Chapter 3 #2
She knocks on the window once, and I unlock the car. Opening the door, she folds herself inside before I can say a word.
For a second, she looks at me.
Her face crumples. “Oh, hon.”
That’s all it takes.
I make a sound that would probably scare the squirrel down the road if it heard, falling sideways into her arms, the center console digging into my belly and the seatbelt tugging at my shoulder.
“I’m buckled,” I sob.
“I can see that.”
“I’m trapped by safety.”
“Hold on.” She reaches over, unbuckling me in one solid motion before enveloping me in a hug. It’s awkward, but tight and absolutely perfect.
Marley smells like coconut dry shampoo, sunscreen, and the peppermint gum she always has in her back pocket. She chews it when she’s stressed, which is just about all the time. She rubs one hand up and down my back as I cry into her. I try to apologize again.
“Don’t,” she says firmly. “No apologies. Not for crying, or for calling, or for being human.” Her eyes flicker to my dashboard. “And not for having a car that lies.”
“It does lie,” I wail.
“I believe you.”
Outside, Oliver opens my gas tank with unnecessary aggression. I lift my head and look out my side mirror.
He’s standing beside my car with a red gas can in one hand, his mouth set in the thinnest line I’ve ever seen. A car stacked with tied-down IKEA boxes flies by, making his flannel snap around him.
He looks like a man personally offended by the concept of gasoline, and it makes me smile. Just a little.
“I think Oliver is mad at my car,” I say as I rub my nose with my sleeve.
“Oliver is mad at everything because if he stops being mad, he’ll have to actually have a feeling.”
He looks up at us sharply, as if he had heard her.
She smiles sweetly and waves.
He does not wave back.
“I ruined his day.” I frown.
“You improved his day. He was doing inventory.”
My head hits the seat. “That sounds like something he enjoys.”
“He does.” She shrugs. “Which is why it’s spiritually unhealthy for him. You were doing him a favor.”
Oliver finishes pouring the gas and screws the cap back on. When he’s done, he comes over to my window.
I roll it down.
He leans in, one forearm on the roof despite the blazing heat. He looks at me.
For a second, he doesn’t say a thing, and neither do I. I watch as his eyes search my face, taking it all in. The swollen eyes, the mascara tracks. His gaze drifts down after that. My ringless finger, the coffee stains on my boots. The way Marley is clinging to me like I may run away.
His jaw tightens. “Are you hurt?” he asks.
I shake my head, my hair falling into my face.
“Did he touch you?”
“No.”
“Good.” His voice is flat, but dangerous.
“Oliver,” Marley warns, leaning forward.
“I said good,” he snaps.
“You said good like you’re making a list.”
“I like lists,” he says.
“You hate them.”
“I like some of them.”
I reach through the window and touch his arm. Two fingers against his sleeve.
He looks down.
“I’m okay,” I say firmly.
It’s not true. I’m a mess. But it’s not entirely false either.
He looks me over carefully. “No, you’re not.” My lips quiver, and his expression softens by the smallest amount. “But you will be.”
Another tear slips over my cheek, and he sighs like the tear inconveniences him. Like it ruins the moment—because it does. He reaches through the window and hands me a napkin with the Saints & Sinners logo on it.
“I don’t have tissues,” he grumbles.
“Of course you don’t.” Marley rolls her eyes. “That would mean you have a sliver of nurturing instinct.”
He crosses his arms. “I brought gas.”
“And sandpaper.”
He ignores this, instead looking at me again. “Can you drive?”
I look at the dashboard. “I think so.”
“You’re not driving to Florida,” he says.
“I wasn’t—”
He stares, and I look away. Marley pats my arm.
“It seemed like a better idea when I was moving,” I admit.
“That’s how bad ideas go. You’re coming back to Baltimore.”
I bristle. No matter how much I love Oliver, being told what to do right after a man just detonated my life is not pleasing.
He notices, his shoulders slumping. “Not because I’m ordering you to,” he says. “But because Marley is in your passenger seat, I’m following you in the truck, and if your car makes another weird noise, I’m pushing it into the harbor and buying you something that respects gas.”
I stare at him.
“That was almost supportive,” Marley says, impressed.
“Where am I going?”
“Not your place,” Marley snaps.
“Grant’s energy is rancid,” Oliver mutters, and I don’t have the heart to tease him for commenting on someone’s energy.
“Can it be removed with bleach?” Marley asks.
“There’s not enough in all of Maryland,” he responds.
Marley thinks for a moment. “Today you can come to my place.”
Oliver shakes his head. “No.”
Marley’s eyebrows shoot up. “Excuse me?”
“Your place has no guest room. Your couch is decorative and hostile. She needs to actually sleep.”
“I have a couch.”
He looks up at the sky, squinting. “It’s basically a pillow with legs.”
“It’s mid-century.”
“And it feels like a punishment.”
“Where am I sleeping?” I ask.
I look back and forth as they share a look. I’ve been best friends with the two of them for long enough to know when silent communication is happening. Marley’s eyes narrow, and Oliver’s jaw shifts. Marley tilts her head, and Oliver blinks once. Just once.
Marley’s mouth flattens.
“Stop having private conversations with your faces,” I snap.
Marley looks back at me. “You can stay above the bar.”
I stare.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
Oliver crosses his arms on the top of my car and dips his head down. “Why no?”
“Because the apartment above the bar is not an apartment.”
“It has a bed,” Marley says.
“It has a mattress on the floor.”
“Good enough for college kids.”
“It has one single working outlet, and it smells like paint.”
“Smells like a fresh start to me,” Oliver interjects.
“The shower sounds like a dying bird.”
Marley nods. “That’s true.”
“It’s not livable.”
“It’s livable,” Oliver says. “I lived there for three months when the pipe burst in my place.”
“You ate cereal out of a saucepan and used a stack of coasters as a nightstand.”
He spreads his arms out beside him. “And look at me now. It’s close, it’s ours. It’s not full of wedding magazines and whatever expensive emotional mold Grant has there.”
“My wedding dress is there,” I whisper.
Everyone goes quiet.
It’s the kind of quiet that happens when grief walks into the party and sits down without asking.
Marley’s hand finds mine, and her thumb brushes over where the ring used to be.
“You two are both being very emotionally competent and it’s becoming unsettling,” I mumble.
Marley squeezes my hand. “Don’t get too used to it. I’m still planning many crimes.”
“I’m not bailing anyone out,” Oliver says.
“You have emergency bail cash.”
“For plumbing.” He straightens and taps the roof of my car twice. “Start it.”
“What if it doesn’t start?”
“Then we’ll fix it.”
“Do you know how?”
“No.”
“Oliver.”
Marley reaches over and turns the key before I can spiral. My car sputters, coughs, and starts.
It still says I have a quarter tank of gas.
“See? She lives!” Marley cheers.
“She’s on thin ice,” Oliver mutters.
“My car is sensitive.”
“Your car stranded you during an emotional emergency.”
“She has bad timing.”
“She has a death wish.”
“She has a name.”
Oliver’s eyes narrow. “You named it?”
“Penelope.”
Marley closes her eyes. “I forgot about that.”
Oliver looks around the car. “She looks like a recall notice.”
I can’t argue with him there.
“Penelope has been through a lot,” I say instead.
“I mean so have I, and yet I’d still notify people when I’m empty.”
What does that even mean?
Marley snorts, and I try not to laugh. Defending Penelope is important to me, but Oliver’s face is far too serious and my body is exhausted and everything is so incredibly horrible. So naturally, the joke hits me.
I laugh.
Marley laughs.
Oliver, however, does not. But the corner of his mouth tilts just a little, which for him counts as public hysteria.
“Okay,” he says. “Marley rides with you. I’m behind you. We go slow. If she makes noise again, turn on your hazards, okay?”
I salute him.
While he gets back in his truck, Marley buckles herself in and points ahead. “To Baltimore!”
The word lands differently than Florida had. Florida means distance from the current circumstance. Baltimore means aftermath.
Baltimore has my home. My wedding dress. Grant’s favorite mug in the cabinets. Three vendor invoices I just paid sitting in my office. A florist who would expect me to approve centerpieces by next Tuesday. A life to dismantle piece by piece while everyone watches.
But it also has Bitter Bloom, and Oliver’s bar, and Marley’s threats, and a couch that’s basically a pillow with legs that I’m not allowed to sleep on. A tiny apartment above Oliver’s shop that smells like paint and maybe, if I’m brave enough to let it happen, a new beginning.
I put the car in drive, my hands shaking on the wheel.
I ease Penelope back onto the highway, keeping my eyes locked ahead. It’s still early, yet Maryland drivers are out and about causing chaos on the roads as usual.
For the first few miles, no one speaks. Marley sits quietly next to me, one foot tucked under her, one hand still resting between us on the console in case I need to grab it.
Oliver follows close enough that I can see his truck in the rearview every time I check, except for the one time a minivan cuts him off.
So he turns his hazards on. It feels like a funeral procession for my engagement.
I snort.
Marley’s head whips around. “What was that?”
“Nothing.”
“That was not a nothing sound. That was a weird little emotionally unstable raccoon sound.”
I hit my head against the seat. “I was just thinking that Oliver’s truck kind of looks like it’s escorting the corpse of my relationship back home.”
Marley twists to look behind us, and immediately starts laughing the kind of laugh that makes your shoulders shake and forces you to gasp for breath.
I laugh too. “Stop,” I say, but there’s no energy to it.