Chapter 11
August
I stepped back from the curtain.
Through the gap in the sliding door, I watched Margaux drop her shoulders and lean against the railing. She looked out at the water. She looked like someone who had just won something.
She sells flowers, Margaux. She is not a threat to you. She’s a nobody. Just let her live her life.
And then Margaux had asked him — you mean that?
And Fletcher had said — yes.
He meant it.
Every single word of it.
I just sell flowers.
I am a nobody.
I walked back into the living room. The rug was still there.
The blue one with the cream border that I had always liked.
The vodka bottle was still in the middle of the circle.
Callie and Poppy were on the sofa with a deck of cards between them and Poppy looked up first and her face changed before I had taken two steps.
I opened my mouth.
My feet went out from under me.
The vodka had been doing its work quietly all evening and it chose this exact moment to remind me of that.
I stumbled forward and then Fletcher was there — he had come through the sliding door right behind me — and his hands caught my shoulders and I grabbed onto his arms and then my knees just stopped.
They gave out. Completely. Like a phone going from ten percent to zero.
I went down.
Fletcher went down with me. Both of us on the rug, his hands still on my arms, his face very close to mine.
“Hey.” His voice was quiet. Careful. “Hey. Are you okay? I think you had too much to drink.”
I didn’t say anything.
I looked at him.
He was right there. His eyes were right in front of mine and his hands were holding my arms. He was looking at me the way he always looked at me, the way that had made me believe for five years that I was not imagining something.
She’s a nobody.
Tears came up fast. I felt them before I could stop them. They didn’t fall. They sat right at the edge of my eyes and burned there and I looked at him. He looked back at me. I watched his face try to figure out what he was seeing.
“I’ll get her some water.” Callie announced and Poppy followed her to the kitchen.
“August.” Fletcher’s voice dropped even lower. “Hey. Talk to me.”
My lips started shaking.
I pressed them together. I told myself — not here, not now, not in front of him. Not in front of Margaux who was two seconds behind him on the other side of that door. I heard heels on the patio tiles.
The sliding door opened.
I pulled back from Fletcher. I got my hands flat on the rug and pushed. I was up before he could help me and I stepped back. Poppy was there with a glass of water and she put her small hand on my arm and stood next to me like she was planting herself there on purpose.
Margaux came in.
She looked at the floor. She looked at me. She looked at Fletcher. She put her arm through his and tilted her head.
“Oh no,” she said. “What happened?”
“Nothing.” I looked at Margaux. I said it loud enough for the room, loud enough for Fletcher. “I think I may have had too much to drink.”
“Oh, sweetheart.” Margaux looked at me with her eyes full of something that looked like concern and wasn’t. “I’m so sorry. I should have known that vodka was too strong for you. It’s the real thing. Very authentic.”
“Please excuse me.” My voice came out steady. “I think I’ll go to my room.”
“Yes.” Margaux nodded. “That’s a very good idea. You need rest, darling.”
Fletcher pulled his arm out from Margaux’s.
He took a step toward me.
I didn’t look at him. I looked at Callie, who was already at my side, her hand on my back, and I let her steer me toward the hallway. I heard Fletcher take another step behind us. I kept my eyes forward and I walked.
The hallway was quiet. The stairs were quiet. Callie’s hand stayed on my back the whole way up.
We stopped outside my room.
“Babe.” She kept her voice low. “What happened?”
“I had too many shots.”
“August.”
“My head is hurting. I’m really tired.”
“Something happened.” She said it the way she said things she already knew. “Between the living room and the curtain. Something happened.”
“I’m drunk, Callie. That’s what happened.”
She looked at my face for a long moment. She had known me for eight years. She knew the difference between I’m fine and the specific version of I’m fine that meant — please do not make me say it out loud in this hallway or everything is going to come out right here and I cannot let that happen yet.
“Okay,” she said. “Get some rest. I’ll bring dinner up.”
“I won’t eat.”
“August—”
“I’ll see you in the morning. I promise.”
She stepped forward and put her arms around me. I hugged her back. I pressed my face into her shoulder and breathed through my nose, slow, even, deliberate.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” she said into my hair.
I pulled back. I found the smile. It was not a good one. It was the best I had. “I’ll be fine. Go. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
She looked at me one more time. Then she went.
I went inside. I closed the door.
I stood in the middle of the room.
The dahlia was on the windowsill in its glass of water. The Café au Lait one. I had changed the water that morning, and trimmed the stem a little.
I looked at it for a long time.
Then I pulled my bag out from under the bed and I started packing.
At four in the morning the house was the kind of quiet that meant everyone was deep asleep. No footsteps. No voices. Just the ocean through the walls.
I sat up. My bag was already packed and standing by the door where I had left it. I had not slept. I had stayed awake in the dark on top of the covers and stared at the ceiling and let the hours pass because there was nothing else to do with them.
I picked up the dahlia. I held the stem in my hand and looked at the flower for a second. Then I carried it with me.
I wrote two notes at the desk by the window.
The first one was for Callie. I’m sorry, I had to go.
Call me when you’re home. Four words and a comma and I could not make it longer than that because longer would require me to explain and I was not ready to explain anything to anyone, not yet, not in a note at four in the morning.
The second note was for Jennifer and Douglas. I thanked them. I said something had come up at home and I had to leave early. I said I was sorry to miss the goodbye. I meant every word of that one.
I left Callie’s note on the floor outside her door. I left Jennifer and Douglas’s note on the kitchen counter by the coffee machine. Then I went out the back door.
The garden path was dark. The stones were uneven and I took them slowly, my bag on one shoulder, the dahlia in my other hand.
The path curved toward the beach and then ran along the shoreline toward Sable Cove town.
Twenty minutes in the dark. The ocean was on my right the whole way, loud and steady and not interested in any of this.
There was an all-hours car rental place on the main strip.
I had seen it when we walked through town.
The man behind the desk had tired eyes and didn’t ask questions.
I gave him my card. He gave me the keys.
I walked out to a small gray sedan that smelled like air freshener and drove out of Sable Cove at four-thirty in the morning.
The dahlia went on the passenger seat.
The highway back to Millhaven was two hours of dark and white lines and my own head, which was very loud company. I turned the radio on. I turned it off again. I drove.
Forty minutes out, I pulled over.
I sat on the side of the highway with the hazard lights going orange on the dashboard. I picked up the dahlia and got out of the car.
I set the flowers down on the road barrier, upright, where the light from the next set of headlights would find it.
I got back in. I pulled back onto the highway.
I watched it in the rearview mirror getting smaller. And then I went around a bend and it was gone.
I got home as the sky was going from black to gray. The rented car sat in front of my building and I sat in the rented car and looked at the front door of the building for a long time before I decided to get out.
I went inside.
I put my bag down on the kitchen floor. I sat down next to it, back against the cabinets, and looked at the ceiling.
I didn’t cry right away.
I sat with it. The ceiling. The quiet. The way the kitchen looked in the early morning gray, all the familiar shapes of the only space that was entirely mine.
Then I cried.
I cried for a long time. And when it stopped I stayed on the floor and I looked up.
Five years.
Five years of nothing.
I had made up five years of nothing.
Because I was a nothing.
***