Chapter Thirty-Five
Over the past three months in Miami, I’ve regained my footing and settled into a life more normal—if not a bit hectic and faster paced—for a person my age.
I look away from the article slated to run on my client and rub gritty eyes that refuse to sharpen and focus. My gaze snags on the picture tacked to my gray cubicle wall with neon pushpins, and then I’m flooded with a tug-of-war mixture of joy and grief.
I purchased a copy of our video-recorded skydiving session once we survived and have watched it countless times since returning to this side of Florida’s dick. There’s nothing better to remind me I’m brave, capable, and I can roll with some seriously bizarre ideas and still come out on top.
After stepping out of all the extra gear and harnesses, Wanda, Grandma Helen, and I returned to Lakeview to break the news of my departure to the rest of the gang, and that’s the evening we took the happy snapshot.
We’re frozen in a giant group hug, arms slung around waists and shoulders. Grinning and laughing, faces radiating the love and affection they poured into me this past summer.
While I pulled a strained smile for the camera, I’m doing what sensitive people like me often do when they have to say goodbye: I’m crying.
Not, like, delicate tears that slip prettily down ladies’ cheeks in the movies, either. We’re talking splotchy red skin, eyelids puffy and swollen.
Family, for me, has always included Grandma Helen and Wanda, but it’s grown to encompass Tia Rita, Vonetta and Gertie Harris-Wagner, Bubbies Leora, Ruth, and Bette, along with Nonna Sophia and Arlene.
Not only had our newest member discovered how much fun dating in her sunset years can be, when Wayne of Shady Tree Lane wanted to lock it down and stop sharing her with Bruce, she replied she planned to remain unattached for a while.
Noah called to relay her decision, teasingly accusing me and the rest of her friends for being bad examples, grumbling about how he’d be playing bouncer to grandparents forever.
And just like that, my mood morphs into that heavy-heartedness of missing him so badly it sometimes makes it hard to breathe.
I was fine, I was fine, crushing it at work and enjoying my fancy miel latte with oat milk and a double shot of espresso.
Then bam, out of nowhere, memories and moments would hit me.
Finding Noah in the dirt planting flowers and his wry sense of humor; the night at the comedy club when our chemistry sparked hot and irresistible; him taking me in his bedroom, demonstrating how sensual of a person I could be; and how he showed up again and again.
Around the one-month mark at my current position, I discovered I do actually get homesick. Just not for the city and coast I fought so hard to return to, and it’s not so much ironic as incredibly frustrating and bad for my second-guessing nature.
But as I’ve reminded myself repeatedly, my summer in Lakeview Retirement Village was basically a vacation from the real world. Part temp job and part puzzle, the position provided a necessary lull after years spent hustling and grinding in the cutthroat world of PR.
Acclimating to the rush of the big city again felt more brutal after my previous cushy living situation, and admittedly, searching for an apartment took some of the shine off Miami at the very beginning.
I missed having Grandma and Wanda to run ideas by and talk to. And Fifi, whose companionship I missed even more during late night work sessions. I no longer took much of a lunch break and couldn’t pound out any bewildering emotions on the piano because I didn’t have access to one.
By the time I left Lakeview, I could play “Champagne Problems” and “Long Live” with hardly any pauses or wrong notes, and now nothing keeps me company besides my laptop and to-do list. Loneliness felt so much more desolate under the darkness of night, the quiet too damn loud.
But as I continue to assure myself with each passing day, I obviously need longer to rebuild a social life—I promised my grandmas I would, after all.
Only that involved meeting people outside of work and dating, which meant apps and filling out profiles and…
Going out with someone who’s not Noah.
Between getting settled and starting a new job and the three-and-a-half hour drive that’d turn seven going both ways, he and I agreed long-distance sucked and would only strain our almost relationship, so it shouldn’t feel like such a big deal.
And I’d juggled not one, but two eligible bachelors during my wild summer of no regrets.
Kind of, anyway, granted I could hardly compete with the residents.
Or so I thought before Noah Drayton parked me and our golf cart beneath the swaying branches of a willow tree and slid his hand up my skirt.
I bite my lip and clench my thighs, my heart racing in excitement rather than a prelude to a panic attack.
They’ve been creeping into my life and robbing me of air when what I have to accomplish overwhelms me, in the shower before work or under my covers late at night, but my life will ease up once I finish my current project.
I just have to make it another month.
As soon as it’s there in my brain, striking an overly familiar chord, my chest tightens uncomfortably, a steady throb forming beneath my temples. Tomorrow, next weekend, just one more month—the finish line kept moving. Never closer, always further.
It’s the same dangling carrot mantra I recited to myself before hitting that burnout wall and getting fired, and dang it, I don’t want to be a donkey anymore.
There has to be a happy medium, but my overachieving ass can’t seem to find it.
My people-pleasing tendencies inevitably took over, then I’d fall into old patterns, agreeing to more tasks than anyone could realistically do in a day to ensure my new coworkers remained stress-free.
Which meant dipping into the hours meant for sleeping, something I absolutely have to do in the near-ish future.
The women in the photo would be ashamed of how tightly I’ve packed my schedule with work, work, and more work.
No chill time in the evenings, and what even is a weekend again?
On top of being preposterously busy, their disappointment is another reason I’ve sent a few of their calls to voicemail recently.
Via text, I could do a better job of pretending everything was hunky-dory, super cool slang I picked up while living the retired life.
Longing winds my heart round and round before it constricts, barbed with wondrous memories I lose myself in a little too often.
I yank my attention away from the photo that kicked off my most recent trip down memory lane and return to my computer screen, my fingers itching to indulge in my most recent compulsion cycle.
It’ll do the opposite of helping, but what’s the point in resisting, when I’ve already thought of Noah Drayton and his sustainable landscaping anyway?
With a click and a few keystrokes, I arrive at his website and the portfolio of his projects, ready to flip through photos I’ve studied dozens of times, my pulse already tripping over itself.
I lean closer to my screen, upset at my eyes for taking so long to refocus, even though that’s what led me to look away in the first place.
There in the background, sits the willow tree.
Our willow tree.
Noah’s voice fills my head, and my past and present longing for him collide. “Tell me what’s broken, and we’ll find a way.”
This time, I’m afraid it’s me. I’m…broken.
No matter how many task items I check off and regardless of how great an article or event turns out, I no longer get that jolt of dopamine and hit of satisfaction of a job well done.
Instead, every ounce of my adrenaline goes toward rushing around like a headless chicken, and when I finally reach my apartment to recharge my batteries and fill my well, I spend the entire time surfing Noah’s website or fighting that fist of anxiety at my throat over my workload.
I could come up with a dozen more reasons why accepting this job was the right call, but much like my excuses for not answering the phone, it won’t change how I feel: torn and unresolved, the strings in my heart twanging with the desperation of a country song.
But if I’m being totally honest, the main reason I’m being such a wimp and avoiding calls has more to do with the heated words Grandma Helen and I exchanged while I packed my belongings.
She pointed out Jan would undoubtedly make an exception for me to stay in the retirement village after everything I’d done to keep it afloat, and I replied that she certainly didn’t seem too put out when I gave notice.
Although she did wish me luck with my future endeavors before she motored off into the sunset, nearly running over my toes for the last time.
My grandma had aimed pure exasperation my way. “You’re leaving behind a man who loves you, Mia.”
For the record, there’d been no such declarations from him, although the hope and desire that flooded my body at my grandmother’s words left me afraid I’d already fallen. It only fueled my urgency, knowing the longer we went, it’d only get worse.
“I see the way you both light up around each other, the laughter and giggly whispers, the tender care,” Grandma Helen continued. “Don’t you realize how difficult that is to find in this world? It’s everything we’ve wanted for you, and here you are, throwing it away.”
Stung by the implication I’d discard something so precious to me like that (and battling a strong case of denial over the depth of my affection for Noah) I reacted in kind, unleashing the subject I held back on all summer.
“You haven’t dated anyone the entire time I’ve been here—not this summer or any of those that came before—all over some brutish narcissist who never deserved you, so I’m not sure you want to go there, Grandma. ”