Chapter Thirty #2
ME: Guess I’m fancy now. Should I steal the toiletries for you?
I follow my text to Dee with a second picture—the view from the window. City lights. A pretty skyline.
ME: They gave me a robe, too. I’m packing it for you.
Dee doesn’t text back right away. That’s fine. I don’t even know what I’m trying to say. Maybe I’m just trying to prove I’m okay. Or pretend I am.
My phone buzzes five minutes later.
DEE: Wow! You are SO hosting the next Dirty Gals meeting, lady!
She texts me a picture of a succulent in a pot. It’s got tall, narrow leaves, the edges lined with tiny baby plantlets.
DEE: My Mother of Thousands! Look at her, gestating baby plants! She’s having trilliontuplets, though, so she’s confined to her pot lest she take over the world.
ME: Holy clone wars!
If I ever go back to Wickham Hollow, the plants will have taken over.
DEE: You fine, fine, fine?
Am I? My fingers hover for a long time before I type. Then erased. Then type again.
ME: I don’t know.
When she calls me thirty seconds later, I answer on the second ring. Jack would be proud of me.
“Hey,” I say, voice scratchy. Because of all the singing! Not because I’m sad!
“Yes, to stealing the toiletries,” Dee says. “But I’m more interested in what’s wrong with you.”
I let out a half laugh. “They’ve got tiny lavender soap shaped like a leaf. How is that not impressive?”
“It is. Very upscale. Almost distracts from the sound of you unraveling.”
I shift the phone against my ear. “I’m not unraveling.” Much.
“You texted me pictures of soap.”
“I’m tired.”
“And overwhelmed,” she prompts.
I close my eyes. “Well, yeah.”
Dee says nothing for a moment. From the rustling, she must be walking around her kitchen or maybe she’s in the greenhouse. Somewhere real. Somewhere that smells like dirt and mint, rather than a promotional candle called “Nashville Nights.”
“You’re charting,” she says gently. “And they’re putting you up at fancy hotels.”
“Yep.”
“You’ve got photo shoots and interviews and catered sushi.”
“I didn’t eat the sushi,” I say. “It looked like regret rolled in seaweed.”
Dee laughs. “Do you want this kind of success?”
“I thought I did.”
“But now?”
I exhale. “I don’t know what I want. Other than everything.”
There’s a pause, but not the kind that makes you feel alone. Just the kind where someone’s actually listening.
“You’re allowed to want everything,” Dee says. “And you’re allowed to be unsure. When I was four, I wanted to be an astronaut.”
That makes me smile. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. I had glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling and a lunchbox with Saturn on it. Then sixteen-year-old me discovered that physics had it in for her.”
“What’d you do?”
“I cried in my guidance counselor’s office. And then I picked something else. Still look up at the stars sometimes, though. Just without the pressure to land there.”
I send her a shot of the stars over Nashville. The picture’s blurry, but she likes it anyhow.
“I feel like if I pick this—really pick a singing career—I’m shutting the door on everything else.”
Jack is my everything else. He’s my everything.
“You’re not,” she says. “Think of it as walking through a room. It’s just one room. You can always double back.”
“I don’t know how to do both. How to be—”
Jack’s. Mine. Here and there at the same time. I’m tired of being pulled in so many directions.
“You don’t have to,” Dee says. “Not forever. Just hold what you need for today. The rest can wait.”
“Okay?”
“Wow! Really? That worked?”
She makes me laugh. “You’re the best.”
“You should probably be specific,” she says. “Really, really specific.”
We wrap up our conversation with promises to stay in touch. She thinks she can come up to Nashville for a girls’ weekend soon, and I promise to show her around town.
I’m totally robbing the housekeeping cart and mailing her my soap loot. She’s an amazing friend.
You don’t have to hold both. Just hold what you need for today. I pad into the bathroom that’s the size of a dozen vans. Maybe a hundred. If I don’t figure this out, I’ll regret it. I run the water and sit on the side of the tub staring out the window.
When the water level’s perilously close to the rim, I add half the bottle of fancy bubble stuff from the counter. It foams like crazy and smells like herbs.
By the time I’ve peeled off the day—dress, earrings, makeup—and sink into the water, the bubbles are chest-high. The heat makes my skin prickle. I rest my head against the edge and close my eyes.
For the first time all day, no one needs anything from me.
I don’t have to pretend I know what I’m doing.
I sit there until the water cools and then I reach for my phone. Open the camera and flip it to front-facing. I’m pink-cheeked and foggy-eyed, surrounded by a sea of suds. Not glamorous. Not a photo shoot. Just me, in a hotel bathtub, with my hair going crazy.
I take the picture.
Then I stare at it.
Then I send it to Jack. No caption. Just the photo.
And then, after a second thought, I do add a message:
ME: There’s room for one more.
I watch the little “delivered” notification appear, then power the phone off.
I don’t want to read what he writes back—not tonight, maybe not tomorrow.
Because sending it isn’t about starting a conversation.
It’s about not pretending I don’t miss him, about saying: I remember. I still feel it. Even here.