Chapter 23
California
The day Beau and I went to Santa Monica for the Segway tour, I had more or less made peace with the fact that I was going to fall off a scooter and die. But I kept reminding myself that my life was already in shambles.
Things can’t exactly get worse.
As we signed away the rental company’s liability for “life-altering injuries,” though, I gave Beau a sidelong look. “I don’t think my new personality includes a traumatic brain injury if I get to choose.”
He looked handsome in aviators and a linen shirt as he handed me a helmet that appeared to be child size. “In that case, make sure to wear your safety gear.”
When I told Gemma that Beau and I were going out, she screamed into the phone.
“It’s not a date,” I said. “It’s a side quest.”
“If that’s what makes you feel better,” she said with a laugh.
The man who showed us how to use the Segways kept saying we’d “glide” once we got the hang of it. Like we might actually take flight, instead of wobble past a juice bar on two wheels.
My incredulity must have been showing, because Beau, with a playful smirk tugging on his lips, leaned in and whispered, “Are you ready to glide?”
“Emotionally? Never,” I said. But the heat of his whispered breath lingered on my ear, and it was doing twisty things to my stomach.
On second thought. Let’s glide.
The sunset painted the sky in shades of pink and red as we cruised along Ocean Avenue.
The Santa Monica Pier streamed below us in a blur of lights, pulsing soft and fast as carnival music drifted through the air.
At one point, I nearly clipped a guy who was skateboarding down the street with a giant pole like some kind of landlocked gondolier.
When I made a face and swerved to avoid hitting a palm tree, Beau laughed—a full, unrestrained laugh.
That was new.
And it made me want to hear it again.
Luckily, Beau had scheduled a lineup of questionable experiences for the next few days.
He was still calling them side quests. And on Monday, we tried a trampoline workout at a strip mall in Venice, where I discovered muscles I didn’t know I had and made Beau laugh with a string of “tramp” puns.
Tuesday was drawing class, where I leaned in earnestly—careful with every stroke of my pencil—and attempted to render a bowl of fruit, and Beau drew a perfectly chiseled seagull with abs.
By Wednesday, we had moved on to sushi making, where I was politely banned from using the blowtorch.
It didn’t exactly feel like rediscovering myself, but it didn’t feel like rotting on the sofa in my apartment either.
We didn’t talk about Redwood or my job. We just kept finding little hits of humor in the absurdity of each new adventure.
Beau had a way of approaching every new hobby with a mix of nonchalance and skill.
He was athletic, artistic, and truly funny.
I told myself we were friends, nothing more.
Because I didn’t have the capacity for more.
But every time he called with a new class or hobby for us to try, I couldn’t deny the lift I felt in my chest. We went on like that for weeks.
We tried stand-up paddleboarding, aerial yoga, circuit training on the beach, aerobics on a vibrating plate.
Every class was more out there than the last. They all offered tiny bursts of dopamine.
Like I was crawling back to who I used to be. Or who I would be once I healed.
My body was tired every night when I lay down to go to sleep. A heavy sort of exhaustion that yanked me under almost as soon as my head hit the pillow, so there was no time to stare at the ceiling and second-guess all of the choices that had led me here.
“Why are you good at everything?” I asked him one afternoon in a woodworking class.
We sat beside each other at a workbench, surrounded by the dry scent of sawdust. There were little blocks of pine in front of us, and we were supposed to be cutting pieces to make a pencil cup.
Beau had already measured and sliced his blocks with neat, perfect passes on the miter saw, and the instructor kept stopping by to admire them, nodding like Beau had channeled some divine geometry.
Meanwhile, I’d nearly sent my block flying in my first attempt with the saw, and now I stood squinting at my shaky pencil line, bracing myself to try again.
He shrugged. “I was an Eagle Scout.”
Of course he was.
Sweet, sometimes nerdy, devastatingly decent Beau. I don’t know why his confession made me think of Simon and the note he’d left. But it did. And my heart dipped, like it always did when I remembered the part of myself I hadn’t told Beau about. The part I probably never would.
Eagle Scouts don’t deal in the morally gray. And they definitely don’t sleep with their bosses. There’s probably an oath about it and everything.
He’d never look at me the same way. And I couldn’t bear to see the admiration in his eyes dim. So I kept my secret tucked away—a quiet divide between us—and pretended it didn’t sting.
But that wasn’t the worst part.
The worst part was every time he laughed or flashed that off-kilter smile, I wanted to kiss him. I wanted to lean in and press my mouth to his and see if he tasted like spearmint or bubble gum. I wanted to know if he’d kiss me back. If he’d pull me into his arms and hold me there.
I didn’t get to know if he wanted to kiss me like I wanted to kiss him, though. Because my life was enough of a mess. I was fired and dumped. I didn’t get to have Beau Walker, and that’s all there was to it.
I looked down at my lopsided cup as I stuffed down my heartache. “This one’s going to have a lot of personality.”
“I can see that.” He laughed. And it was the good laugh again. Lately, I was starting to worry I might be addicted to that laugh.
When he had assembled his pencil cup, he turned to help me with mine, and the quiet concentration necessary for the task felt intimate. As we both reached for the clamp, our hands brushed—warm skin against warm skin—and my stomach did a little flip. I looked up at him to see if he felt it, too.
His eyes were soft at the edges, but he kept his gaze steady on me.
What are you doing? What are you doing, Este? You’re on a time-out. Forever.
“You ever wonder if our new personalities involve dinners?” he asked, and there was a rasp in his voice, like he was nervous.
Thank God I’m seated.
“What do you mean?” I laughed, feebly searching for a joke. “Have you not been eating dinner?”
“Not with you.” He smiled. “There’s a place near my house. Some Michelin-level spot everyone’s raving about.”
He said it like a suggestion. But I could hear the question, too. Did I want to go on a date with him?
Obviously yes.
But I couldn’t. I couldn’t trust myself to be somewhere with him that didn’t have bright overhead lighting.
And if I said no, that might be the end of our side quests.
But if I said yes? No. I couldn’t say yes.
Couldn’t see him dressed up and candlelit.
It already took effort to resist the way I wanted to kiss him when we were wearing woodworking aprons.
“Maybe,” I countered, looking back down at my pencil cup. “But the weather on Saturday is supposed to be beautiful. I was thinking we should try this thing in my neighborhood.”
“Oh yeah?”
I nodded, attempting to hold two pieces of wood in place without letting him see my shaking hands. “Unicycling. I’ve been wanting to give it a shot.”
“You’ve been wanting to try unicycling?” His mouth twitched, and I couldn’t tell if he was amused or disappointed.
“Yeah. Maybe that’s my new personality.” I looked back at the cup, but I could feel his eyes on me. “And then maybe we can do your thing some other time?”
“All right,” he said after a beat. “Send me the details.”
He hid his disappointment well, but I could feel it. The tiny part of him begging me to let him in.
I can’t. I wanted to telegraph back. Because you won’t like me if I do.
So instead of dinner by candlelight at some ritzy restaurant, we ended up wobbling on rented unicycles through the streets of Venice.
And it wasn’t the worst distraction I had ever cooked up—mostly because it was impossible to feel sexy while wearing a helmet and flailing for balance. But Beau, of course, was a natural.
I told myself I’d just have to live with that.
He was handsome and funny and kind. So kind I sometimes wondered if he was raised on a steady diet of fairy tales with sitcom-perfect parents.
And he was good at everything. And I could never kiss him.
Never tell him how much I liked him, which unfortunately for me was a little more with every side quest.
While balancing all of these thoughts along with my imperfect core strength, I was too busy to notice the uneven sidewalk that bit at my wheel and sent me flying.
My arms pinwheeled as I fell. I wasn’t airborne long, but it was long enough to register that my landing was really going to suck, and then, I slid forward. My bare arms scraped against concrete, skinning my elbows with a searing pain.
“Shit—Este.” Beau was off his unicycle in an instant. I didn’t have to look up. I could hear his feet hitting the blacktop as he ran back and crouched beside me. “Are you okay?”
I sat up slowly, hissing through my teeth as I looked at my elbow. Skin raw. Blood dripping. My pride eviscerated.
This is what you wanted, right? Distractions. Theatrics. Anything to avoid thinking about Simon. Or Beau.
“It’s fine,” I said, trying to laugh, but my voice shook.
“Let me see.” He reached for my arm before I could stop him, and I think the amount of blood took us both by surprise. He looked around for something to stop the bleeding, but the only things in sight were a recycling bin and a tipped Bird scooter.
“My place is right up there,” I said, swallowing a wave of nausea at the sight of my own blood trickling onto the concrete. “I can make it.”
“Can you walk?” His hand was already beneath my arm, steadying me.