I nod, knowing they keep nothing from each other.
“I didn’t mean to upset you.” Mom’s voice is sandpaper. “I just wanted…” she trails off, shaking her head. “I’m sorry I talked about you with Wren. She wasn’t trying to talk about you behind your back. She just wants the best for you too.”
A lump forms in my throat, thick and painful.
“But I realize that it’s up to you to decide what’s best for you,” Mom says.
I don’t know what to say, how to tell her that Idowant to decide what’s best for myself, but that I’m so lost, so unsure of what I want or how to get it.
Instead, I say, “Helping you two and Grandma doesn’t feel like a chore for me. I’m happy to do what I can.”
“And we’re so thankful for that,” Dad says, reaching out to pat my hand. His is calloused and rough, dotted and wrinkled from all his time in the sun. “But we also don’t want you to sacrifice time with your friends or time to do things that fill your cup in order to take care of us. I think maybe we can find a balance, eh?”
I nod. “Yeah, I think we can do that.”
“That’s what I was trying to say the other day, but I don’t think it came out that way,” Mom tells me.
“I know. I don’t think I took it very well either. I blew up on Wren, and we said a lot of terrible things to each other.”
The words we flung back and forth have been playing on a loop in my head the past four days. Wren is my oldest friend, and it’s not the first time we’ve fought, nor the first time we’ve said things out of love that came out with venom. But this argument in particular has stuck to me like a virus I can’t shake, attacking all my most vulnerable spots.
“I need to fix things with her,” I say. The coffee in my mug has finally started to cool so I take a sip and try to hide my wince from my parents. Despite my culinary skills, I’ve never been too picky about my coffee until living with Jack the last month. I’ve become spoiled by fresh ground beans and his moka pot, and my parents’ bulk decaf isn’t cutting it anymore.
Dad wrinkles his nose. “What’s wrong with your coffee?”
Guess I didn’t hide it as well as I thought.
“Nothing,” I tell him. “Jack just got me hooked on fancy coffee.”
“You two seem like you’ve gotten close,” Mom says, eyes fixed on me.
Flashes from this morning flit through my memory. Jack in my Airstream and on my couch, his shoulder pressed to mine. His eyelids growing heavier with every passing minute. The moment he drifted off, and the few I allowed myself to watchhim before I woke him up and made him a cup of subpar Keurig coffee to keep him awake on the drive home.
I drag my fingertip along the bumpy handle of my coffee mug, tracing its texture. “He’s become a good friend.”
“When does he leave?” she asks. I think I can hear a faint current of concern in her voice, and I know I’m not fooling her, that she can see past the walls I’ve built around my heart to protect myself when he leaves Fontana Ridge.
“A few days before Thanksgiving.”
She nods. “Soon.”
“Soon,” I agree.
Time used to feel endless, like this town had its own calendar that was somehow slower than the rest of the world. Days felt like weeks, and the off-season would stretch on for so long that by the time spring arrived, my body would ache with the need for sun and work and movement.
But it’s changed now. It’s moving at breakneck speed, threatening to bowl me over, and I’m unable to catch my breath.
I know the next couple of weeks are going to be gone in the blink of an eye, and so will Jack. Everyone and everything will go back to how it was in September, and I’ll be alone again. It will be worse this time, though, because I had a taste of what life could be like if things were different.
“Do you think you’ll keep in touch?” Mom asks, pulling me from my thoughts.
I meet her eyes, a blue that’s as familiar to me as the back of my own hand. Summer sky blue, unlike Jack’s lake water blue. Different, but no less intense. Both able to see right through me.
“I hope so.”
Wren is the one to answer the door this time, and when she sees me on the doorstep, she throws her arms around me.
“I’m so sorry, Stevie.”
