Chapter 5 #3
Before I can decide whether to slap him with the tea tray or tell him to get lost, he’s already out the door, the click of it shutting way too cheerful.
“What an asshole,” I hiss at Tessa. “I should totally whoop his ass before I leave. Think I could take him? He’s tall, but I have rage and culinary trauma on my side.”
I swear the corner of her mouth twitches in the tiniest ghost of a reaction, and I freeze.
“Tessa…”
My shoulders slump after several long seconds of nothing. The leaves outside the window flutter as if they’re mocking me.
It was nothing, Lenny.
Just what you see when you see something you want badly enough, and I know that.
I’ve had enough experience with it to recognize the mechanism.
My father died, and for months afterward, I kept seeing men who walked like him, and my brain kept filing it before I could stop it, processing the silhouette and sending the signal before catching the error.
This is probably that. Wishful thinking.
Except…
“It was real, even if it was a dream… right?” My voice comes out thin.
“You asking me to come to you. It wasn’t just my brain missing you so hard it started…
making you up.” I swallow. “These last twelve years, all those dreams, all those conversations with you that felt so real… was it just me? Losing my mind a little more every night?”
God.
“Please tell me I’m not crazy on top of everything else,” I murmur, then watch how Tessa’s eyes flick toward the bottom shelf of the bookcase, then back to the window.
The mug nearly slips out of my hands as I set it down, tea sloshing dangerously over the rim. I lean over her, trying to catch her gaze. “Did you just…”
She’s back to the blank stare from before, but I saw it. I know I did.
I follow the line her eyes took to the bottom shelf, the stacks of notebooks, and there—spine cracked, the exact shade of seaweed green I could pick out in a lineup—is the one she used to guard with her life. The journal she wouldn’t let me anywhere near in school, and she scribbled in for hours.
I look back at her. “Did you mean that?” I wait several long moments, but when she doesn’t change, I grab the journal, then step back and hold it up between us. “Blink if you want me to read this.”
I give her three seconds.
“Dammit, Tessa. Do you want me to invade your privacy? Yes or no?”
I know exactly how insane I’m acting, which apparently does nothing to stop me.
There’s a knock at the door again, and when the door slides open, I panic, shoving the journal behind my back, then down the waistband of my skirt, tugging my sweater over it.
“How are my girls doing?” Nora steps inside with a warm smile. “Just wanted to give a heads-up that the psychologist will be here any minute, but as I said, you’re welcome to stay, Lennon.”
“Thank you,” I force out, heart racing at my snap decision to become a thief. “But I think I’ll head out.”
I press a soft kiss to Tessa’s temple and whisper, “I’ll be back, okay?”
“Let me walk you out, then,” Nora reaches out a hand toward me, and I step out of the room with her.
Every step we take down the hall, I’m sure the journal is going to slip out and thump onto the floor in front of her like, hello, I am the evidence of Lennon’s anxiety-induced kleptomania.
When we make it to the front door, I’ve calmed myself down enough to say, “I’ll be in town for a while. I’d love to come back, if that’s okay?”
“Always. This door is never closed to you.” Nora smiles just as Simon appears behind her to open the main door. “It was so wonderful to see you, and I’m already looking forward to next time.”
“Same,” I say, then glance at Simon, then back at Nora, plastering on my sweetest customer- service smile. “Though you should probably consider letting him go.”
I’m not brave in most situations, but apparently the shortcut to it is letting someone be cruel to someone I love.
“I know it’s not my place, and you know him far better than I do, but someone who talks about her the way he just did, that’s not the person who should be anywhere near her.
She can’t advocate for herself right now. Someone should.”
It comes out more plainly than I planned, but I mean every word of it, and I’d say it again.
Nora frowns, while Simon rears back, looking offended.
Excellent.
I back down the steps in three fast, awkward little hops, still smiling at Nora like I didn’t just accuse her employee of being a disrespectful walnut.
Nora turns to frown at Simon, and I take the chance to turn around and tug the journal out from under my sweater and hold it in front of me as I walk away.
When I feel safe enough to look back at Tessa’s window, I find her still sitting in the reading chair, still staring out at the leaves.
Did you really want me to have this?
Or did I just steal from my comatose best friend because I’m desperate enough to believe in miracles?
I hold the book close to my chest, as if it has all the answers I need.
“Come to me.”
Her eyes moving to that shelf wasn’t nothing. That was a choice. And if Tessa made a choice, even a small one, even just a flicker, then she’s still in there somewhere making them, and I am going to figure out how to reach her if it’s the last thing I do.
Hope really is the cruelest kindness.