“I guess all families are complicated, one way or another.” I think of my empty driveway, of standing barefoot on the floor vent, letting the heat billow through my pajamas as I watched the window and waited. To be worth it, to be chosen.
The corner of Miles’s mouth hitches. “Petra’s was basically a Norman Rockwell painting.”
I sigh. “Yeah, Peter’s too.”
Miles looks up at me from under a slightly furrowed brow, his thumbs still gliding back and forth along my wrists. “Were you close?” he asks. “With Peter’s parents.”
My chest pinches. “Sort of. I mean, maybe not close. But they were always really nice. His mom came wedding dress shopping with me and my mom. And she got a monogrammed Christmas stocking made for me to match his and his brother’s. They’re the kind of family with a million traditions. Certain plates and specific desserts for each of their birthdays. Every single thing in their house was some kind of heirloom with some great story, and he and his brother, Ben, would argue over who’d inherit what someday, but in this jokey way. The whole extended family always comes here for New Year’s Eve and they do a white elephant gift exchange, and it’s all very . . . I don’t know. I just really wanted . . .”
“To be a part of it?” Miles guesses.
I nod.
“Yeah,” he says.
I hadn’t heard anything from any of Peter’s local friends after the breakup, not even Scott. But both his mom and his brother’s girlfriend, Kiki, sent messages in those first couple weeks. Kiki told me to hit her up if I were ever in Grand Rapids, and I knew she meant it.
Mrs. Collins’s message, however, had only read: thinking of you, with a little purple heart beside it.
“For what it’s worth,” I say, “what Peter said—it sounded like he didn’t really know what he was talking about. Like he got the CliffsNotes from Petra and made the rest up. I doubt she was harping on you.”
“Yeah, I know,” he says. “She wouldn’t.”
There’s a levity to his voice, but he looks uncommonly distant, halfway here with me and halfway deep inside his skull.
It’s surprising, how powerful the urge to comfort him is, how comfortable it feels to let myself lean against him in one of only a handful of hugs to pass between us in the months we’ve lived together.
His hands slide down my arms to wrap across my back. We stand there for several seconds, tangled up together.
“Want to go egg his car?” I mumble into his chest.
“Seems like a waste of good eggs,” he says.
“I agree,” I say. “I just wish my gynecologist told me that sooner.”
I’m joking, but Miles draws back enough to peer into my face. “You’d be a great mom.”
It’s the kind of thing everyone says to their friends, but I believe him when he says it, and I’m strangely touched. “What about you? You want kids?”
“I wouldn’t know the first thing about being a dad.” He smiles faintly, tucking my hair behind my ear. It makes me feel like a two-liter bottle of soda flipped upside down, all the bubbles suddenly rushing in the opposite direction. “Hey, tell me something.”
“What?” I ask.
“Something about you,” he says. “That has nothing to do with him.”
“Well.” I laugh. “I guess all you need to know is how blank my mind just went. That’s how sure I am about ‘who I am’ these days.”
“What about your family,” he says. “Any siblings?”
“None that I know of,” I say.
His head tilts.
“My dad’s had a lot of girlfriends over the years,” I say. “I wouldn’t be that surprised if I’ve got a few half siblings floating around.”
“Neither of your parents ever remarried?” he asks.
“My mom’s never even dated since my dad,” I say.
“Too brokenhearted?” he asks, which makes me actually laugh.
“Too busy. When I was a kid, she worked a lot to make ends meet, and she always said she’d rather spend her free time with me. I figured once I went to college, she’d give it a try. Instead she got really into CrossFit and made a ton of friends. She’s always basically either exercising with a lady named Pam or taking art classes with a woman named Jan, or drinking smoothies with both of them. She’s really happy, though. That’s what matters.”
Even as I say it, I feel a pang. I know she’s meant it every time she’s told me I could come stay with her, move into her tiny studio. But for the first time since I can remember, she actually has a full life, beyond just taking care of me.
The week Peter dumped me, it took a two-hour phone call to convince her to not cancel the five-day “backpacking journey” she had scheduled with Pam, to come nurse my broken heart. She’d spent too much of her life dropping everything for me, knowing it all fell to her.
I could just as easily weep in her arms at the end of the summer, during my scheduled post–Read-a-thon visit.
“CrossFit,” Miles says thoughtfully. “That explains it.”
“What could that possibly explain?” I ask.
“The screams and clanking metal I hear from the other room when you’re on speakerphone.”
“Oh, no,” I say, “that’s unrelated.”
“I don’t want any more information,” he plays along. “I feel totally uncurious.”
“My regularly scheduled calls with Christian Grey are completely mundane.”
His brows pinch. “Who?”
“It’s from a book,” I say. “Never mind.”
“Ah,” he says. “Not a big reader.”
“I know that’s a possibility,” I say, “and yet I truly cannot fathom it.”
“What do you like about it,” he says.
“Everything,” I say.
His mouth curls. “Fascinating.”
“I like that it feels like I can live as many lives as I want,” I say.
“What’s wrong with this one?”
At my pointed expression, he snorts a laugh. “Okay. But we’re more than just what happened in April. Let’s focus on the other stuff.”
“Like?”
“How did it start?” he asks. “The library thing.”
I cast my mind back, to before grad school, before undergrad even, all the way to the first moment I remember loving a story. Feeling like I was living it. Being, even as a child, bowled over by how something imaginary could become real, could wring every emotion from me or make me homesick for places I’d never been.
“Narnia,” I tell him.
“Now, that one I’ve heard of,” he says.
“Ever since Mr. Tumnus showed up at that snowy lamppost, this world was never going to quite cut it for me.”
“Who’s Mr. Tumnus?” he asks.
“I thought you’d read it!” I cry.
“No, I’ve heard of it,” he corrects me. “As a kid, I never read for fun. I’m dyslexic, and it took too long.”
“What about audiobooks?” I say.
“Does that count?” he asks.
“Of course it counts,” I say.
His eyes narrow. “Are you sure?”
“I’m a librarian,” I say. “If anyone gets to decide whether it counts or not, it’s me.”
His smile parts, his eyes crinkling at the corners.
For a second, we’re just standing there, a tiny bit too close. Or maybe it’s a totally normal amount of space, but the kiss is suddenly buzzing through me, replaying again and again.
His hands sliding around me. Lemon and lavender on his tongue. Our spines curving together. Him going hard. I’m fairly certain I can see it replaying in his eyes too.
“Shit!” He flinches away from me. “The asparagus!” He tries to yank one smoking stalk off the grill but jerks his hand back with a hiss, fumbling for the tongs before his second attempt to move them to the plate.
Meanwhile, I’m standing there, waiting for the fizz to settle.
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12
THURSDAY, JUNE 6TH
72 DAYS UNTIL I CAN LEAVE
