Chapter 7
On the day I was born, the stars and planets aligned.
Clouds parted and the sun shone bright, horns blaring while the angels sang out to all the universe, proclaiming that the most basic of bitches had arrived.
Has it been a lot of pressure knowing this is the purpose I’ve been placed on this earth to fulfill?
Of course, but it’s my lot in life and I bravely face it every single day.
There’s never been a seasonal latte I’ve shied away from or a style of Uggs I haven’t owned.
I know every Taylor Swift lyric ever written while also being a card-carrying member of the Beyhive, and a proud American Mixer who still occasionally weeps when I think of Little Mix.
I can throw an amazing party with any theme and budget—my Alice in Discoland party was one for the history books—and this is part of why I was the go-to person for putting together events at the Book Nook.
One of my best traits is my ability to romanticize absolutely anything.
I enter every room knowing I’ll be both the most basic and most extra person in attendance.
I try to bring the same beautiful, chaotic energy to every aspect of my life, but after I lost my mom, it was easy to let the chaos overshadow the beauty.
To lose sight of the beauty entirely.
Only knowing my dad through a handful of pictures and stories told to me by those who loved him most, I’ve never known life without loss.
The fragility of life has always danced in my periphery.
The ghost of his presence acted as a constant, unspoken reminder to cherish each and every moment gifted to me.
I’ve lived my entire life closely acclimated to and acutely aware of death, but nothing—not the sickening realization it was coming sooner than I could’ve ever dreamt possible or the months spent watching…bracing—could’ve prepared me for the moment it came for my mom.
People—my therapist and Gabby—told me not to make this move.
They warned me time and time again that this house was a distraction.
A weak attempt to run from grief that’s impossible to escape.
And while I’m a big enough person to admit they weren’t completely wrong, I can’t say they were completely right either.
More than anything, this move has been about finding a safe, quiet space to tap back into the pieces of myself that grief ripped away from me and to bring the beautiful, chaotic energy back into my life…
Starting with my house.
I’ve been here for over a week, and it’s time to get down to business so that it really feels like home.
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Gabby’s big brown eyes narrow with skepticism and judgment as she watches me take off the final cabinet door in my kitchen over FaceTime. “Didn’t you say Hot Cowboy Neighbor knows a good handyman?”
“His name is Silas.” I correct her even though I’m the one who trademarked Hot Cowboy Neighbor. “The handyman is his brother, and I will call if I need him. Which I don’t.”
“That’s what you said when you were taking out the bathroom sink and the pipe exploded in your face.”
“Excuse me.” I drop the cabinet and put my hands on my hips, but I fear the impact is lost over the phone’s screen. “Are you friend or foe? Why are you throwing my mistakes in my face?”
I mean, really! You flood a bathroom once and they never let you live it down.
“If I can’t keep it real with you, then who can?
” She asks the question I ask her routinely.
I like it a lot less coming from her. “Just because I’m hundreds of miles away doesn’t mean it’s not still my job to make sure you’re not acting before you think.
I’m making sure you know what you’re doing before you paint those cabinets because if you ruin them now, you’re losing your time plus the money you’re going to have to pay someone to fix or replace them. ”
I hate it when she’s right.
“Who told you to be logical?”
“You sound like my students.” She laughs. “And you know I’m always logical.”
Now I’m the one laughing.
“Oh puh-lease! Was it logical when you triple-booked your Hinge dates and had them battle for your heart?”
“I was on a Bachelorette kick!” she says, like it’s an actual defense and not a prime example of the point I’m making. “I wanted to know what it was like to have three men try to win and woo me without the pressure of being on national television.”
If this was the only instance, I would let it lie, but there are hundreds, if not millions, of examples to choose from.
“What about the time you were working in the elementary school and your principal shot down your field trip to the zoo so you invited that animal keeper into your class without getting approval and then the snake got out?”
“Okay, yeah. That one was bad.” Bad is an understatement.
A student in the classroom where they found the snake was so freaked out, she had to start seeing the school counselor.
Gabby was put on probation for the rest of the school year.
“But that doesn’t mean that the roles haven’t reversed here and I’m not right. ”
“I appreciate your concern, but I’m very confident in my skills to accomplish this project. I’ve read ten different blog posts from Pinterest, and do you remember when I spent a weekend taking a DIY workshop at the rec center? We learned about refinishing cabinets!”
I was the only single non-mom in the class, and it was the most fun I’ve ever had. I won’t admit it to Gabby, but we all met up for drinks after, and I learned more about their personal lives than I did refinishing. I need to call Ally. I wonder if she worked things out with her mother-in-law.
I watch Gabby throw her hands in the air out of the corner of my eye.
“Fine,” she says. “But know that if it somehow manages to go astray, I do reserve the right to say I told you so loudly and often.”
Considering I still bring up the zoo/classroom fiasco anytime I get the chance, I don’t doubt this for a second.
“I would never deny you your God-given right as my best friend to mock my failures.” I wedge the phone beneath my chin, and she gets a glorious view up my nostrils as I grab the cabinet and push open the door to my back porch with my foot. “But you’re not—”
I lose track of what I was going to say when none other than Hot Cowboy Neighbor? pulls the door wide open for me.
“I was fixing the fence and saw you bringing stuff outside. I figured the neighborly thing to do would be to come and help.” He answers the question I didn’t have time to ask. “If you want it, of course.”
“Um, yeah.” Heavy silence falls from my phone while I struggle to string words together as my speech returns. “That’d be nice.”
He gestures to the cabinet door. “Can I carry that for you?”
I’m all for feminism. Huge fan. 10/10 stars.
But when it comes to physical labor of any kind, I’m an even bigger fan of passing it off to the men.
If I have to deal with a period and the patriarchy, they should have to deal with at least a moment of mild discomfort and strain their muscles to lift heavy things for me.
It’s called equity.
“If you insist.” I hand it over without so much as pretending to contemplate it, and the second I do, the screeching I assumed I’d hear moments ago finally comes.
“Oh my god!” Gabby’s voice echoes into the great expanse of open fields and deep into my heart. “Is that—”
I know how that sentence ends, and there’s no part of me that can allow her to say it in front of Silas.
“I have to go paint now!” I cut her off. “Talk to you later. Love you. Bye!”
I hit end before she can embarrass me and turn on Do Not Disturb after sending her immediate incoming call directly to voicemail.
“Someone from back home?” Silas asks with a knowing grin on his face.
Dammit.
One day I’ll know how to play it cool.
“My best friend, Gabby.” I pull my sunglasses from the top of my head and hope they can protect my eyes from the sun and Silas’s smile—both equally liable to blind me.
“Before I moved, we made a promise to have at least one FaceTime call a day. She’s very invested in my home improvement projects and she likes to micromanage from the phone. ”
Micro-criticize is more accurate, but Silas doesn’t need to know that.
“It’s crazy what technology can do now.” He walks beside me to the giant tarp where I’ve carefully displayed all my cabinet doors and gently places it on the open corner spot. “I had a friend move to Washington my sophomore year. We could only talk once a month because of long-distance fees.”
“Even on your cell phone?” My grandma was from Chicago, and I still remember how happy she was when my mom gave her a cell phone. She sat on the couch for hours, calling her sister and all her friends back home. “I thought there were plans that included it.”
“The cell service here was terrible until I was in college.” He shakes his head.
His honey eyes crinkle at the corners, flecks of gold winking beneath the sun.
“It’s why everyone around here still has a landline, especially the farther you get from town.
There are still some companies we have to avoid because they drop more calls than they connect. ”
Cell coverage wasn’t something I even considered in my move. Thank goodness my phone is still working.
“There’s a rotary phone in the kitchen. I thought it was for decoration.”
“I doubt that Mr. Monroe ever had a cell phone,” he says. “That phone is probably the one thing in your house that doesn’t need work.”
Unfortunately, I doubt he’s wrong.
I’ve had one too many surprises since I’ve started really looking around the house, and I have a feeling there are many more to come.
“So, what ended up happening with your friend who moved?” I ask. “Did you rekindle your friendship through Facebook and Instagram messages?”
The only thing I know about this man is nothing, but I can’t miss the sadness that flashes in his eyes. The emotion looks so out of place on his perpetually happy face that I wish I could shove the words back in my mouth and choke on them.
“Uh, no.” He clears his head and studies his boots. “We lost touch after a few months. Last I heard she was married and had a kid.”
Interesting.
I have a million more follow-up questions, but I don’t need to be a detective to figure out that he doesn’t want to talk about it—about her—and as a person who would rather have all my teeth pulled than talk about my past, I get it.
“I’m sorry,” I say, and I hope he can tell that I mean it. “It sounds like she was pretty special for you to still remember her so fondly.”
“She was the best.” His voice drips with sincerity. “Who knows, maybe someday our paths will cross again.”
Silas is kind, gorgeous, and pretty much all the things anyone interested in a person of the male persuasion would look for in a partner.
Hearing the longing in his voice when he talks about another woman should make me rage with jealousy.
Instead, I feel nothing but deep sadness and hope that one day, they’ll find each other again.
“I’m painting my kitchen.” I forgo a smooth transition and inform him of something I’m sure he figured out on his own. “It’s probably going to take me a century to finish. If you’re free, I wouldn’t mind the company or the help.”
“I have the day to myself.” He turns his attention back to me and aims a grateful smile my way. “Sanding cabinets with you sounds like the perfect way to spend it.”
Not even the romance books I’ve pored over could prepare me for what it feels like for a man like Silas to look at me like this.
It’s as if the heavens have opened up and are shining upon me.
A future spent lazing in the sun with him, turning the mundane into the romantic, flashes before my eyes.
The possibilities are as glorious as they are endless, and it’s too bad a faceless woman from his past has managed to encroach on my daydreams.
“I couldn’t agree more.”