Overdue

Chapter Twenty-Six

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

At the first hint of dawn, I folded the blanket, used the toilet, and headed for the door.

“Are you leaving?” Macon’s voice was low and scratchy with sleep when he appeared at the threshold between the hallway and living room. He squinted at me because he wasn’t wearing his glasses. His hair was a disaster, and he needed to shave.

My heart thumped. It was unfair how attractive a man could look in the morning, even when he was exhausted, even when he was a friend, even when that friendship was strained. I cleared my dry throat. “I need to shower and change. I was gonna text you.”

“Breakfast?”

“No. I’m okay.”

“Okay,” he said after a moment. There was nothing else to say.

My new place was only five minutes away, so close that I felt even stupider for having spent the night.

I arrived in a state. It took ten enraging minutes to find my shower toiletries, and then the instant I was naked, I realized all the windows were uncovered.

I turned off the overheads and showered briskly in the early morning light.

My unit was in the backyard, so it was fairly private, but I still felt exposed.

I’d forgotten to look for a towel, so I squeegeed my body with my hands and shook off the rest of the water like a dog.

Work didn’t begin for another three hours, so I curled up—nudely, wetly, miserably—on my clothes and crashed until my alarm went off.

Then I dug through the pile again, found some clothing that would do and about half of my makeup.

My hair dryer could have been anywhere, so I twisted my hair into a damp and lifeless bun.

“Morning, neighbor!” Bex called out as I trudged to my car. They were drinking coffee on the front porch. Their chair was tipped back, their feet up on a table. I adjusted course and wandered over. “We didn’t realize you came home last night until we heard the shower,” they said.

When I explained that I hadn’t, they gave me a closer look. Their eyes were naturally dramatic with thick brows and long lashes. After an intense appraisal, they slid their mug across the table to me. I rarely shared beverages postpandemic, but—after only a brief hesitation—I accepted.

“So.” Their thick brows waggled. “Macon.”

“It’s really not like that.”

My tone was dour enough and their respect for privacy was healthy enough that they grinned but smoothly changed the subject. “We’ll have a bed for you by the time you get home.”

“Any plans for covering the windows?”

“Shit.” The front chair legs thunked back onto the porch. “Sorry about that. No idea, but we’ll take care of that today, too.”

I thanked them for everything, including the coffee, and made it to the library on time.

Sue and Alyssa chattered like noisy songbirds while we prepared to open, but Macon arrived even later than usual and in an extraordinarily grouchy mood.

His dark eyes were underscored with even darker circles, and his hair was still smashed and poofed and sticking out in all directions, a warning to anyone who dared speak to him.

Alyssa did not heed the warning. “What were you up to last night?”

Before he could destroy her for such a banal ribbing, I stepped in. “It’s my fault. He helped me move.” I neglected to mention that it had been the second night in a row.

Sue looked surprised. She knew about my apartment woes, but Macon and I had yet to divulge the full extent of our friendship.

It shouldn’t have felt illicit, but it did.

Or perhaps not revealing it was what made it feel illicit.

“You should have asked us, too,” she said. “We could have lent a hand.”

“Yeah,” Alyssa said, though if I had asked her, she probably would have claimed to be busy. (I didn’t blame her. It sucked helping people move.)

“I’ll call you next time,” I said grimly.

Work was hectic from the moment the doors opened.

A puppeteer arrived for the summer reading program, shortly followed by a tsunami of children.

Alyssa managed the event on the lakeside porch, but even inside the branch it was packed and loud.

Macon twitched at every cheer from the crowd, ready to incinerate the puppets in the fireplace.

A steady line plowed past our desk, and it wasn’t until after our later-than-usual lunches that the library finally calmed.

Macon put his head on the desk, muffling his voice. “Fuck. This. Day.”

“Were you able to get any sleep last night?” I asked.

“Very little.” His head lifted. “You?”

“Nope.”

A toddler screeched in the children’s area, and our eyes bugged. We waited. The kid shut up, and Macon’s head dropped back between his arms on the desk.

I had to say it so we could move past it. “I’m sorry about last night.”

He turned his head to the side to look at me again.

“I genuinely don’t know what got into me. Are we okay?”

“Yeah. Of course.” His words implied that it was obvious, but a measure of tension relaxed from his facial muscles.

We didn’t make any weekend plans because it was understood that I needed to get settled.

When I returned to my new place that evening, a dozen plastic milk crates were scattered across the backyard, and a brand-new mattress was on the studio floor.

It was exuding a gassy chemical smell, and the windows were all the way open.

I hadn’t slept on a twin bed since leaving my childhood home.

Once Cory and I began to visit as a couple, my parents had replaced it with a larger size. I’d forgotten how small they were.

Mika arrived swiftly at my door. “There are sheets, I promise. Nice organic ones. I’m washing them right now. And the bed frame is on order, but it should only take a week.”

“Better than my accommodations last night,” I joked. Despair gripped me.

“We also ordered bamboo window shades, but until they arrive we can hang up some old towels. Would that be okay? We didn’t want to do it until we checked with you.

And I thought we could stack up those crates and use them for open shelving for your clothes.

They were in our basement, so I had to hose them off, but they should be dry now. I can help you set them up.”

“Sure. Yeah, thanks.”

Mika could tell that I was down, and she looked worried. “I’m sorry it’s this bad.”

“It’ll be fine soon enough.”

“It will be.”

Bex entered with a stack of folded towels. We set to work nailing them over the windows, and then we dragged all my belongings to the other side of the room to make space for the crates. We bound them together with zip ties and shoved the structure against the side wall.

Bex put their hands on their hips. “What a shithole.”

“Who are your landlords?” Mika said. “I’m gonna send Bex to taekwondo their asses.”

At least it was funny to them.

They invited me inside for dinner, and we made a quick pasta dish with cherry tomatoes and fresh basil, which was fine but not as good as Macon’s.

Mika followed me back to my unit afterward.

Bex had already done enough, and although I was friends with them both, Mika was my friend-friend.

My primary friend. I didn’t want to place any additional burden on Bex.

They seemed glad to be ordered to stay behind, and I didn’t see them for the rest of the night.

Mika and I folded, rolled, and arranged as much of my clothing as possible, but there was still a lot left over, so we extracted the cold-weather items and packed them back into my car along with most of my shoes and handbags. I’d have to store them at Macon’s.

We said good night, and I crawled between the new sheets in my new bed. Toxic gas still perfumed the air. The crates were positioned behind my head, and everything else lay before me. Summer insects droned in a familiar cacophony. The house beside me was quiet.

I had never relied on this many people for help before.

Gratitude churned with shame around the micro-studio, lulling me into a deep, dark sleep, and I didn’t wake up until nearly ten.

After remembering that I’d have to go into the main house for breakfast, I decided the first item we needed to tackle was installing the studio’s kitchen.

But not yet. Not this weekend.

I stayed in bed for another half hour, not wanting to face the day.

It was hard to get over how depressing it was to see the sunlight filtered through somebody else’s old bath towels.

Eventually my bladder forced me to get out of the micro-bed to use the micro-toilet, and then I took another micro-shower.

After a regular-size bowl of cereal in the regular-size main house, I was itching to scram.

Without texting him first, I drove my final carload of belongings over to Macon’s.

I was surprised not to find him in the garden, and he seemed surprised to find me at his front door. He was wearing yet another black T-shirt, pajama bottoms, and socks with sandals. I noticed the footwear immediately, and his toes curled in a cringe. His expression hardened.

“Hey, I’m in no place to judge anybody for anything,” I said.

He stared me down for another defensive beat and then, satisfied that I wasn’t going to tease him, relaxed into confusion. “Sorry, did I forget something? Do we have plans for today?”

“No. I should have texted.” I lifted my armload of coats in explanation. “I just wanted to drop off a few more things. What’s left in my car is the last of it, I promise.”

His socks and sandals shuffled aside to let me in. “I have to teach my mom how to use her new phone this afternoon, so I’ve been treating myself to a lazy morning. Edmond and I are doing laundry and reading in bed.”

“That last part sounds good, at least.”

“You’re welcome to join us.” Belatedly realizing that the implication was in bed , he winced. “That’s not—”

“I know, I know. We just went over that, remember?” I glided past him with my coats, glacier-cool, but my insides burned.

We didn’t speak much as he helped me unload the rest of my car. It didn’t take long. I had no reason to linger but felt defeated and unfulfilled. I sensed that he wasn’t ready for me to leave either, but we were without a task.

I was heading toward the door when he thought of something. “Oh! I’ve narrowed down the green.” He led me to a wall where only two paint cards remained, a rich green called Hunting Party and a similar shade with a hint of brown called Forest Floor.

“I prefer this one’s name.” I pointed at Forest Floor. “But Hunting Party. That’s the one.”

He smiled. “I agree.”

“Maybe I can work on it next weekend.”

“There’s no rush,” he said, but I didn’t like the unfinished job hanging over me.

I was heading back toward the exit when he started talking again.

“Remember that windstorm last week? My next-door neighbor, the one who moved into Shawn’s old place, lost this massive branch from his walnut tree.

He’s been using my compost pile, so he asked if it would be okay to saw it into pieces and put them in there, but I had a better idea. ”

Suddenly I felt tired. I wanted to stay, but I also didn’t want to talk about work of any kind.

“A cat tree. A literal cat tree. I’m thinking in that corner,” he said, pointing between the fireplace and front windows. “You know, because it would go with our theme. And Edmond would love it.”

We both glanced at Edmond, who was perched in his usual place on the back of the couch. His watchful green eyes were focused on a crow that was hopping around in the mulch outside, and the white tip of his black tail was twitching.

I frowned. “How big is this branch?”

“Big.”

“How would we install it?”

“No idea. I’ll research it.”

Macon seemed to think that we could do anything. I didn’t want to discourage him, so I let it go for now, but the project seemed beyond me in terms of time, skill, and energy. My weariness grew, and I made another move to leave.

“Have you had lunch?” he asked, almost desperately. Always trying to feed me.

“I just had breakfast.”

It came out more annoyed than I felt, and he looked hurt.

Lunch would have been perfect, an idle afternoon would have been perfect, spending any amount of time with him in his magical storybook cottage would have been perfect.

But instinct, or maybe self-preservation, shouted at me to flee.

He clammed up and didn’t stand in my way.