25. Laine
25
LAINE
My chest thumps along in time with the roar of thunder outside the guest room window. With shaking hands, I hit the green answer button. In the call’s background, I hear overlapping conversations and distorted music.
“Heyyy, Ophelia,” I say, shaking my head at my singsong tone.
“Laine Rodriguez!” Thankfully, she sounds happy enough. “Can you hear me alright?” she asks.
“It’s a little loud, but I can hear you.”
“Sorry about that. Adam and I are at the Cannes Film Festival. But I wanted to check in while it’s a decent hour for you. Working with time changes can be so complicated. Anyway, I read the notes and draft you’ve been working on, and I think you have a solid foundation here.”
All at once, the tension I was holding unwinds like a string from a yo-yo. “That’s amazing to hear. Thank you,” I say through a relieved exhale.
"But—"
That one word winds that yo-yo right back up.
“I think you’re losing your voice,” Ophelia says. “While none of the drafts are bad , per se, they aren’t reading like the articles I read from your college days. These are coming off a bit…distracted.”
Despite my best efforts at stringing some semblance of a sentence together, I come up short. I’m undoubtedly distracted, seeing as how I’ve been harboring very real—scarily real—feelings for my best friend. I was just hoping that wouldn’t show in my writing.
“You said you had another interview lined up for today, right? How was that?”
There is hope in Ophelia’s voice, and it makes my chest tighten. I think back to my empty notebook, not a single quote or anecdote from Clive written. Maybe Ophelia won’t be able to hear the lying in my voice over the phone. “It went greaaaat,” I say, drawing the word out. What I hoped would sound like enthusiasm only comes across as desperation.
“You also said you would have three articles by the end of the week. How’s that looking?”
“You’ve already seen the article about what it’s like to work on the ranch, with the interviews with the owner and some cowboys. I’m almost done turning the interview with the cook into a fully fleshed story. Oh! And I have a handful of recipes he gave us the green light to publish. Plus, I have a good idea on where I’m headed with the story about the radio station.” Good idea isn’t exactly the truth, and it probably doesn’t sound like it either, with the way my words tumble from my mouth, just as erratic as I feel.
After a too-long pause, Ophelia says, “I take it you won’t be done with the three articles tonight?”
My lungs feel tight. “No. But I think by the end of the week—”
“Laine,” Ophelia says gently, “today is Saturday. It is the end of the week.”
Impossible .
I pull up my phone’s calendar. Sure enough. My deadline is tonight. This week jerked me around, moving too fast for me to get my footing. Another round of thunder reverberates through the window, and I rush to it, stricken by the endless raindrops warping my view.
Sutton is out there.
On a horse, apparently.
And his phone must be dead—maybe out of service—because my texts stopped delivering hours ago.
Lightning brightens the entire sky, illuminating the treacherous clouds.
“Laine?” Ophelia says. “Did I lose you?”
I forgot I was even on the call for a minute there. “Hi, no, you didn’t. But—” Another streak of light stops me. “Sorry, Ophelia,” I say, trying to piece the right words together but coming up short. “Is there any chance I can have an extension?”
“Is everything okay?” Ophelia asks. “You even sound distracted.”
I let out a joyless laugh, trying to play her words off. “I’m great!”
Ophelia isn’t convinced. “Alright…Tell you what, Adam and I are getting back to New York on Monday. Can you get the articles done by that night? You’ll still be in Montana, right? Let’s plan for a Zoom call next week. I’ll email you the information.”
“Thank you, Ophelia. I owe you.”
“You do. You owe me three polished articles. And I trust you’ll follow through.”
Immediately after Ophelia hangs up, I call my mom’s phone. It only rings once before she answers.
“Hello, favorite daughter,” she says, the sounds of cooking behind her voice.
“Hey, kid!” an unexpected voice yells at her side .
“Huh? Dad?”
I try to picture them, just the two of them, together, but the image is lacking. To my knowledge, the only time they’ve seen each other since the divorce was at my graduation.
“What’s going on?” I ask. “Did someone die or something?”
“Your father invited me over so we could talk about you—the one subject we have in common,” Mom says. “It’s called being friends , something we think we should attempt. How’s our girl?”
My uncharacteristic silence is answer enough.
“What happened, Laine?”
“I think everything caught up to me,” I force out, retreating to the en suite bathroom and locking the door behind me. Still worried someone might overhear my conversation, I crawl into the empty tub, as far away from the door as possible.
Mom’s voice goes tight. “Did something happen with Sutton?”
“I’m in way over my head.”
“Speakerphone,” Dad begs.
“In over your head with Sutton?” Mom asks. It's no surprise that she wants clarification. During our last semester at NYU, Sutton practically became a part of our family. She doesn’t want to lose him any more than I do.
“Yes, with Sutton. With him and all the Davises. With this trip and this wedding. And with work.”
“Work’s not going well?” Mom says. Defeat is clear in her tone, and it doesn’t carry any touch of shock with it. She saw this coming, I guess. I never had much follow-through. “You texted me a few days ago saying you were loving writing for Wonderings .”
Lean my head back against the cool ceramic lip of the tub, I breathe in slowly through my nose. “I was . I was loving it, and I thought I was doing a good job. But according to my boss, my writing came off as distracted as I feel. I have two days to write two articles. Not to mention the first one I need to rework completely.”
“You can do it, Lainey,” Dad urges.
His words do little to quell the worried knot in my stomach. Ophelia was right to start me off on a trial run. It’s like she knew I wasn’t actually cut out for this job.
After a beat of silence, Dad’s voice is back, colder than I’m used to—colder, even, than Mom’s tends to be. “Don’t do this,” he insists.
My mouth pops open. “Don’t do what?”
“Don’t quit your Wonderings gig,” he explains. “Don’t run away from it.”
With my free hand, I tap my fingers anxiously. “I can’t freelance. I don’t know what I was thinking. My mind is always on the run. I’m not organized or focused or—”
“Laine!” Mom cuts in with a sharp exhale. “You can do it. In fact, more than that, you need to do it. I know it’s hard. But I also know you’re fully capable.”
“Enough of the self-doubt,” Dad adds. “Enough indecisiveness.”
“Stick this out,” Mom says, a pleading edge to her tone. “At least this one gig. You owe it to Wonderings . And more than that, you owe it to yourself.”
For a while, we don’t speak. I stare at the flashes of lightning out my window, juggling my parents’ words and my worry for Sutton out there in the rain. When I speak, my voice is barely audible. “You’re right.”
“And the sky is blue,” Dad adds.
“Tell us about Sutton,” Mom says, already excited about a topic of conversation she’s always keen on. “How is operation ‘fake-date’?”
Through gritted teeth, I confess, “Not…as fake as we in tended it to be.”
“Ha!” Dad barks so loud the microphone clips. “You owe me twenty dollars, Althea.”
“Whoa now,” she says, giggling— giggling! “That wasn’t the bet. Laine, what exactly do you mean about it not being fake?”
Caught up in reliving our date last night, I must be silent too long, because Dad’s voice interrupts my thoughts. “Told you! That silence is all the answer I need. Pay up.”
After letting out a playful curse at Dad, Mom turns her attention back to me. “Did you—did you think this would happen?”
“You’re kidding right? We’re so different.” I look out at the storm hammering against the window. “We’re like thunder and a soft, summer breeze. And I bet you can guess which one I am. Even if I thought about Sutton in a romantic way before—which I didn’t let myself do—I wouldn’t have imagined he would ever feel the same way.”
“Then you’re blind, kid,” Dad says.
I scoff. “Are you saying I’m not a chaotic, unpredictable storm?”
“Oh, you are,” Mom laughs. “But Sutton has always loved that about you. When you’re in the same room as him, it’s like you’re that strike of lightning he needs. You liven him up. And maybe you hadn’t considered what it would be like to be with Sutton. But trust me, I’ve seen the way he can’t stop smiling when you’re around. He’s been thinking about what it would be like for a long time.”
“Where’s Sutton now?” Dad asks.
I crawl out of my tub-turned-hideout and walk over to the window, opening it a few inches. Within seconds, the bathroom counter is soaked by angled rain. “You hear that?” I ask, nearly having to shout over the roaring wind. “He’s somewhere out there.”