and make a beeline for the fridge, and as I’m preparing to eat strawberries right from the container in the blue-green glow, I catch their eyes.
My dad never smiles, but in this picture he’s grinning, one hand tight on my mother’s waist, the other on his knee. The way my mother tells it, they’ve only ever loved each other. The biggest decision most people make—whether or not to give their heart away—and they got it right on their first try.
There’s a knock at the front door, then it creaks open and Allie pops her head in. She catches me staring at the fridge, in the dark. Embarrassing.
“Soph and I are gonna go out for a drink. Wanna join, babe? Talk about your date?” She has a crisp Midwestern accent and the sweetest way of handling vowels.
“Um,” I say and my voice cracks. Because I haven’t spoken a single word out loud since I said goodbye to Marco. I clear my throat. “No thanks. Not tonight.”
She flashes me a gentle smile. “Not feeling good?”
I nod. “I should probably get some rest so tomorrow I’m in better shape.”
She says goodbye and pulls the door shut.
Once again, I’m alone.
I text Marco: We date until May 31st and then that’s it
Marco: We said a month.
Nadia: May 31st and you’re done
Marco: You’re being difficult.
Then, he writes: Might be my second favorite thing about you
I frown at my phone. What’s number one?
He writes back almost immediately. Your smile