Chapter 13
Autumn
Not long after Tucker sets out for the Portland airport, I fall asleep.
It’s not too surprising. I was up a lot last night, hyperaware of Tucker in the other bed.
The room was too hot and then, after I turned the temp down, too cold.
The covers on the bed were tucked in too tight, crushing my toes, and once I shook them loose, they slid around on the bed, impossible to corral.
So it’s not too shocking that I don’t wake up until the car stops.
“You mind?” a deep voice asks, and I remember in a rush where I am—Tucker’s truck, on the way to the airport. But there’s new visual information outside the truck, and it isn’t the arrivals gate. It’s a squat building with bricks brightly painted in alternating red and white.
“Joe’s Donut Shop,” I read off the bland black-and-white sign.
“My family always stopped here on the way to PDX.”
It’s another tiny clue to this gruff giant of a man, and I file it away. For a second, I’m able to imagine a small version of Tucker silently hoping the car will stop for his favorite treat—and to see the possibility of the eager child in the stoic adult. “Go ahead,” I say.
“You want something?”
I shake my head.
As soon as he’s gone, I reflexively reach for my phone, open Instagram, and wince at my own feed. The last post was nearly a week ago.
I have to do something about that.
Instead I flip to my sister’s account—an old habit, looking for clues to her mood and relative level of well-being, as if Instagram offers anything like the truth on that front.
The most recent post is a reel, taken at a slight distance. Tucker and me, talking in the hotel lobby. She must have recorded it while I was asking him what had happened with the plant-stalker.
My sister’s new boo, the captions say. Super sweet guy!
There’s a viral number of likes on the post, and when I start scrolling through the comments, I discover that my followers have found the post. They’re pissed at me for not letting them know there was a new man in my life, and they’re demanding details from me.
The not-posting thing has gone too far; I have to put something up.
I pull out my emergency makeup kit, fluff my hair, dig my selfie stick from my purse, and hop out of the truck.
“I’m in Oregon for my sister’s wedding!” I say cheerfully to the camera, something clenching in my chest. A now all-too-familiar resistance, like my own body wants to shove camera and audience—all of it—away.
I push through it, my willpower against that new resistance.
“There’s nothing more beautiful than the beginning of the rest of someone’s life, and I’m so, so excited for my amazing sis—”
And then the resistance rises and chokes the words back.
I hit Pause. “Fuck,” I say, tears threatening.
“What’s wrong?”
Tucker has come up behind me with a brown cardboard box in his hands.
“I don’t know,” I confess.
He gazes at me steadily, without judgment. Then he says, “I looked at your account last night.”
“And?” I ask, dreading the answer.
He lifts a shoulder. “Not really my thing,” he says. “Too much—positivity.”
That makes me laugh. “On brand for you.”
“And good to know that you’re terrified of mice. I’ll make sure to leave Matthias, Basil, and Stuart in their cage rather than letting them get their exercise on the hotel room floor.”
“You don’t—”
He shakes his head, the faintest of smiles showing around the edges of his usually grim mouth.
I shudder. I really hate mice.
“I saw you haven’t posted in almost a week,” he says. “That’s a long time for you, right?”
I close my eyes, half hoping he and his questions will disappear, too. “Yeah.”
When I open my eyes, he’s staring at me. He doesn’t speak a question out loud, but he might as well. His silent scrutiny is as clear as words.
“I just—I can’t,” I admit.
Still, that quiet waiting. And it’s that, more than any question he could possibly ask, that lets me answer.
“I don’t know why. I keep partially recording stuff and then…deleting it.”
I don’t say the rest—that every time I try, it’s like this—part of me shutting down another part of me, a war inside.
“It’s a lot of pressure,” he says, his voice surprisingly gentle.
“Posting all the time?”
“Pretending to be upbeat all the time.”
“I’m not pretending,” I say.
His eyebrows go up again.
“That was a lot of ‘beautiful’ and ‘amazing’ and ‘fun’ and ‘great,” he says. “Is that really how it feels?”
I’m horrified to discover that there’s a pressure in my chest and behind my eyes. Fighting back the sensations, I put on my best sunshine face and tease, “What? You want me to grunt my reels?”
He lifts that shoulder again. “Would that be so bad? If it were honest?”
“I’m always honest.”
I’m startled by the steel in my own voice. I wasn’t expecting it to come out…sounding that way.
Something goes blank and hard behind his face, his steel matching mine. “You’re right,” he says. “That was out of line. Carry on recording.”
He steps past me and gets back into the truck.
I start recording again, but as soon as the red numbers start counting, the pressure in my chest surges back. I manage a few words before my throat closes.
I hit Pause on the recording and, shoving down the pressure as hard as I can, climb back into the truck as well.
“I’ll do it later,” I tell Tucker. And myself.