I, meanwhile, am starfished on my cushy ivory rug, staring at the ceiling with a mug of chai at my hip. This is as close as I get to life on the edge: a milky tea and a near-white rug.
“Happy for me?” I echo. I’m happy for you isn’t the reaction one expects to a story about her coworker having to temporarily ban a library patron who ripped a computer out of the wall.
“I mean, I’m glad you’ve become real friends with your coworker,” she clarifies.
“Me too.” I don’t think I realized how lonely I was here, even prebreakup.
Ashleigh and I haven’t had another big night out since our winery visit—Duke’s an involved parent, but she’s got primary custody and Mulder’s schedule is packed with extracurriculars—but even just sharing our lunch breaks at the food truck park across from the library has made Waning Bay feel more like home.
“I’m just so happy you’re putting yourself out there,” Mom says. “Your life can be totally full without a romantic relationship. Take it from me.”
She either has a much lower libido than I do, or she’s managing to burn through it by throwing tires across a poured concrete floor.
Maybe she’s onto something. Maybe I should join some kind of exercise class. Not CrossFit, but something with more lying on your back and staring at the ceiling. Yoga? I could at least start walking to work regularly, now that I live closer.
“You know, baby,” Mom goes on, “there really is always room for you here.”
On a purely spatial level, this is false. “Thanks, but I have to stay through the summer.”
“Right, right,” Mom says. “The Read-a-thon.”
I haven’t mentioned the other thing. The one-man Waning Bay Tourism Bureau, in the bedroom across the hall. Mom’s too perceptive for me to talk about that without her picking up on my rebound crush, and giving that any oxygen will only let it live longer.
“And you’ve got enough for the rent in the meantime?” she asks.
“I’m not borrowing money from you, Mom.”
“I really don’t mind,” she says.
“I’m fine.” That’s the truth, but even if it weren’t, I wouldn’t take a cent from her. For years after their split, Dad treated her like an ATM, and she helped him out every time, until I turned eighteen. Like some kind of fucked-up reverse child support, where he was the child she was obligated to support.
She told me she couldn’t have my father out on his ass, that it wasn’t right. But a funny thing happened when she cut him off: he was fine.
Mom’s done enough caretaking for two lifetimes, and if my dad can scrape by without her help, I can too. When I move, it will be because I’ve found a good job and my own place, that I can afford with my money.
“I’ve got things under control,” I promise.
She’s stopped walking, catching her breath at her front door probably. “You’ve always had a backbone of steel.”
“Wonder where I get that from,” I say.
“No idea,” she deadpans.
We say our goodbyes, do our I love you; I love you mores, and I go back to reading the library’s galley copy of a new Goonies-esque chapter book.
After a minute, though, I pick up my phone and text Ashleigh: Do you know of a good beginners’ yoga class?
She sends back nothing but an ellipsis. I reply with a question mark. She says, I don’t believe in organized exercise.
I have no idea what that means.
She adds, Looking to get ripped?
Looking for a hobby, I say, because “more friends” sounds too desperate.
Does it have to be exercise? Ashleigh asks.
Nope. When I see her typing, I head her off. But I’m not interested in the knitting circle at the library.
I’ve got something better, she says. You free next Wednesday after work?
There’s a knock at my bedroom door, and I set my phone aside, sitting up. “Come in.”
The door whines open and Miles leans in, hair wet from a shower, beard sticking out in every direction. “Hey.”
“Hey,” I say; then, with a realization, “It’s Friday.”
“It is,” he says.
“Shouldn’t you be at work?” I say.
He half shrugs. “Katya needed more hours. You up for another film?”
We’ve watched a movie every night since Sunday. Specifically the over-the-top action-comedies I’d always assumed were strictly intended for viewing whilst high out of your fucking gourd. It turns out they’re also pretty good when you’re stone-cold sober and trying not to think about making out with your roommate.
Lying on the floor of my tiny bedroom, while he stands over me like this, for example, is less ideal.
I sit up abruptly and knock over my chai in the process. “Shit!”
Miles retreats and returns with a hand towel, throwing it at me. Not to. At. It hits my face.
“Great catch,” he says.
“Thanks.” I yank the towel down and mop up the spill. “When’s showtime?”
“Whenever you want,” he says.
“Give me two minutes,” I say.
“I’ll make popcorn,” he says.
Five minutes later, we’re settled in for our ritual.
The oddball pairings are so cliché, so expected. But then again, they work.
The huge guy and the tiny one.
The trained assassin and the everyday Joe who gets mixed up with him.
The serious one who gives good eyebrow and the wisecracking sidekick who is absolutely always Ryan Reynolds or someone nearly indistinguishable from Ryan Reynolds when you close your eyes.
“This man must make sixty of these a year,” I say.
“And Dwayne Johnson’s only in thirty of them,” Miles says, from the opposite end of the couch.
“I wish I could send them an Edible Arrangement to thank them for their service.” I sit up to grab another sour gummy worm from the Spread of Bad Decisions Miles arranged for us.
“There’s just something about a movie where shit gets blown up during a car chase,” he says, “that makes me feel like everything’s going to be okay.”
At my laugh, he looks over, stretches one leg out until his foot is pushing against my thigh. “Hey, that was a real one.”
I turn to face him, my back against the arm of the couch, and swing my legs up onto the cushions. “A real what?”
“A real laugh,” he says. “You’ve got your polite little chuckle, and then you’ve got that weird, deep chortle you do when you actually think I’m funny.”
“It’s not a polite laugh,” I say. “It’s a display of mild amusement. I’d never fake-laugh. I don’t fake anything.”
He gives me a look.
I go warm in several places.
“So if that’s the mild amusement laugh,” he says, “then the low chortle is reserved for . . .”
“When you’re actually funny,” I say.
Without warning, he grabs my ankles and yanks me down the couch, draping my legs across his lap, my butt resting against the side of his thigh so that his face hangs over me.
“Fine!” I say, heart trilling at this closeness. “You’re actually funny a lot of the time.”
The corner of his mouth ticks. “And the chortle is . . . ?”
“I think it’s when I’m really relaxed,” I say. “I’ve always been self-conscious about my laugh, but this immense amount of attention being drawn to it is definitely helping.”
At the sarcasm, his grin spreads. He takes hold of my wrists. “No, don’t be self-conscious,” he says. “It’s so fucking cute.”
“I can really tell from the way you described it,” I deadpan.
“I’m serious.” He lifts my wrists, planting my limp hands on the sides of his face, a grown and bearded version of Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone. “I never would’ve said anything about it if I didn’t think it was cute.”
This is the most we’ve touched in weeks. Every point of contact vibrates.
He gingerly sets my hands back down on my chest, crossing them like I’m lying in a coffin, and while his knuckles barely graze me, my nipples peak up against my shirt.
I see him notice.
The anesthetizing power of the action-comedy genre isn’t cutting it anymore. I’m a bundle of buzzing nerves and want.
