Chapter Eight
I woke up with a crush. This is infinitely better than waking up without one. I was grinning at nothing. The cabin looked
its best in the early morning light. Even though it was cold, the air smelled of cedar and lilac and generalized flora from
the forest floor. Ben. Having someone to casually wonder about. What did he eat for breakfast? Is he a morning person? There were four thousand mundane and in-depth questions I’d yet to ask him. Also, a perk of being fired: waking leisurely
to real birds chirping, not the fake ones on my phone. I also somehow had a cat? Despite not letting him inside, I found the
orange-and-white cat was sleeping at my feet. When I moved he looked at my punitively, like That’s not how we do things here. I made a mental note to buy cat kibble later. There was no click of the streetcar outside my window, no one shouting at
strangers. I sat up and stretched my arms high, moving them around all the space. Not being in a cramped apartment with piles
of laundry to do was also a bonus. I looked at my phone, hoping for a witty missive from Ben. Nope. But Marlon had texted
me a pic of his 6 a.m., all-M other times we’d run off into the sunset together.
“Buckeye,” I said, “I thought it might be you. But you look different.”
“You look exactly the same. I just figured out how to bench press. And grow a beard. And the ravages of time, I guess. Buckeye,
I forgot about that name.”
There it was, the same sizzle between us. I did not look the same as I did at nineteen. I weighed what an adult woman weighs
when they’ve stopped growing upwards and don’t want to waste their one precious life counting grams of protein. I felt self-conscious
about the gap in time, and the fact that our physical differences really highlighted how long I’d been holding on to feelings
of sadness and resentment. But there he was. A full-grown man, with a beard, nervously pushing the sleeves up on a plaid shirt,
showcasing arms that men only had if they swung heavy things most days. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t feel my hands.
“I heard you really did it. You became a writer.” I looked down.
At my Crocs. I usually felt proud when someone from my childhood said this.
It was the one thing I had in my arsenal to bring up in conversation, like maybe I’m not married and I don’t have kids and I haven’t gone on any great adventures, but I am a writer with an IMDb page a mile long.
I knew strange facts and secrets about celebrities.
But Buckeye was someone I talked about real films with, late into the night.
If he really knew what I produced, would he be impressed?
“Yeah, I mean, I haven’t made my own movie yet. But I’ve been working steadily, which is actually quite difficult to do, you
know. But it’s partly why I’m here, to write a feature script. In the quiet.”
“Good for you,” he said. “We were all just kids with a hobby back then, but I knew you were the one who would really go for
it. You were fearless.”
I scoffed. “Well, we all knew Charlie was going to be a star.”
“Oh, of course. She was in that British soap about teenagers, last I heard.”
“And that crime show on Netflix.”
How long could two estranged lovers talk about television? Their one famous friend from high school?