Chapter 41 THAT’S NOT WHERE I WAS SUPPOSED TO LAND WHEN I FELL
THAT’S NOT WHERE I WAS SUPPOSED TO LAND WHEN I FELL
Daphne
Oliver’s so stuffed he can barely walk across the parking lot to the motel after dinner.
And yes, he paid for the other couple’s meal and also left a very large tip.
And yes again, they checked that his money wasn’t counterfeit. It was so on-brand for this trip that I had to excuse myself to the bathroom so they wouldn’t see me laughing.
Laughing is never a good sign that you’re not trying to pass off fake cash.
We’ve already checked into our room for the night, but it was light when we got here and now it’s dark outside—mostly due to another storm, this one thankfully lighter on the thunder.
Tonight’s digs are a dinky little room that keeps glowing intermittently red because we’re facing the flashing motel sign. The nightstand feels sticky, and the bathroom door doesn’t fully shut, probably because of good ol’ Southern humidity.
“I’ll take the floor tonight,” Oliver says as he collapses into the roller chair at the rickety table, which wobbles precariously.
He grabs the table, clearly trying to steady himself, then leaps to his feet as the chair topples, then grabs his stomach and moans.
“You sure you can handle the floor? Not too unstable for you?”
The look he gives me isn’t irritated enough.
It’s tolerant.
Heavy on amused.
And an amused Oliver is unfortunately hot.
I reach for the knot in my neck, then drop my hand quickly as he notices. “Dumb for both of us to sleep shitty,” I say quickly. “Take the bed. It’s fine.”
“Why would you sleep shitty in the bed?”
“I don’t sleep well a lot.”
He stares at me expectantly.
As if he honestly expects I’d confess about my panic attacks over the idea of going broke and losing Margot.
I’ve made such a point of insisting that I can take care of myself that I sometimes can’t breathe when I think about what would happen if I lost my job and couldn’t find another one.
I know there are good people in the world—like Bea—who want to lend a helping hand when they can, and she’d help me out, but it isn’t her job to be my backup plan, even if we do have plans to live together forever so that we can be badass old ladies in our custom rocking chairs on our porch, telling stories someday about all of the fun we had to our great-nieces and great-nephews.
I suspect with Simon tagging along now. I’m pretty sure he’s Bea’s forever.
Maybe we’ll tell his grandkids stories someday too.
But I also know I have to be responsible, which isn’t something I was born with a natural inclination to understand.
I didn’t have to be responsible, and my parents assumed I’d be a cookie cutter of Margot, so they never bothered to figure out I needed a little help figuring out how to be a truly functional member of normal society.
And the deeper I get into this road trip with Oliver, the more I’m afraid I’m going to do something that makes Margot never want to talk to me again.
Even as I’m recognizing that this Oliver?
Margot wouldn’t like him.
Not like that.
And he doesn’t want her.
Her lifestyle actively wouldn’t agree with him.
It’s ironic—I’m here because I wanted to tell him to leave her alone, that he wasn’t good for her, that she deserved better—but I’m finding I can’t convince myself that I want him to leave me alone, that he’s not good for me, that I deserve better.
This Oliver?
I like him.
I feel for him. I respect what he’s doing. Even when he’s been grumpy and mad at me, I get it.
I understand.
I don’t hold it against him.
Plus the fact that he can get mad at me but still tell me he wants me to stay with him? That we’re able to work through the conflict and have a fun dinner and that he notices when I want a stuffed crab and he buys me a microwavable heating pad for my neck?
Then insists that I take the bed because of it?
“It’s a new bed thing,” I tell Oliver, switching my story and earning a flat stare from him. “It always takes me a night or two to warm up to sleeping well in a new bed, and I’m used to sleeping on a floor now since they all feel the same.”
“That’s working well for your neck.”
It’s wrong to get a little fluttery in the heart when a guy who was almost my brother-in-law wants to take care of me in some ways, right?
That’s definitely wrong.
He’s simply showing me basic human compassion.
Compassion wasn’t exactly in abundance when I was growing up. Definitely not the way I’ve found it in Athena’s Rest.
And watching him visibly relax and turn off his GPS and get us lost lost, without freaking out, while seeming to enjoy himself today—yeah, that hasn’t messed with my head and possibly other parts of me at all lately.
“My neck’s all better,” I lie.
He snorts, clearly amused, clearly not annoyed.
“I’m gonna sit on the bed and watch TV for a couple hours though,” I tell him. “Not sleep in it. Just sit on it.”
He makes a help yourself gesture and disappears into the bathroom. The door won’t shut all the way, but he tries to make it, tugging it and banging it harder and harder until he gives up, apparently deciding it’s stuck enough, even if it’s not truly shut.
In any case, I can’t hear him inside, so the door’s better than a lot of the other doors have been this trip.
I settle my bags in a corner of the room, then plop into the middle of the bed and turn on the TV.
One channel’s having an In the Weeds marathon, which makes me both grimace and smile.
The show truly is awful. Even Simon will tell you so, though privately.
But seeing a familiar face—even when he’s in character and scowling, which is now utterly hilarious considering I learned this summer that he smiles nonstop in real life—makes me happy in a homesick kind of way.
I flip the channel and grimace again.
Margot loves these home improvement and cooking shows that are on every single one of the next four channels. She keeps refusing to try true crime podcasts instead.
She’s more interested in fixing things than in worrying about all of the ways someone might murder her someday.
That’s probably healthiest for her. She does have a lot of that older sister what if something terrible happens in her personality already.
No need to give her other ideas beyond what if the wood beneath the carpet is rotted and we can’t use it?
I click and click and click, until I’ve flipped through two hundred channels three different times.
Oliver’s still in the bathroom.
Maybe he’s working out all of his dinner.
Or maybe he’s scrolling his phone.
Could be either. Or both.
I’m just grateful for having a break from him.
Some breathing room.
He was different Saturday night from what I remember of him when he was engaged to Margot.
He was different again from Saturday to Sunday.
More so Monday, kind of. Sleeping the whole day in the car was worrisome, but given that he still looks like he’s in his forties, I can only imagine how much stress he’s recovering from and how much sleep he might need.
And then yesterday—yesterday, he was different all over again in his anger about the phone.
But today was something else entirely.
Today, it feels like something snapped inside of him, and now he’s—I don’t know what he is.
Not the old Oliver.
Not grumpy Oliver.
Not angry Oliver.
More like found his peace Oliver.
Got far enough away Oliver.
Let go of everything and wants to live Oliver.
Still far more confident than he was four years ago, but without the edge he’s had the past few days.
And goddess help me, I like it.
I’m still searching mindlessly on the television, pretending he’s not hiding from me in the bathroom. I click past something that appears to be local news, and then instantly flip back as my brain catches up to what I saw.
Those kids look familiar.
Actually, they look like—“Oh, fuck.”
This is bad.
This is very, very bad.
“Oliver? Oliver, are you using the toilet or are you scrolling on your phone? Because you need to see this.”
There’s a beat of silence, then the bathroom door opens and Oliver looks out at me. “What?”
I point to the TV and turn the volume up. “Recognize them?”
“This man and this lady was driving by and they stopped to get my fancy lemonade, and they left me with five hundred real dollars,” a little girl is telling the news reporter.
“We’re smart, so we called the sheriff to get it checked and make sure it’s not fake,” her older brother says.
“I got me the start of a college fund,” Tilda crows. “And I ain’t sharing. Because I did all of the work. I made the lemonade and I pulled the Oreos out of the cabinet and I even found my daddy’s special extra ingredient to fix up the lemonade all special all by myself.”
“Did you get a picture of the people who gave you all of that money?” the reporter asks, clearly holding back a smile.
“No, Sammy was being a fart-butt about letting me use his phone,” the little girl replies.
“They said they won the lottery,” her older brother adds. “They said this was their way of sharing. But I feel like it was a trick.”
“Trick or not, this little girl has the start of her college fund with five hundred real dollars from a stranger, checked over by the sheriff and everything. And there you have it, Ella-Mae,” the reporter onscreen says. “Today’s good news story, right here in Farnsworth.”
The scene switches back to the news studio, and I glance over at Oliver.
His eyes meet mine, half panicked, half something I can’t entirely read, and then he turns his back on me and disappears into the bathroom again.
“Did we go backwards?” he mutters to himself while he shuts the door.
I pull up my phone and check the map. “No, but we’re still in Mississippi. We’re probably on the very edge of the viewing area for this channel. We could leave and get a little farther down the road, but this is the kind of thing the internet and social media could pick up.”
He grunts in response.
It’s not so much an irritated grunt—not like I’d expect—as it is a simple acknowledgment.