Chapter 34
Chapter Thirty-Four
Tess
If May is the balmy prelude to true summer, then June is the sweltering first act. After straining muscles I didn’t know I had to help some pot-bellied gentleman from the next town over load my grandparents’ old red couch into the bed of his truck, I’m drenched in sweat. I stumble back into the dimly lit house, make my way to the kitchen, and retrieve a soda from the fridge. Then I lie down in the middle of the living room floor to sip it while willing the cool hardwood to chill my feverish skin.
I’m not sure if minutes or hours pass, but at some point I fall asleep, only to be woken by the sound of my front door slamming shut. Only one person enters without knocking, and soon a flash of pale skin and thick, black hair confirms my suspicions about my intruder.
Alicia flops onto the floor beside me, hair sprawling in an onyx fan around her face, and tilts her petite nose up at the wood-paneled ceiling. “Do I even want to know where all your furniture has gone?”
The floor is unforgiving as I roll my head from side to side, taking in the shockingly empty space. No more red couch or solid oak coffee table. The ginormous rear-projection television was picked up yesterday by a teenage boy obsessed with all things vintage, while I tried not to cringe at the fact that objects of my childhood are now considered as such. The elevated dining room area seems especially bare. My grandmother’s dining table—which had had the leaves in for so long they could no longer be removed without excessive force—made a family of six who just moved in on my street very happy.
I turn to my best friend and frown. “I don’t honestly know. When I got back from Florida, I looked around and saw so many things that reflected my grandparents’ taste, or even my parents’, but none of it felt like me. So I started selling things online. Figured I’d use the money to buy things I genuinely like.”
It was therapeutic, actually. Watching each piece be carried out the front door. It felt like the beginnings of ripping a Band-Aid off a wound I hadn’t even identified yet.
She lifts a brow. “And?”
“And what?”
Her teeth flash as she lets out a bright giggle. “Well, did you have new stuff coming on order? Or did you decide you prefer the minimalist approach?”
I smile, because I suddenly remember how. “You’ve gotta admit, the floor works wonders on a sore back.”
She snorts, reaches for my soda can, and takes a swig. Her purple lipstick leaves a print on the rim. “Speaking of, you missed Delilah and Truett’s 5k fundraiser this morning. Turns out I’m a shit runner. And my hip is killing me for some reason?”
I let out a groan that echoes in the empty room. “I forgot that was today. Were they super upset?” Delilah’s such a sweet person, and I had every intention of showing up to support her and her fiancé. Ever since her dad was diagnosed with early onset dementia, she’s been trying to find a way to make a difference. Raising money for local families unable to afford care for their loved ones seemed like the perfect way to do it. What a shit friend I am for missing it.
Alicia scoffs. “There were over three hundred people in attendance. I don’t think they even noticed my presence, let alone the lack of yours.”
Thank God. My chest deflates with a heavy sigh.
“Are you okay, Tess? You’ve been so discombobulated since you came back from the Carmen. And now you’re giving away all your earthly possessions.” She waves a hand toward the room. “The mental health training all the teachers had to go through with the school counselor last year tells me you’re a flashing, neon red flag.”
“Does the color red come in neon?” My skin squeaks against the hardwood when she shoves me, and I laugh. Both at my friend and the ridiculous sound. “I’m all right. Just trying to figure things out, one baby step at a time.”
She’s silent for so long that I lift a finger under her nose to ensure she’s still breathing, which she swats away with a frown. “Have you spoken to Deputy McHotStuff since you got home?”
His last message pops into my mind. The thought of sharing a drink with him was so tempting that I almost texted him back just to say so. But then I’d scrolled up, back to the photo he’d snapped of Fly Hollow’s exit sign moving past in a green blur, and the twisting feeling in my stomach became too much to bear. I’d locked my phone and, consequently, any hint of that feeling was shoved far away.
I shake my head, focusing on the rustle of my hair against the floorboards rather than her tongue-click of disappointment. My lips roll, and I close my eyes. “I saw a listing for a skydiving instructor in Denver.”
The sound of fabric shifting, then what I imagine is an elbow hitting the hardwood, tells me she’s propped herself up to stare at me. “And why, pray tell, were you looking at jobs in Colorado?”
I squirm beneath her scrutiny but don’t answer. Can’t, really. All I know is one minute I was soaking in the same bathtub I’d washed my grandmother in for the last few months before she went into a care home, and the next, I was scrolling through a list of very outdoorsy roles that I am sorely underqualified for. Not that that’s ever stopped me.
Maybe it was the ache in my stomach when Gary called to see how the job search was going. Or the longing that strangled my windpipe when he mentioned he’d seen Kit at Zoey’s bar, confirming he’d made it back to Loveless in one piece. I shouldn’t care. I’d made it my business not to. But just the single syllable of his name was enough to bring me back to stage one of grief: denial.
Hence, Colorado.
“Also,” Alicia continues, not waiting for a reply that she knows isn’t likely to come, “respectfully, how the hell do you afford to live on the salaries from these jobs? If it weren’t for Destin being a doctor, we’d be screwed! Teaching might as well be a passion project for all they pay me.”
I weigh my options, deciding just how honest to be. But it’s Alicia, so of course I go for no holds barred in a way I’ve only ever been with her. Or Kit. “Being the sole beneficiary of four life insurance policies has a way of floating you for quite a long time.”
Her silence is heavy. I feel it pressing on me like a weighted blanket. Through a slitted eyelid, I peek up at her. She’s nibbling at her bottom lip.
“It’s o?—”
“Don’t say it’s okay,” she interjects, her voice no more than a whisper. Her brown eyes shutter for a moment. When they reopen, they’re washed with unshed tears. “I know we don’t talk about it often. And it’s not because it makes me uncomfortable, I can assure you of that. But I try not to bring it up because I see how much it upsets you. Especially this time of year. Especially when you go to the resort.”
“Alicia…”
“You’re selling their things. Looking at jobs in another city.” She shakes her head, the corner of her mouth tilting up. “Something changed for you this summer. And while I’m sure part of it is because of you, I can’t help but feel that he had a lot to do with it.”
I release the breath I’d been holding in a whoosh, feeling my bones melt into the floor beneath me. Wishing I could slip right through, to the cool earth beneath, and let life sort itself out the way it feels so inclined. Letting things begin and end without emotion, without heartbreak. Trusting that each life is exactly as long as it needed to be. That love doesn’t have to be spoken aloud to change everything we are inside.
My throat bobs. I gaze up at my friend, vulnerable as I’ll ever be, and smile sadly. “I didn’t talk about it— couldn’t talk about it—for a long time because it hurt so badly. Every heartbeat after losing Mom and Dad was a struggle. Every year that passed. Every summer at the Carmen. Every anniversary. While everyone else was growing up and growing older, I was doing the opposite. Moving backward. Becoming less and less, in the hopes that I’d eventually disappear.
“Then I found out I still had family in the world. And that family led me to Kit.” I wet my lips and draw in a hiccuping breath. Whisper, so the walls won’t hear me. “And I think Kit led me back to myself.”
Not the me I’d been pretending to be for so long, but the real Tess. One who could burst into tears if a sunrise was too beautiful, or wallow in sand without caring about the cleanup. One who sometimes needed to be spoon-fed pasta while wearing only a robe to bed because the grief was overwhelming. One who made love, and let love remake her, in the only place she remembered feeling alive.
The Tess who fell in love with him but was too scared to say it when it mattered the most.
“That’s wonderful, Tess.” Alicia’s watery smile quickly turns to confusion. “So what on earth are you doing here with me?”
“You let yourself in,” I say matter-of-factly.
She pins me with a glare. “You know what I mean. Why are you here when you could be there? You have no job tying you to this place, and if you think for one second that moving across state lines will keep me from you, you’re sorely mistaken. So what gives?”
I sit up, folding my legs in a crisscross, and curse my aching back. So much for the floor helping. “I can’t just up and move to Colorado for a man.”
“It’s not for a man. It’s for you.” Her hair dusts her shoulders as she tips her head this way and that. “Okay. And a little bit for a man. But let’s be honest, Gary’s worth it. He killed at Christmas karaoke.”
Leave it to Alicia to deflate my very real worries with a pinprick of relentless laughter. The mental image of my uncle, drunk on peach schnapps and brandy, singing “Here Comes Santa Claus” at the top of his lungs in Alicia and Destin’s living room will never not win any argument in which it’s brought up.
When the giggling finally dissolves, my cheeks ache and my abs are in stitches. I take Alicia’s hand in mine and hold it against my heart, which beats in a rapid tempo. “Would it be absolutely insane?”
“Yeah, but that’s kinda your MO.”
I let out an exasperated sigh, but hope keeps my lungs afloat like a buoy. “Am I really going to do this?”
She nods. For the first time since mentioning it, sadness enters her expression. “You’re really going to do this.”
“What about you?” I ask, throat raw from blending tears and joy and trepidation all into one. “What will you do without me?”
“First of all, I’m going with you. I’m off for the summer, and a cross-country road trip sounds amazing.” She taps my nose with our clasped hands. “Then I’ll probably buy this house.”
“What?” I scoff.
“Yeah.” She shrugs, leaning back to peruse the room. “Lots of potential, and we’ve been hoping to move closer to town. The commute from Foley is a bitch on school days.” Her brown eyes dart to meet mine in a mischievous smirk. “And besides, I know the owner, and she’s selling for way below market value.”
Laughter bubbles up my throat once more. “Oh, is she now?”
“But only for me. Because I’m her best friend in the whole world.” Then she leans forward and throws her arms around me, squeezing the air right out of me. “Don’t you ever forget it, either, Tess Monroe.”
“As long as you don’t forget me, ” I retort.
She snickers. “As if anyone could.”
If only she knew just how heavily I’m betting on that.