Chapter 12
Tuesday in Holme brought a lethargic heat.
The bed felt oddly big. Silver wasn’t in it.
Briefly I wondered if I’d made everything up; maybe James had taken her to New York after all.
My relief at discovering her curled in the cool darkness under the bed was diminished only slightly by shame over what I’d done.
My phone reported a few new messages: one from James and the other, a surprise, from Isabelle. James’s message came in at one in the morning.
Hey, home safe.
I’m not angry with you, really want to talk this through
Call when you get the chance
Isabelle’s was sent two hours ago, just after eight.
Hi! It’s Isabelle. James gave me your number. I thought it’d be nice to grab coffee or something. Let me know!
I ignored them both.
In the kitchen, I refilled Silver’s water and food bowls, moving slowly to pass the time. The day felt too long to get through. When I returned upstairs, Silver was still sleeping. It was well past the time she usually woke.
“Hello, sleepy.” I knelt and poked her. “Come on. We have the whole day to ourselves.”
She gave no response. I lowered my cheek to the floor. “Hey. Wake up.”
Nothing. I took a breath and blew into her face. She snapped up, hissing. Finally. “Are you mad at me?”
She yawned, her tongue a lighter pink than normal. I wet my finger with water from the bathroom sink and held it for her to lick. “See,” I said. “I know how to take care of you. I bet by the time he’s back you’ll wish we had more time to ourselves.”
Silver put her head behind her paws.
“Fine, if that’s your attitude.” While walking out of the room, I made sure not to look back to show her I did not care. But then I was in the hallway, and she hadn’t followed me, and everything felt worse.
—
I spent most of the morning trying not to count the hours until bedtime.
Last night’s events felt unfamiliar, as if executed and experienced by somebody else.
Had I really done that? I began to feel some regret, but the regret soon slipped into something colder, more distant.
Defensiveness. The idea of being back in New York with James and without Silver seemed more ridiculous than the reality that I’d trapped us in Holme.
Eventually, I lay back in bed, but it wasn’t yet noon, and anyway it was too hot to sleep. I opened a window, closed it. I pictured James’s bed in the city: queen-size, navy sheets. Navy was a stupid color, just a prissier version of black.
Every time I pictured moving in with James, I felt a distant yet growing dread.
But James had been so excited. It pleased him to tuck me into the navy sheets of his life.
He said he loved me. Did I love him back?
I became antsy if he was away too long, like on his five-turned-nine-mile runs.
When we showered drunk together, I knew that if I wanted, I could pass out and wake up clean and dry in bed.
I could soil his car and stain his sheets and be sick on his furniture and still he would give me his home.
Was that love? Or was that something else, something I actually wanted more?
The heater clanged. I bent to check on Silver. She remained in the same position as before, her tongue sticking out.
“Let’s go for a swim.” I shook her. “I’ll leave without you.”
When I tried picking her up, she hissed. Resigned, I put on my swimsuit and packed my bag. Still, I made sure to keep the front door unlocked so she could let herself out and join me if she changed her mind.
The sea today was full of people, presumably drawn out by the warm weather.
Usually we swam late in the afternoon, when the waves were gentler, and I had to exert myself in the morning’s high tide.
I fantasized about the waves building into a tsunami and destroying the whole town, washing me someplace new and simple.
Without Silver leading the way, I couldn’t summon the motivation to swim out very far.
I held my breath and let myself sink, crossing my legs when I hit the gritty bottom.
When my lungs started to burn, I pushed myself up, meeting the eyes of a random child who, seeing me, twisted and splashed away.
Someone waved at me from shore: a girl. I approached her.
“Katie,” she called. I blinked and her face became clear. Isabelle.
“Were you looking for me?”
She laughed. “You make me sound like a stalker. No, I just wanted to get out of the house.”
Because Isabelle had instigated the conversation, I figured she would keep it going. She didn’t. She just smiled at me, looking expectant.
“I’m sorry I didn’t go out with you and James,” I finally said.
“Don’t be sorry. I’m glad I caught you. I don’t know if you got my message. I thought it’d be nice to grab coffee or lunch sometime.”
“Did he tell you to reach out?”
“I actually had to hound him for your number.”
“Oh.” Then, because she still didn’t fill the silence, I said, “Coffee would be nice.”
“Are you free now?”
Isabelle was obviously a nice person, but her eagerness confused me. I wondered if she would treat me the same way if I weren’t dating James, if I were just a girl she met at a party. James said that Isabelle’s family had more money than his. I didn’t know there were so many levels to being rich.
“Come on,” she said. “My treat.”
The window for politely declining passed. I threw on a sweater over my swimsuit and followed her away from the beach. She led us to an airy café covered in black-and-white photographs of the ocean. People really were obsessed here.
“Go ahead.” Isabelle led me to the barista. I asked for a hot chocolate.
“Make that two.” She slid her arm gracefully in front of me, card already offered before the barista could ask if we were paying together.
The move was effortless yet deliberate. I played with my hair.
Should I have offered to pay? Maybe my mistake was earlier.
I should’ve pushed back against ordering first, seen it for the trick of politesse that it was. Where did people learn these things?
We sat with our mugs. “I can pay you back,” I said.
“Sorry?”
I couldn’t tell if she really hadn’t heard me. She spoke again before I could decide. “I never get hot chocolate, yum. I forget that you’re allowed to drink it as an adult.”
I sipped. It burned my tongue.
“I wanted to say I’m sorry,” she said. “About my mom being weird to you the other day. She’s tough. And she really loves James. He reminds her of, I don’t know, the golden days.”
“The golden days?”
“When we were kids, I guess.”
“That must take a toll on your friendship.”
“God, no,” she said. “No, James and I never had any drama. I think we just understand each other. We were both kind of lonely as children, I guess. When he started living with us, it was basically the best thing that ever happened to me. His situation was awful, I knew that, but it was like this never-ending sleepover. We made all these little music videos together. Has he ever shown you one? And my mom was so nice, too. I loved him for making her nice.”
I became uncomfortable. Mothers to me were an inappropriate choice for coffee-table conversation, the intimacy it forced akin to divulging your bowel movements. I drank too quickly and burned my tongue.
“Sorry, I’m rambling. Moms, right?” Isabelle gave a smile of encouragement.
With horror, I became certain that James had told her what he told me, that we’d get along, only he must’ve mentioned something about our mothers.
The betrayal was enormous. I felt better now about ignoring his calls, of which there were now three.
“You might not relate,” Isabelle spoke quickly. “I just thought—what you said to my mother at dinner, it was brave. I felt like it was personal. Sorry, am I being intrusive?”
“I don’t know, a bit,” I said. “It’s okay. I was intrusive at that dinner. I’m sorry, I don’t know how to talk about this kind of stuff.”
“That’s okay. It’s not why I wanted to get coffee. I feel like I’m screwing this up. I just wanted to be friends. It sounds pathetic, I know, but it can be pretty lonely to be twenty-six and still live with your parents.”
“Do you think you’ll ever move back to the city?”
“I hope so. I mean, I’d like to, but I have this feeling that if I move back, something terrible will happen.
I don’t know if James told you”—I nodded, she gave a small smile—“yeah, I had to leave for some health stuff. I just feel like it’ll happen again if I go back.
That’s not fun to admit. It’s easier here, people are less crazy.
I guess because they’re all old people or kids.
” She laughed. “But I love this place, I really do. It’s just lonely. ”
“It would be nice,” I said, “if you could skip the stage between being a kid and an old person.”
“Exactly. I want to be retired. Give me a comfy bed to lie on and a nice view. That’s all I need.” Her smile straightened. “God, is that depressing?”
“No, it sounds nice.” I didn’t say that it seemed to me she already had the life she described. What she really wanted was something else, but neither of us knew what that was.
“Well, anyway.” She cleared her throat. “When are you heading back?”
“At the end of the week. James is back on Thursday, and we’ll leave sometime on Saturday, I think.”
“Wish you two could stay for longer.”
“Me too,” I said. Then, against my expectations, my resolve loosened. Like James, Isabelle possessed a self-insistent honesty that was difficult to resist. It was the confidence of somebody who for their whole life had been important, if not to their family, then to the world.
“I feel the same way about the city,” I let myself admit. “I get anxious when I think about really living there. When I was a student, it felt like I could always take everything back and just go home.”
“I know it’s not technically the fashionable thing to do,” said Isabelle, “but can’t you still?”