Chapter 37
Many of my worst decisions have been Cherry’s idea, and this one is no exception.
I’m too old for this. Too tired. Too weary.
And I’m certainly too ancient for these shoes, which are a half size too small and digging into my heels.
I feel like the oldest thirty-four-year-old alive.
The depressing cocktail of grief and heartbreak will do that.
“You promised me,” Cherry had wailed over the phone. “You have to spend your last night in San Diego with me.”
I would have preferred to accept Lani’s invitation for a family meal.
I wanted to curl up on the couch in their family room and pretend my world hadn’t tilted on its axis and tossed me on my ass.
But I had promised Cherry, and I want to be a better friend.
I’ve been angry with her about the stunt she pulled with Beau all those years ago—but I can’t write her off for something she did at seventeen.
We were all slightly crueler versions of ourselves then.
“Finally.” She drops her purse on the stool next to mine. “I needed a night off. You have no idea how good you have it—only having to worry about yourself.”
I slide her the Manhattan I ordered for her, and she moans.
“How I’ve missed you,” she says to the glass before taking a sip.
“I’ll have to pump and dump, but it’s worth it.
If I leave it to Austin, he’d never get my drink.
” She gestures to her husband, who is standing at the bar, riveted to a baseball game playing on the big screen.
“Cheers,” I say, holding up my seltzer water. My stomach is in knots—food and alcohol aren’t sitting well these days.
She clinks her glass to mine. “So tell me. Where did you go on your road trip? You left town without telling anyone.”
“Up along the coast to Oregon. I had to get away.” And leave a piece of my bruised heart on every interstate along the way.
She brushes her long brown hair over her shoulder. She’s always had great hair, and tonight it looks like she’s had a professional blowout. I couldn’t produce those sexy waves with hair extensions and two stylists. “I wish. To be able to be so carefree.”
I smile, but it’s brittle, as if my lips might crack from the effort. I’d buried Dad only six weeks ago. Dad, who called her Cherry Blossom, who chauffeured us around town for years, who would make her aebleskivers when she’d spend the night. And it’s like she’s forgotten him.
Cherry waves to Simone and her wife, Alyanna, as they slip into the bar through the heavy wooden doors. Cherry didn’t mention spouses were invited. I like Austin and Alyanna just fine, but I didn’t know I’d be the fifth wheel.
Simone strides over in four graceful steps, balancing on red stilettos with a silver sequin clutch in one hand. She looks like she’s dressed for the red carpet, not an evening out at Coach’s Bar, the dive we frequented in our early twenties. She pulls me into a hug.
Alyanna is right behind her but is called over to the bar by Austin.
“Our nomad. We were worried you’d never come back.” Simone hugs me.
“You know me. I can’t commit to anything for too long—even aimlessness.”
Simone laughs. “Too true. It’s why we love you.”
“Ophelia Dahl: saying fuck you to achievement culture long before it was cool.” Cherry laughs.
I shouldn’t be offended. I said it. They just agreed. I’ve always felt safer getting the barbs in before someone else launches them. But my friends have a knack for sinking them deeper. Maybe it’s why I haven’t told them about my mother or Beau. I risk multiplying my heartbreak by sharing it.
I wish I hadn’t come. I yearn for the scratchy texture of motel sheets, a too-thin pillow, and a grumbling Beau complaining about the rom-com I’ve chosen on pay-per-view. I yearn for the person who knows me to the bone.
“You’re so quiet, Phe. What’s up?” Simone asks.
“Just tired.”
“Tired?” Cherry says. “Childless people don’t know tired. We haven’t really hung out in eons. Austin’s mom has the kids for an overnight.” She drapes an arm over my shoulders and tilts her head against mine. “I need Fun Ophelia tonight.”
Fun Ophelia. Who is that? She’d crack a self-deprecating joke. Maybe later, she’d sing bad karaoke. But that Ophelia hadn’t lived through a personal apocalypse.
“I have to use the restroom,” I mumble, and slink off the stool before either of them can follow.
The floor of the one-stall restroom is sticky.
The walls are covered with sanctioned graffiti—elaborate sketches and statements that chronicle twenty years of cultural history.
The lighting is dim, but I reapply lipstick—my favorite shade of blush pink that picks up the color still clinging to the ends of my hair.
I brush on a bit more mascara. Perhaps if I play the part, I can get through the night.
But the girl who looks back at me doesn’t feel like me anymore—but like a wax figure.
I step into the hallway as a man enters the corridor. He’s three paces away, and it takes me each stride to place him. The upturned blue eyes—although bordered by thin lines now. The wavy hair, still full despite Beau’s sabotage.
“Dahl!” Matty envelops me in a hug, his hands curled against my spine and his forehead dropped to my neck. “Cherry said you’d be here.” He pulls back, inspecting me. “Sorry about your dad.”
“Thanks,” I mumble on autopilot. Cherry invited him?
“How have you been?” He smiles at me—as if it’s been a few months, not a decade since I changed my number and fled San Diego to commit to the fifth and final breakup.
“Fine.” It’s more truth than lie. Because until six weeks ago, I was fine. No highs. No lows. A job that paid the bills. Enough distractions to prevent me from yearning for more. Fine.
“You look good,” he says.
“You too.” But I don’t mean it. He’s still handsome enough. But his face has lost all its luster. Like a word you say so many times it becomes gibberish, a handsome face that spills toxicity too often becomes poisoned. He looks like my passivity, my poor boundaries, my regret.
He has a hand on my waist and drags his thumb over my bottom rib. The pit in my stomach expands, threatening to swallow me from inside.
I step back. “I’ll see you, Matty.” I slip to the side to return to the table, but he follows.
“Let me buy you a drink.” He places his hand on my lower back, splayed across my spine like he owns me, leading me toward the bar.
I trip down the hall beside him but stop short as we enter the bar area. He turns toward me, ducking his head. “Baby Dahl.” The old term of endearment curls off his tongue like a whip, as if he’s been waiting to unleash it all this time.
There’s no part of me that’s been waiting to hear it.
“Don’t,” I say, and find space between us.
He chuckles and straightens to his full height, as if he didn’t mean it anyway. “Still like mojitos?”
I shake my head. “I have a drink at the table.” I almost escape, but Cherry appears at my side, sliding her arm around my waist and reaching for Matty’s wrist.
“You found her,” Cherry coos.
“He did,” I bite.
“Do you need a drink, Cher?”
“Manhattan,” she says.
Matty winks at me and heads to the bar.
“Cherry, what the fuck?”
“What?” she says, her doe eyes wide and innocent.
“You invited Matty?”
She waves a hand between us. “Oh, Phe. It’s been so long. And he just broke up with Jace. And you’re so lonely. I thought you might want to reconnect.” Jace—the woman he cheated with last. I am somehow always the understudy for more deserving women.
“Matty is the last person I need to deal with today.” How is this not a given to one of my oldest friends?
“Can’t we all be friends again? It’s a pain in the ass that we have to see you separately. Ten years. That’s a long time to hang on to baggage better left in the past.”
And in the dim light of Coach’s Bar, it’s clear to me. Some things are better left in the past.
Like this friendship.
Cherry hasn’t grown up at all; she is just as cruel as she was when she drove a wedge between Beau and me in high school.
“You’re right, Cherry,” I say before I turn and walk out of the bar into the clear night.
Dad’s house is so unfamiliar. Glowing in the moonlight now, rather than sinking into the background like the wallflower it was.
It strikes me anew when I pull into the driveway for the last time, anxious to crash after my shitty night.
The car sputters and twitches in the quiet—a reminder I need a new car, in addition to new friends and a new life.
I leave it gasping in the driveway as I trudge up the porch to wrangle with the lockbox the Realtor installed.
I startle at my name, turning abruptly and spotting a figure emerging from the car parked across the street.
“I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to scare you.”
I crane toward the woman’s voice, my eyes adjusting to make her out, and my heart gallops, each beat coming faster than the last, until adrenaline surges.
“What are you doing here?”
Mary doesn’t say anything for a moment, but hovers with a hand on the railing and one foot on the bottom step. She’s backlit from the streetlamp, and her hair casts a halo around her silhouette. She’s dressed in slacks and a cardigan, as if ready for a job interview.
“I looked for you,” she says.
“What? When? Are you saying Dad kidnapped me or something?” I don’t even try to iron out the skepticism. I saw the paperwork. Her rights were terminated. Whatever mistakes Dad may have made, he didn’t commit a crime.
“No,” she says, her voice shaking. “After you came to the café. I tried to find you on social media.”
“My accounts are private,” I say. I don’t use my full name online.
She nods. “There’s a private investigator who is a regular at the café. He found this address and one in Pasadena. I went there first.”
She could have found me years ago had she wanted to.
“Why are you here?”
She takes another big breath and wipes a wispy strand of hair away from her face with the back of her hand. “To apologize.”