Chapter 11
Brick Walls & Icy Falls
Sage wakes up with the sort of energy that would have her actually looking forward to a spin class with Margot.
It has her fingers tapping a random rhythm on the counter as she makes her espresso, and even though she spent most of the night tossing and turning and replaying Theo’s explanation in her mind, she feels wide awake.
And not in a good way, if her reflection is any indication. Her hair is more of a frizzy crow’s nest, and though the microwave window isn’t an accurate depiction of her face, she can already tell there’s no eye mask in the world that would help her dark circles.
She heads to the bathroom and splashes some water on her face before she tugs a comb through her strands and tries desperately to quiet her looping mind.
She wanders back into the kitchen, picking up her phone on the way. There are fifty-two missed texts in her group chat with Emerson and Margot, all in response to the fifteen-second voice message Sage had sent that simply said, So, A Thing happened. I ran into Theo. He’s in Skye.
She’d only caught the first twenty before she’d fallen into a fitful sleep. She swipes the notifications away, navigating instead to her new text thread with Theo.
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Nov 13 10:32 PM
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Thank you again for hearing me out.
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In case you need a place to clear your head while drafting:
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Fairy Glen | Uig | Isle of Skye, Scotland
Nov 13 11:46 PM
Of course.
Wow, this looks gorgeous. Thank you!
She’d waffled on her response for a solid twenty minutes, trying to find the balance between not being dismissive but not being tempted to open a door she knows she won’t be able to close.
She isn’t sure any response would have felt not awkward. But, whatever.
She sighs as she sets her phone on the counter and glances toward the window. It’s looks cold—the type of cold that has her digging out the heavier jacket she packed but hadn’t bothered to unearth yet.
She still hasn’t hit her target this is what I need before I let myself go explore word count, but she knows herself well enough to know there’s no way she’s going to get any writing done when she feels like this.
There is also the fact that Emerson had sent her a very threatening So help me god, if you don’t send me a picture of something in the next few days that isn’t your pathetic attempt at reheating frozen food, I’ll make Margot send you studies on fresh air and the brain text.
So. Yeah.
What was it she said to Theo in New York?
When in Rome.
“Sightseeing today?” Greta asks as Sage trudges out of the cottage in her boots and beanie. Her host is carrying a bundle of logs up to the house, a pair of pink fuzzy earmuffs stuffed over her curls.
“Figured I’d go see the Fairy Glen. See if it inspires anything.”
Greta fixes her with a stern gaze. “Don’t go moving the rocks. Tourists love to do that. There’s no luck in it.”
Sage holds up three fingers. “I won’t, I swear it.”
Her host eyes her closely, as if waiting to detect a lie, before she relaxes. “I’m glad you’re getting out. Brains need to breathe.”
She reminds her of Margot. Maybe Greta has books on energy alignment, too.
“Certainly plenty of air out here,” Sage remarks. It bites at her cheeks, and she sucks in a burning lungful of it, that buzzing in her veins receding slightly.
“Good time for exploring as well,” Greta remarks, falling in step beside her. “Snow’s coming soon.” She pats her on the arm. “I’ll make sure you have extra blankets.”
Sage’s throat feels inexplicably scratchy as she swallows. “Thanks, Greta.”
Greta gives her arm a squeeze before tottering off toward the main house.
“Morning, Hank,” Sage murmurs as she slides into the SUV.
Hank’s some sort of hybrid, so he doesn’t roar to life in greeting, but she feels his presence nonetheless. She tugs her phone out of her pocket and looks up the directions. “Ready to go for an adventure?” she asks as she hits Play on the music.
Noah Kahan’s “You’re Gonna Go Far” comes blaring through the speakers as if in answer, and she lets it play on as she starts down the road.
The glen is about thirty minutes away, just enough that by the time she turns onto the one-lane road, taking in the rolling hills and sheep farms that line the way to the glen, she’s feeling more settled than she has in days.
There’s something about a drive that always helps restlessness seep out of her.
It’s forward movement—a thing she’s doing even if she’s just zoning out on the winding roads of Calabasas as whatever artist she’s hyper-fixated on that month croons through her speakers.
Sage hops out of the car and pulls her coat closer around her as she wanders down the dirt path of the Fairy Glen.
She hasn’t exactly traveled the world, but she’s seen her fair share of beautiful places. From driving up the 1 and taking in the ragged cliffs of Big Sur to party crashing with Emerson on a riverboat on the Seine the summer after they graduated, she’s no stranger to breathtaking sights.
But this …
This is one of the most gorgeous places she’s ever seen.
Hills stretch in all directions, each a different shape and size, creating a sort of whimsical, Alice in Wonderland-type of feel to the place. It’s like someone has turned up the contrast on the world around her, the green of the grass so vibrant it almost hurts to look at it.
Sage finds a basalt topping on one of the hills—“Castle Ewen,” Google tells her—and she climbs up to it so she has an unobstructed view of the sprawling landscape.
She can see everything from here: the narrow path she stumbled on and the gray-and-white rocks interrupting the hills and the unique formations of the stones that form spirals in the grass.
While Google says there’s no actual lore attached to the place, it’s obvious how the Fairy Glen got its name. It really does look like someplace a mythical creature would inhabit.
It makes Sage feel giddy—childlike. She loved stories about the fantastical when she was a kid. Magic and dragons and fairies and knights. It makes nostalgia ache in her throat despite her never having been here.
She inhales another lungful of the cold air, letting the wind whip rogue strains of her hair across her face. “Dammit, Theo,” she mutters.
For all of the urging that fresh air is good for the brain, she wonders if too much of it actually addles the mind. There’s no other logical explanation for what she does next.
[PHOTO]
She doesn’t even have time to consider what the actual hell she’s thinking before Theo replies.
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Nov 14 11:45 AM
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Young Theo was convinced all of the tooth fairies lived in that glen.
I wouldn’t have argued with him on it.
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I didn’t know you knew how NOT to argue.
BYE THEO.
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Don’t trip. Again. You don’t have an emergency contact here, and something tells me Emerson wouldn’t appreciate the phone call.
Sage pauses, all too aware of the smile threatening to break through the press of her lips. It’s too easy. Talking to Theo, teasing him—it’s too easy.
But she knows better now. Knows it’s leading nowhere, and maybe that makes it better. Maybe that makes it okay.
It’s like … an olive branch. Things like space and distance seem to be nebulous in this town anyway, so they are basically, sort of, practically, neighbors. It wouldn’t do her any good to not be friendly with Theo.
Besides. She has to add his number back into her phone anyway.
[Contact: ICE Theo Sharpe]
Charmed.
The peace from the Fairy Glen clears the buzzing from her mind, but it doesn’t last nearly as long as she hopes.
She has a feeling it has to do with the missed call from her mother. The mere sight of the notification makes her shoulders tense.
She hasn’t been avoiding her parents. It’s just …
She’s been avoiding her parents.
Aside from a few texts over the last few weeks, she hasn’t talked to them, except for the disastrous I’m Not Coming to Thanksgiving phone call.
It is, quite possibly, the worst time for Sage to break her silence.
But the longer she puts this off, the worse it’s going to get.
It’ll nag at her thoughts and tug on her conscience and fortify her mother’s commitment to being angry for far longer than either of them have time for.
Sage didn’t come by her stubbornness on her own.
Even still, it takes thirty minutes and another cup of oversweetened espresso before Sage has enough resolve to call her back.
She puts on her happiest voice when her mom answers. “Hey, Mom!”
“I finally caught you,” her mom says. Sage can hear the telltale signs of a morning just getting started back home—the old coffee machine percolating in the background, the jingle of their border collie Rex’s collar as he follows Mom around the kitchen, hoping for an early breakfast. It’s almost enough to make Sage feel homesick.
Almost.
But then her mother jumps right in with “So. Have you found the inspiration you were searching for?” and it sounds just this side of condescending. Sage is already forcing a steady inhale through her nose.
“Still a little stuck, but I’ll get there.”
“I’m still not sure what Scotland has to do with your book. Doesn’t it take place in America?”
“Postapocalyptic North America,” she impulsively corrects. “And it’s, um, not about the location. It’s about getting some space to clear my head.”
Her mother hums noncommittally, and Sage swallows the urge to explain it further. It doesn’t matter how she breaks it down—she might as well be speaking a foreign language.
Her mom’s in finance, her dad in engineering, and both are hardcore traditionalists.
Data, facts, figures. Promotions, pay raises, pensions. Those are the things her parents know. This is uncharted territory for them, and one that they don’t trust not to swallow Sage whole and spit her back out in a mess of failure.
“This isn’t some Eat, Pray, Love thing, is it?” her mom teases.