Chapter 14
Adam is nowhere to be found when I bring dinner over for William later, which relieves and annoys me at once.
On one hand, I don’t think I could take the awkwardness of being extra unsure of what to say around him.
On the other, it pisses me off that he thinks he can treat me like I am insane and disappear without a trace.
I didn’t take him for the sort to run away after being a piece of crap to someone, but then again, it seems like I didn’t really know Adam after all.
Even with all the spying on him as a ghost a couple of years back.
Luckily, William doesn’t seem to either notice or mind my emotional distress. “What are these things?” he asks, grabbing his now third helping of dinner.
“They’re enchiladas,” I say, picking at my own plate. Not even Nadia’s world-famous extra-cheesy enchiladas can help my mood.
I listen to William wax on for a while about how too many damn people are moving into town, when he shocks me with this question: “So what the hell are your intentions with Adam, anyway?”
I blink. “Come again?”
William ignores my question. “Just go easy on him, will ya? The kid hasn’t had a lot of good luck lately. After his mother died, and then him having to stop drinking, and then losing all those jobs—”
“Jesus Christ, William. Don’t tell me any more of his business like that. Adam and I aren’t dating.”
He looks at me and raises one white, fuzzy eyebrow. “You sure about that?”
I nod. “Oh yes. I’m sure.”
“Then why did he come in here earlier, after seeing you, stomping around and looking like someone punched him in the face?”
I shrug. “He was an idiot to me earlier and I called him out on it.”
William scoffs. “Damn kid. He’s got no sense when it comes to a good woman, does he?”
I don’t know what to say to that. I’m oddly touched that William thinks I’m a good woman. Good enough to be romantically entangled with his grandson, even. But after everything that’s happened with him, I don’t think Adam’s good enough to be entangled with me.
Specifically after today, I’m having a difficult time remembering what it was like to crush on Adam, anyway.
I shake my head when I realize William’s waiting for a response still.
“I don’t know about that. He’s doing a reporting piece on me, and we had a disagreement. ” I shrug. “It’s not a big deal.”
“Not a big deal. He’s looking like someone told him his mother’s dead again, and you’re looking like someone told you that the damn animals in the forest all dropped dead—”
I gasp. “William! Enough with all the dead talk, man!”
“You two better have made up by next week!” William points his finger at me. “I don’t want to deal with you two moping around again, you hear?”
Well, I guess I can see where Adam got some of his lack of tact from. I refrain from sighing too loudly as I stand. “Sure thing, William. Let me pack up the leftovers for you before I go, okay?”
Nadia’s car still isn’t back when I walk home, for some strange reason, and that makes me extra annoyed as I imagine where Adam could be, because his vehicle is nowhere to be seen, either.
Because, honestly, the first thing that comes to mind is him, looking charming and attractive as usual, sitting next to a beautiful woman at some swanky restaurant downtown or even in the next town over.
I imagine his big hand on the small of her back, and how warm and safe it would feel for her there.
How he’d whisper in her ear the things he was planning on doing to her later. How she’d giggle and blush.
How she’d be normal. How she wouldn’t be a woman who lost eight years in a way he would never believe. How because of that, he’d think she was worthy of his respect.
I try and distract myself from my bad mood first with food.
I couldn’t finish my plate at William’s, so I open all the cupboards in the kitchen, trying to brainstorm and find something that would hit the spot.
I settle for s’mores—made up with value-brand cinnamon graham crackers, a few pieces of mint dark chocolate, and big, honking marshmallows that I roast over the flames of the gas range.
I eat them in the living room while watching Gilmore Girls, the Thanksgiving episode where Lorelai and Rory get invited to so many Thanksgivings that they have to micro-schedule their whole day and appetites, around, like, ten different meals.
As the credits roll, it hits me that Thanksgiving is about five months away and…
what if I don’t hear from my sisters before then?
What if Nadia and I are still strangers who happen to live in the same dwelling?
I’ll have the literal opposite problem that Lorelai and Rory had.
Everyone will be doing their own thing for the holiday. And they’ll all have forgotten me.
I know this thinking is a bit dramatic, but right now, it not only feels possible, it feels probable.
I take a breath and stand, brushing the s’mores crumbs off my clothes. And then I put on my garden shoes and step outside.
The sky is brilliant, with the clouds lined up from one side to the other, appearing white and a thousand shades of blue in the shadows against the setting sun. There’s the ever-so-slightest chill in the air, and I wrap my arms around my middle as I make my way to the backyard.
I sit in the middle of the moss-and-grass mixture, between the roses climbing over the half-rotted wooden fences and the cedar trellises holding vines of cucumbers and tomatoes.
Nadia’s growing a lot of unusual heirlooms this year—yellow cucumbers that look more like lemons than any cucumber I’ve seen.
Tomatoes that aren’t rounded but instead are the shape of icicles, the colors of fire—iron oxide, orange sunset, solar flare yellow, even little dots of the blue of flames—all on a single fruit. “Anyone there?” I call.
There’s a loud rustle of leaves from beyond the cliff, and then, climbing over, is a black bear.
I know this bear. She used to come and play with me when she was a baby during last year’s spring, while her mother ate the soft lettuce shoots and not-quite-ripe raspberries in Nadia’s garden.
“Lily,” I say, the name I gave her because after smelling a daylily, she sneezed the most perfect baby bear sneeze. She smiles in the way only bears can and meanders my way.
Our gifts always come with a knowing that is hard to describe in words.
I know which animals care for me and which ones don’t.
Although my gift allows me to tune in to all the animals in my area—even the ones inside the skin of the ocean miles away from me right now, enveloped in wild, cerulean waves—not all animals want a connection with me.
This must be respected. A relationship that is one-sided isn’t a relationship at all.
The ones who do come to me, or allow me to come to them, it’s because consent in having a friendship has been established by nonverbal communication.
It’s almost like a piece of my soul runs out and says to the animal’s soul: Is it okay to play?
And then my soul returns with the answer, which honestly comes through as a simple knowledge in my belly.
Lily has always wanted to be friends. When she reaches me, she plops over, belly up, doing a silly bear growl until I scratch her. Her fur is coarse, with a couple of dried leaves stuck to her. “How have you been, lovely?” I ask.
And before I know it…I’m crying. The tears drip off my face and onto her fur. They catch the last remaining light in the sky, reflecting the halo of deep gold and orange around me. It looks like she’s wearing jewels. Citrine and yellow diamond tears.
I take a shuddering breath and ask her a question. It’s a dangerous one, but it’s one that’s been in the back of my mind for a long while. For two years, even, ever since I returned to myself and awoke inside the hollowed-out cavern of an ancient oak tree.
“Why doesn’t anyone want me?”
It comes out in a whisper. It comes out alongside two, three, four more tears. Four more jewels beading upon her fur, which is as deep brown as roasted coffee beans, or the darkest percentage of chocolate you can find in a bar.
It’s not just the fact that no one wants me romantically. It’s also friendship. It’s also family.
How can I have spent eight years alone in the woods, only to return to the World of the Living and feel more lonely than I ever have in my life?
In a good portion of Nadia’s books, protagonists who are like me, who are alone and forgotten by those closest to them, end up finding family.
Found family is maybe my most favorite trope of all time.
It provides more hope than any other, in my opinion.
It means that I can create family, somehow, even if I’m starting with little to nothing.
But what happens when no one outside of my little-to-nothing situation will even give me a chance?
After I fell, Sage couldn’t bear the pain so much that she moved away.
Maybe that’s what I need to do. Save up money and find a new home. And there, finally find my true family.
What are you up to, Salt Sea Girl?
I lay in bed for a long time after crying all over poor Lily’s fur. She licked up the tears and nuzzled the crook of my elbow, letting me lean on her until I relaxed enough to come back inside.
And now I’m still in bed, staring at the message from @tryingsomethingnew. Wondering what, or even if, I should write back, considering the mood I’m currently in.
Exhausted. Wrung out. Heart still aching a bit too much for my liking.
Hey, I finally type back. I’m simply too starved for human communication, I reckon, to just ignore the closest thing I have to a real friend right now. I just had the absolute shittiest day. Hope yours is better than mine.
I’m sorry to hear that. Damn. No, mine was rather shitty, too, actually. Do you want to talk about it? Your day, I mean?