Chapter 9
On day seven my phone rang. Yasmin’s name flashed across the screen. I hit the button to answer on speakerphone.
“Hey girl. I’m going to be driving by your house in a few minutes, and I figured we could have lunch,” she said, not even letting me get out a ‘hello’ first. “I’m stopping at ‘Kettle this food smells amazing.”
I had to agree; the smell coming from the bags she carried had my mouth watering.
She set the bags down on the kitchen table and pulled the containers out.
“I ordered 2 bowls of that Tuscan white bean, kale, and pancetta soup you like. Then I got the lemon-herb grilled chicken sandwich on ciabatta bread for us to share.”
“That sounds delicious.” I said, pulling out the chairs for us to sit.
As we ate, Yasmin caught me up on work gossip, how John from payroll had been fired for showing up to work drunk, and how she found a mistake that her boss had made.
“I didn’t rub it in his face, of course. Even though I sooo wanted to.”
“Of course.” I chuckled.
Then Yasmin told me about a date she'd been on the week before with a man who had spent the entire dinner talking about his ex-wife.
“The whole dinner, Catia. Every single topic somehow looped back to Sandra.” She jabbed her spoon into her soup. “I don't even know Sandra, and I hate her.”
I laughed. “Have you seen him again?”
“God, no,” she paused. “Well. I texted him once.”
“Yasmin.”
“He was hot!” She threw her hands up. “Anyway. He didn't text back, so I guess he made the decision for me.”
I shook my head and smiled into my soup.
“Okay, enough about my disaster of a love life.” She propped her chin in her hand and studied me from across the table. “How are you doing? Like, really. It being the first summer alone and all that.”
“Honestly?” I shrugged. “Better than I expected.”
“Are you sure?” she raised an eyebrow. “Because when I dragged you out last week, you looked a bit haggard.”
“That was day one. I've had time to adjust.”
“Okay, I believe you.” She stirred her soup slowly, watching my face, knowing my tells as only a lifelong friend could. “You do seem different. Lighter.”
“I think I’ve had enough of bars and clubs for a good long while, but you weren't wrong that I had needed to get out of the house.”
“I'm never wrong,” she said, pointing her spoon at me. “But I'm also willing to admit that maybe getting out doesn't always mean a bar.”
“Yeah, we aren’t in our twenties anymore.” I groaned, stretching to pop my back for emphasis.
“I guess.” Yasmin pushed her bowl back and looked at me. “Okay, I have to tell you something, but I don't want you to freak out.”
I put my sandwich down. “That sentence has never been followed by good news.”
“I know.” She folded her hands on the table. “Derek called me.”
The name landed like a stone in the pit of my stomach. “What? When?”
“About an hour before I called you for lunch. He said he just wanted to check in on you and make sure you were doing okay with the kids being gone.”
I consciously unclenched my teeth. “What did you tell him?”
“That you were fine, but that he should call you himself if he had questions about you.” She paused. “He said he'd tried and you weren't answering.”
“Yep.”
“How many times has he called?”
“Once,” I picked my sandwich back up and took a small bite. “But he texted once before that.”
Yasmin was quiet for a moment. “He's been liking your old photos on social media. Ones from, like, two or three years ago.”
I set the sandwich back down. “Really? I haven’t been paying any attention to social media lately.”
“Yeah, I saw them pop up on my feed. It didn’t feel like the kind of thing someone who wants a divorce does.”
“Well, he should have thought of that before he asked for one.”
Yasmin nodded, and we returned to eating for a minute.
“He left a voicemail,” I said. “A few days ago. I didn't listen to it.”
Yasmin's eyebrows rose slightly. “Do you want to?”
I thought about it for a moment. I didn’t want to talk to him, but listening to a voicemail that he had already left wasn’t the same as conversing directly with him. I couldn’t very well just let it sit there; I’d keep wondering what he said.
“If you'll listen to it with me.”
Yasmin nodded and made room for my phone between us on the table. I pulled up the voicemail and hit speaker.
Derek's voice filled the kitchen, and something about hearing it out loud made my heart pound. I couldn’t tell if it was a positive or negative feeling. I had loved him once; he had been my whole world, but things were different now.
“Hey. I know you probably weren't expecting to hear from me. I just, uh,” a brief pause, like he was choosing his words carefully, “The kids are great, by the way. Settling in. They made me watch the same movie three times yesterday. You know how they get when they find something they like.”
Despite everything, the corner of my mouth twitched.
“I don't know. This summer feels strange. I've been doing a lot of thinking.” Another pause. “Anyway. I hope you're doing okay. That's all.”
The voicemail ended.
Yasmin and I just sat there for a moment.
“Huh,” she grunted finally.
“Yeah,” I agreed.
Yasmin left an hour later, squeezing me in a bear hug before she went.
After watching her car back out of the drive, I closed the door and leaned against it for a moment.
“Okay,” I said. “The coast is clear.”
I went to the restroom while Lux transformed. When I came back, he was standing in the center of the room, straightening the hem of his t-shirt.
“Do your clothes transform with you or something?”
"Sort of, they really just disappear and then reappear when I transform back.”
He looked at me with those steady blue eyes and didn't say anything about the voicemail or Derek. Though he did glance at my phone, an unreadable expression on his face.
“How was lunch?” he asked.
“Good.” I smiled. “Yasmin sends her regards. Even if she doesn’t know that she does.”
He smiled back and held out his hand. I crossed the room and took it, then we sat on the couch together with his arm around me and my head against his shoulder.
“Want to play?” he asked, nodding toward the TV.
I hadn't touched the games since everything changed.
“Sure,” I said.
Lux reached into the waistband of his pants and detached the controller, casually handing it to me like it was a normal thing.
I stared at it in my hand for a moment.
“You okay?” he asked.
“I'm fine,” I said. “It's just a little hard to hold this and not think about what it actually is.”
He laughed, genuinely amused. “You'll get used to it.”
I wasn't sure I would. But I turned on the TV anyway, and we played for the rest of the evening. He was able to control a character on the screen with his mind despite not having a second controller. We played against each other in racing games, and he clearly let me win several times.
I didn't think about the voicemail.
Or at least, I told myself I didn't.