I blink at her, the words swirling around in my pounding head. “Why?”
“There’s a hole in your roof.”
There’saholeinmy roof.
I wasn’t discharged from the hospital until the early morning, and Wren wouldn’t bring me to the Airstream until I had rested for a full twenty-four hours. Although part of me wanted to fight her on it, my head hurt like hell and I finally gave in. Staring at the Airstream now, the scent of rain clinging to the trees and loamy earth rising from the mud, I’m glad I did. I think staring at my flooded, exposed Airstream that I spent the last few years restoring and decorating and turning into a home would have sent me over the edge.
The hole itself really isn’tthatbad, all things considered. A piece of the roof caved in and knocked my overly full bookshelf off the wall, sending it and my stacks of books onto my head. There’s blood on my couch from the gash the corner of the bookshelf left on my shoulder. Wren shows me the exact spot she found me crumpled in a pile on the floor and I feel a stab of guilt because I know how much it must have freaked her out.
If the hole was the only thing to contend with, I could probably cover it with a tarp until I could order the parts anddo the repairs. But unfortunately, the branch that ripped a hole through my roof and dented my exterior left the interior exposed to the elements. The storm raged all night and the next day and the water that got in damaged my electric, at least according to Holden.
“So I can’t stay here,” I ask again, hoping his answer will change. There’s a rip near the front pocket in my jeans that I can’t stop sticking my finger through. Beneath it, my skin is cold. It’s the first actually chilly day of the season, and there’s a hole in my roof and no electricity to run the heat.
“No,” he says, his voice scratchy through the speakerphone Wren is holding between us. Holden assessed the damage last night on his way home from a jobsite he’s a contractor on, but Wren and I weren’t able to get here until now. It’s early morning, and sunlight pours through my windows, bathing the Airstream in shades of gold. Outside, the leaves are just starting to change. Usually, this is my favorite time of year. I spend most of it out in the mountains, taking hikers and tourists on guided hikes, thanking my lucky stars that I get to watch the seasons change up close. When I’m home, I can sit at my kitchen table and look right out into the woods, catching sight of the leaves as they drift down onto the cold earth.
Now I can’t hike until my head heals, and I can’t even sit at my table and enjoy the view.
“If you try to turn on your heat before you get the electric fixed, you’re just asking for a fire.”
Wren pins me with a look. A few years ago when she was renovating a cabin, it caught fire and she’s been paranoid about it ever since. Not that I can blame her.
“Listen,” Holden says over the sound of a drill turning on in the background. “I’ve got to go, but I’ll come with you later this week and walk you through everything I noticed. And I can try tohelp you wherever I can. I know you fixed the thing on your own and probably don’t need it, but—”
“No, I’ll take all the help I can get,” I tell him. The truth is, I hate restoration and repairs. I only did it because I had no other option. I could go the rest of my life without splinters in my hands and sawdust in my hair. “Thanks, Holden.”
Wren ends the call and gives me a pained look, her blue eyes full of sympathy. It stirs something in my chest I’d rather not examine, a piece of myself I’ve shoved so far down from the surface for so long that it’s become second nature. “Are you okay?”
I ignore her question, not wanting to have to answer it truthfully, and sink onto my built-in couch.
Which promptly gives out beneath me.
“Shit.”
Wren scrambles to help me up. “Stevie! Are you okay?”
I take her hand but don’t try to stand yet, looking around my home. There’s water damage to the floors and a hole in my ceiling. My custom sofa I painstakingly designed and built is flattened under my ass. Tears prick at the back of my eyes and I fight to blink them away. I hate crying, especially in front of other people. I usually reserve those moments for when I’m sitting on my shower floor, drinking cheap white wine out of a tumbler and contemplating my life.
“What am I going to do?” I ask, and haul myself up, my head spinning. I’m so tired I want to lean against the wall for support, but at this point, I don’t trust it.
She bites her lip. “I don’t know.”
A sigh heaves out of me, and I rub at the tender spot on my ass, the worn denim soft against my fingertips. “I guess I could always move back in with my parents for a bit.”
Just the thought of it makes anxiety clench at my chest. I love my parents, but I love my independence too. I’ve lived on myown since I was eighteen, alone in the woods, and living with someone else at this point is my worst nightmare. And now that my grandma has moved in with them, the farmhouse I grew up in feels different, a carefully arranged space meant to make her as comfortable as possible. There’s no freedom there.
She is shaking her head before I finish the thought, her coppery corkscrew curls bouncing with the movement. “No, you take on enough there without being available 24/7.”
“They wouldn’t take advantage of me,” I say, a touch defensive.
Wren clocks it and shakes her head again, her expression going soft. She knows all my tender places, even the ones I don’t like to talk about. “I know that. They would never do that. But you have a tendency to…” She trails off, leaving the sentence hanging, like she doesn’t know how to finish it. Or if she should.
“You have a tendency to give more of yourself than is good for you,” she finally settles on. The words are salt on a wound I’ve let fester, but I ignore it like always, and repeat the same thing I always do.
“They’re my family, Wren. And I’m their only kid.”
We’ve had this discussion before and it’s led to some of the few arguments we’ve had in our lifetime of friendship. She thinks I need to prioritize myself more, and it’s not even that I don’t agree with her. It’s more so that I don’t know how. Or that I feel like I can’t.
I don’t like fighting with Wren, and I know she likes it even less. It’s why we usually avoid this topic, something we’ve never been able to agree on. She wants better for me, she says, and I’ve never known how to take that. I don’t think she realizes that by saying it she’s discounting the life I’ve built here. Maybe it wasn’t what I had in mind growing up, but it’s what I have now. And if there’s a small part of me thatwisheswhen I’m lying in bed at night, staring at the star stickers on my ceiling, it’s not something I want to think about. There’s no point wishing forsomething I can’t have, something I decided a long time ago that I wouldn’t have.
