Chapter 7 #4
“You don’t need it to be cool. Or exotic.
I think you’re very mysterious already. And by the way, do you have any idea how cute it is that you can admit your love of bird watching and gardening and commit your whole soul to dancing in your kitchen, even when someone else is watching? I’d never be able to do that.”
“Yeah.” You make the impossible seem possible. You make me feel alive again.
I grasp a handful of my hair and yank. It’s my go-to for self-soothing, frustration, anger, sorrow, and easing my nerves. It’s a wonder I have any hair at all.
It’s not up to her to do that for me. I should have done that for myself a long time ago.
“I’m glad he wasn’t mad,” she murmurs, angling toward the window to watch Adam get out of the car and survey the damage to the rental car. “He warned me not to do anything to harm you. But not in a scary or threatening way. It was more like he was begging me not to.”
“Probably because he lives with me, and he’s technically employed by my parents, so when I’m in a shit mood, he feels like he’s failing at his profession even when it has nothing to do with him. He likes giving them positive quarterly progress reports.”
“Somehow, I find that hard to believe.” She sounds skeptical.
“It’s all very true,” I tell her.
“Down to the progress reports?”
“Definitely those. They’re verbal, though, not printed out.”
“As someone who loves her family very much, I find it encouraging that your parents love you enough to find someone for you when you wanted to shut the world out the most,” she says.
“I had medical needs,” I point out.
“I don’t think that was it. They love you, and you love them.
You didn’t shut them down or shut them out.
I’m really glad you have that. I know so many people who struggle with their family, and it’s the worst thing ever.
I… it’s maybe even worse than having your face rearranged by a kitchen implement. ”
There it is. Her first stab at the witty, sarcastic humor that got me right from the start. No one is brave enough to talk like that. Honesty is a rare commodity. It’s as refreshing as the smell of rain that fills up the cabin when Dulcie moves to the door and slowly opens it.
“I guess you should probably go since Adam’s here.” She struggles to hide her sadness and disappointment, and she fails. I get it. I’d like a few more minutes with her too. “Do you want some pizza for the road?”
I answer, “Uh, sure. Thank you.”
She grabs two paper plates from the cupboard and piles slices on with one hand, keeping her wounded one away. Then, she makes a pizza sandwich with the other plate on top of the stack. “Sorry. That’s all I have. No takeout containers or bags. I guess you’re supposed to bring that yourself.”
I take it from her, our fingers brushing and reigniting the fizzing current in my bloodstream.
“Don’t worry about the rental,” I tell her again. I want to make absolutely sure she doesn’t go out there after I’m done and hurt herself on broken glass or try to clean up the mess.
“You have my number. I left it on the paper,” she says.
“Yes.” I have it tucked safely in my wallet, along with the land location and fire number for this place.
“I’m going to call the owners and tell them what happened. I’ll leave them the option of getting someone to come out here, but if they don’t, I’ll have to make some calls.”
“I could do that,” I offer.
“You could, but it’s not your responsibility.”
“If the owners won’t deal with it, please call me. I know local crews from around here that can have it all taken care of. I’ve had to get several trees cut down and cut up around my place after storms, or just because they were old and dead and posing a hazard.”
She’s still reluctant. “I… I don’t want you to have to do that. It just feels wrong, asking you to deal with my problems. I can phone the car company too.”
“Let my lawyer do it. He’s very efficient.”
She laughs shakily. “That… I’d believe. How about if they give me any trouble, I’ll call you, and he can call them back and do his lawyerly stuff?
” I hear what she’s not asking. It’s not just that she doesn’t want me to throw my money and connections around for her.
It’s that she’s fully capable of taking care of herself.
She’s right. It’s not my business. She’s fully capable.
It just drives me insane thinking about leaving her here with no car and at the mercy of the owners of this place.
And also, thinking about her getting jerked around by the car rental place makes my blood boil.
They’re going to give her a hard time. I can already see it coming.
“Will you call me if you need anything? A ride anywhere or anything else?”
“Sure, but I’ll be fine.” She points at the pizza. “I have that to live off for the next four hundred years.”
She’s got a point.
“Okay. I… I guess I should go.”
I told Adam that I’d call him when I was ready to leave, but he no doubt doubled back because of the storm.
He’d wait out there forever, but it’s rude to make him do that.
Plus, I don’t want him fucking around with that tree and the broken glass out there either.
He’s a fixer, and the longer he looks at it, the more he’ll want to make it right.
“Will you text me when you’re ready to leave? I’ll book us a car. Don’t worry about the timeline. If you didn’t notice, I’m kind of a bum.”
“Are you though? You have your birds and your garden, and you still cook.”
“I’m definitely a bum.”
“Oh my god!” She brightens so visibly that I actually look at the window to the left and turn to stare out the one by the sink.
Nope. The sun hasn’t broken through the clouds out there.
That burst of light shining in here is all her.
“I just had an idea. You should do a cooking show and put it on all the socials, but do it like a masked chef version. Cook in a—”
“Paper bag?”
“In a giant mascot costume.”
“Or like a hockey goalie mask or something,” I add.
“That’s a little too horror movie,” she says with a frown.
“Horror movies are their own vibe.”
She’s struggling to hold in her laughter. “But it’s so much more fun to be happy when you cook.”
“Is it though?”
She nods emphatically, her hair flying all around her face. She doesn’t know how dreamy she looks like this. Unfiltered. Raw. Totally vulnerable. And here she said I was the brave one for dancing in my kitchen. She has no idea.
“Cooking makes me happy,” she admits, but quickly changes the subject when I open my mouth to try to ask her about it. “Uh, can you make it a party bus? I’ve always wanted to go on one of those, but I was never into pub crawls, and none of my friends are married yet, so zero chance.”
“A party bus?”
“Yeah. You’re richer than god, so why not splurge?”
There’s more evidence that she’s back to feeling more like herself.
Weirdly enough, it makes me feel like me too.
Not the me right now or the me before the accident, but the me I rarely get to be with anyone because they just don’t get me.
I have no idea where she gets this rough and amazing humor from.
Certainly not her parents, unless they’ve changed.
“Party bus it is then.”
“We’ll go to Ohio in style. We could go in real style if you dressed up and wore some of those clothes that matched the song and dance you did.”
“What makes you think I own anything with safety pins in it?”
“Please,” she scoffs, her face dancing with amusement. “You’ve had years by yourself, and you’re into the music, plus you know all the dances. There’s no way you don’t have something in your wardrobe that you fabbed up to match.”
“I honestly don’t. But I could. Especially if we have a few days before we leave.”
She sighs, but tries to mask it at the last second so I won’t worry. “I’m sure it will be at least three or four days before that mess out there gets sorted out.”
I grab the pizza package she assembled for me and do the notorious phone sign with my fingers to indicate call me.
She mirrors it back and crosses her fingers as if telling me, I will. Promise.
The door is still open slightly from when Dulcie unlocked it a few minutes ago. I pull it wide open, but she stops me.
“Hey. Just before you go, I wanted to give you something to think about. Parting wisdom from someone who isn’t very wise but knows how to use the internet and gets way too many quotes popping up because once you read one, you have to read them all.”
I can’t help but brace myself when I angle around to make eye contact with her.
That’s what you should do when someone says they have wisdom for you.
From anyone else, I tend not to take it, or I’ll be highly skeptical and listen, but let it bounce right off.
From Dulcie, with her little smile and the creases at the corners of her eyes crinkled with kindness and smeared eyeliner, I know I won’t just listen.
Her words will settle into my flesh and bone and become a part of me.
What did I just say about being so fucked?
“Go ahead,” I say to her.
“Don’t laugh.”
“I won’t,” I swear. “Unless… well, unless I do.”
At those words, she does the most ridiculous thing and pushes up the tip of her nose, pulling a face at me. I laugh so hard that I nearly drop the pizza I’m holding.
“There. You can get it out of the way,” she says in response to my laughter. “What I’m about to say is serious.”
I try to force a straight face.
“This is translated from another language. I can’t remember which one, but it doesn’t really matter.”
I nearly lost it there. She notices and puts up a hand in a signal for me to hold it in until I burst if I have to. She needs to get to the good part.
“It went something like, to create peace in the world, you have to create peace in yourself. The way you see yourself is how other people will see you. I know this is just me, and it’s easier said than done, but you should do you and do it awesomely, because you are awesome.
I know you think people will just look at you and see the half of your face you’re not that into anymore, but you’re wrong.
” She frames her hands around her face, still holding the paper towel tight around her finger, and makes an explosion noise.
Brain blown.
Tell me about it.
You should do you and do it awesomely, because you are awesome.
It’s not laughter that wants to burst out of me.
My eyes are dangerously hot, and this is just more evidence that Dulcie is feeling like herself.
She’s one of the few people in the world who would dare to speak her mind.
She gives it to me straight, and not just the bad but the good too.
Sometimes that’s the most frightening thing.
Goodness and hope are so fragile and can be so easily ripped away.
I salute her with the plate of pizza I’m holding. “I’ll do my best to remember that.” I need to promise more. She didn’t put that out there just so it could stay surface level in my head. I thump my fist over my chest. “I’ll take it to heart.”
She twists a strand of her hair around her finger, looking flushed, frazzled, and unearthly gorgeous in her baggy clothes.
“Aye, aye, captain. See you in a few days. Remember, if you bail on me, I know where you live. I’ll toilet paper your trees, even if I have to walk all the way there while shouldering two industrial packs. ”
I’m the one who crosses my fingers this time and holds them up next to the pizza. “I promise. I won’t bail on you. I’d never give up a chance to ride a party bus.”
There’s nothing in my life that I want to do more than this.
I know I should have gone back to Ohio long before now.
I just never knew homesickness could be a person you barely know and not a place at all.