Chapter Forty-Seven
When Eli returned with his arms full of groceries, he laid a kiss on my forehead before heading into the kitchen.
“You writing?” he asked casually.
“Something like that,” I said as I took an inventory of the random scraps and thoughts I’d jotted down. A few lines of dialogue. Scenic descriptions.
“Good, good, good,” he said, his lips curling into the ghost of a smile before he fell into the silent rhythm of rinsing vegetables and organizing the refrigerator.
“Eli,” Tess called as she walked back into the living room, scrunching her curls with one of the old T-shirts I’d loaned her. “I like your choice of candle in the bathroom.”
He glanced over his shoulder like he’d been caught, but the look vanished a second later.
“Doesn’t it smell familiar, Vera?” she asked.
I only vaguely recalled the candle in the bathroom, so I shook my head.
“Cucumber melon?” she asked, her arms crossed over her chest. “That Bath & Body Works body spray you wore for four years straight in college?”
Eli was blushing now.
“Oh, yeah.” I bit down on the inside of my lip. That couldn’t be true, though. He wouldn’t buy a candle because of some random lackluster scent I’d been obsessed with in college.
“Huh,” Eli said. “What a coincidence.”
Tess’s gaze narrowed on him. “Yeah, especially since the scent was discontinued years ago.”
“When did you become a Bath & Body Works scholar?” I asked Tess.
She turned to me with a whose-side-are-you-on sort of look. “You mean to tell me you don’t go into a Bath & Body Works once a year and panic buy thirty-seven candles just so you can feel alive?”
I shook my head. “You know that’s too rich for my blood.”
“They brought it back,” Eli murmured. “For some anniversary thing.”
We both looked at him, jaws slack.
“What?” He shrugged and then turned back to the groceries.
Tess looked at me with a silent but frantic Oh my fucking god and kicked my foot hard before sitting down beside me.
“What’s this?” She tilted her head to get a better look at what I was working on.
“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing in the most nothing form.”
She pulled some pages out from under me. “Are you writing by hand?”
“Not by choice,” I told her. “But I guess it’s kind of nice. I can’t really go back and fidget without a backspace button, ya know? And it’s just a baby idea, anyway. Just a little brain detour. A distraction.”
“I promise not to stage mom you and tell you how proud you’ve made Mommy so that you don’t panic and never touch this thing again.”
“And I appreciate that, Mommy.” I gave her a grateful smile and patted the seat beside me for her to sit down.
She reached for the remote and flipped through streaming services until landing on Never Been Kissed, a staple of ours in college.
And that was the start of a very perfect night.
Eli made gnocchi while we watched movie after movie. Tess and I cuddled into each other while I tucked my toes under Eli’s butt and only wiggled them a few times, which elicited some sort of shrill noise.
As we all started to fade and get ready for bed, Tess pushed me toward Eli’s bedroom.
I shook my head. “I’m not missing a chance to have a slumber party with my best friend.”
Eli squeezed my shoulder before Tess and I broke off toward my bedroom.
“Good night, ladies,” he said as he shut the door behind us.
Tess took a good fifteen minutes to find the perfect configuration of pillows and then she tossed for a few minutes before deciding she wanted to be big spoon. “Sorry,” she said. “I’m too used to sharing a bed with Max.”
“It’s okay,” I told her, as she nestled into my shoulder. “It’s nice to know you’re still a big spoon.”
She sighed. “That candle, huh? V, that’s some lore shit. He’s got it bad. Hell, he’s had it bad.”
“I don’t know,” I said, trying not to let myself read too much into it. “Maybe the candle is just a dumb nostalgia thing. Or more likely a coincidence.”
“I miss a lot about those days. But your body spray is not one of them.”
It was an inoffensive enough scent that conjured memories of cinnamon pretzels from the mall and ironic T-shirts from Spencer’s.
But definitely not something I would actively choose for myself now.
But during college, those little bottles of body spray were my most beloved splurge purchase.
The thought of Eli buying that candle because it reminded him of me made my chest swell to the point of stinging.
“It was really sweet of Max to let you get away for the day,” I said.
“Ummm.” She unhooked her arm from around my waist and plopped back against the pillows.
I turned over to face her and sat up with my arm propped behind me. “Um, what, Tess?”
She gritted her teeth but said nothing.
“Um, what, Tess?”
She squeezed her eyes shut. “I might not have told him where I was going. Or that I was leaving at all.”
I sat up fully now and shook her shoulders. “Are you telling me I’m harboring a fugitive?”
“I didn’t break a law, Vera! I’m more of a . . . missing person.”
I shook my head and crawled over her body to dig her phone out of her purse on the floor.
When I finally came back with it, I found that it was dead. “It’s off?” I asked. “The last time you were without a phone was when you accidentally ran over your BlackBerry freshman year. You, the same woman who thought airplane mode was a conspiracy theory until five years ago!”
She shrugged. “I kind of still think it is.”
“Did he do something to you?” I asked, reining myself back in. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”
She shook her head aggressively. “No, no. Of course not. God, no. I just needed . . . quiet. Have you ever needed quiet so badly that you wanted to throw your phone off an overpass?”
“I’m not exactly that popular, but I get what you’re saying.” I held the phone out to her. “You have to let Max know you’re okay, though. He’s probably crawling the walls Exorcism-style. I bet the man has the coast guard on the line.”
She sighed and reluctantly pressed the power button on the side of her phone. Alerts sounded almost immediately. Nonstop. A symphony of chimes and beeps.
Tess cringed and I took the phone from her, immediately silencing all notifications. “Do you want me to message him or would you rather?” I asked.
“I will.” She huffed. “This probably warrants a phone call.”
She slithered out of bed and into the living room, holding her phone like it was a live grenade.
There wasn’t much I’d been thankful for in the last few months, but running away .
. . starting over . . . It had been hard.
It was hard in the same way that it is hard to take a deep breath when you’re sick.
Painful, but necessary. Tess didn’t have the luxury of running away, though.
The job, the house, the kids . . . Max. It was all so firm and immovable.
For as aimless as I felt, she was just as hemmed in.
I heard her muffled voice from the other room as the light in the bathroom flicked on and Eli started the shower. I lay there in the dark, enjoying the sounds of the water hitting the tile and waiting for Tess to return.
And there, after a moment, was the faint smell of cucumber melon.