Chapter 1 #2
Gwendolyn looks up as she hands a customer their cup. She smiles and says something, probably wishing them a nice day. Why not? Some people can still have those. Nice days, I mean. As they turn away and she greets the next customer, her eyes flit over the person’s shoulder and outside.
She sees me. She sees me, and her smile disappears. I don’t look away. I want to know what she thinks. I want to know whether she regrets what she did. She needs to look at me and feel like shit, damn it.
But there is nothing there that I can recognize from a distance. No movement. I am reluctant to admit that Gwendolyn is just like me. She’s a master of hiding her emotions. A perfect poker face.
I wish I could hate her. Sadly, I’m just not made that way.
Objectively speaking, I can understand. If I were her and someone like Wyatt showed interest in me, I probably wouldn’t be able to resist, either.
I don’t think any woman could. Refuse Wyatt, I mean.
He’s got that way, that particular charm you simply can’t refuse.
I mean, everything about him is stylish and adventuresome, special, new somehow, even years later, and a little bit mischievous.
I’m sure he shone for her. He was forbidden fruit, and she took a bite.
Gwendolyn turns away as Kate sticks yet another cup of coffee in front of her nose.
I move on. The bells begin to chime, announcing the hour. Two guests are coming out of our wood-paneled B she’d run away from her trainer in Minneapolis and ended up finding herself in Aspen.
I love her. Everyone loves her. Paisley is…
She’s like Aspen. When you’re with her, you feel at peace.
I grin as my glance sweeps across the room. Either she painstakingly tried not to move a single thing, or Mom put everything back just like it was so that I’d feel at home. I can imagine both.
The walls run straight down; the window is located on the straight triangular wall that overlooks the street. In elementary school I was the coolest because I told everyone I lived in a triangle.
This room is the dream come true for any girl who’s into the cozy Christmas vibe.
String lights wrapped around the roof beams. Walls of rustic wood.
There’s a big wardrobe against one wall, an ancient desk that I never use, and two chests of drawers.
My eyes wander over to the white sofa beneath the double window.
There’s still that gold garland with a Christmas star over the curtains that I put up some years back.
I didn’t feel like taking it back down later on. I just like it.
It’s strange being back here. Not just for a period of time, but back. Back in Aspen. Back in my room. What a mindfuck. This is where everything comes together. All the good memories, but the bad ones, too.
I sink down onto my feathery bed. I couldn’t do that in my dorm room at Brown; the bed was as hard as a block of cement. All my savings, thousands of dollars for a bed of rock. Nice, huh?
My dad made this one. I was fourteen, and my legs had grown so long that they hung half a foot over the end of my kiddie bed. I had to curl up in the fetal position to fit. Thinking about it is just bizarre.
That was around the time I got together with Wyatt.
We were both still totally green behind the ears, so in love that we could hardly look at each other without blushing.
One Saturday morning, Dad decided to test Wyatt’s bonafides as an artisan.
He took him up to Red Mountain, chopped down a tree, and, over the course of a single day, made this bed with him.
After that, as far as he was concerned, Wyatt was part of the family.
Or, well, at least until the day my dad decided to take off to the Hamptons with a tanned tourist and was never heard from again.
With a loud sigh, I fall back onto the patchwork quilt and raise my arm to brush the string lights out of my face.
They’re hanging all the way across the room.
Originally, they were affixed to the wooden beam above me, but over time some of the tape lost its grip and they started to droop.
I look through the skylight right above my head.
We had it put in later because, when I was a kid, I always talked about wanting to be able to count the stars before going to sleep.
At the moment, morning clouds are wafting across the horizon, dyeing the sky pink. I close my eyes.
This room belongs to me. I lived in this triangle for years. It’s mine, but I feel estranged somehow. I feel like I don’t know who I am anymore.
In Aspen, I was Wyatt’s Aria. In Providence, I was the sports medicine student, a melancholic Aria who never went out and missed the snow-covered mountains, missed weird William, the town halls, the tourists, the hikes, tracks through the snow, screaming kids on skates, and waffles with hot cherries in front of the fire during snowstorms.
And now I’m back, but I’m not Wyatt’s Aria anymore. And I’m not the Aria going to Brown either, spending her days feeling lonely.
Who am I?
Ladies and gentlemen, I have no idea.