He turned and walked away, thankfully before he could see me blush more intensely than I ever had in my life.
“Oh mygod.” Nikki groaned when he was out of earshot. She led me through the courtyard by my arm like a puppy that had escaped its crate. “You have some major explaining to do. Who was that guy, and why, for the love ofLaguna Beach, did you reject him before he even had a chance to ask you out?”
“Stop.” I held my hand up to her. “This is exactly why I didn’t say anything to you. He’s just a boy.”
“Um, no.” Nikki stopped before the double glass doors leading back into her wing of the facility. “That wasn’t a boy, that was aman. How do you even know him?”
“You remember how last week I came in with coffee all over me, and I said I tripped?”
She nodded eagerly, even though I was sure she knew exactly where this story was going.
“Well,heknocked me over in the parking lot and the coffee spilled everywhere. That’s why I was covered in it. Then on Monday he actually waited outside in the parking lot for me and brought me coffee because he felt bad about knocking me over.”
Nikki was ready to explode with excitement. “Oh my god that’ssoadorable. What else?”
I opened the door and gestured for Nikki to go inside before we were over our allotted walking/fresh air time. It wasn’t my place to tell Nikki that he was a patient to some degree here too.
“Nothing else.” I shrugged. “And now we’re here.”
“You’re no fun,” she grumbled.
We arrived back at Nikki’s room, and as I watched her settle back in to her temporary room, guilt rolled through me. I didn’t want her to feel like any of that was her fault. Maybe the other reason I didn’t want to date was because of how invested she would get, and that I didn’t wantherto get disappointed if it didn’t work out. Everything really did come back to her.
May 21
Hey Dad,
I’ve been thinking about this a bit lately, but today made me realize I need to come out and say it.
I feel like a bad sister sometimes.
All I want is for her to get better. Really, I do, but I can’t help but feel resentful of her. It’s only sometimes, and I actually recognize it even less. Usually I don’t think twice about arranging my schedule around her, or keeping to myself because she needs my full attention.
It’s only a flash of irritation, and then it’s gone, and I hate this part of me. Because right after the resentment comes the guilt, and it feels so much worse. I think about how selfish it all sounds, and I can almost hear you saying I’m being too hard on myself. Maybe I am. But I don’t have time to consider that part. At least not in those moments.
The truth is, I love her so much it physically hurts. That’s what makes the resentment feel so shameful. I know I’m doing exactly what I should be doing, and I’m glad I get to be there for her.
Maybe that’s how I justify rejecting people before they can disrupt that, even if part of me doesn’t want to.
Anyway, I just needed to tell someone. You’re the easiest person to tell, because you won’t judge me. Or maybe you would, but I’ll never know.
Love, Nat
Four
If there was one thing I’d learned since moving to Dahlia Point, it was that time didn’t move unless youmadeit move.
The first few weeks after Nikki’s admission were a blur of drives to Otter House, cleaning the kitchen until midnight, and pretending to “work” on my fledgling YA magical realism coming-of-age story about fairies when really I was just rearranging plot points in a scattered mess of an outline, like furniture that wasn’t mine. Eventually Mom suggested I find something to dojust for the summer, she’d said, in that way she’d say things to make it sound like a suggestion instead of an order.
That’s how I ended up at Stacks, the local bookstore a long three blocks from my house. Maybe on a nice fall day I’d even walk there, but not in the throes of a humid Southern summer, when walking three blocks made youlooklike you’d run three marathons.
Stacks wasn’t exactly a literary utopia. The air-conditioning rattled louder than the jazz playlist we had on rotation, and half the shelves leaned at odd angles, like they were as tired as the rest of us. But the smell—coffee, paper, dust, and something vaguely floral—was a kind of peace I hadn’t realized I needed. I’d only been there a week and a half, but already I had a rhythm: unlock at ten, straighten displays, alphabetize the chaos left behind by some tourists, and lose myself in the steady quiet of other people’s words.
It wasn’t glamorous, but it was something. Something that wasn’twaiting.
I was restocking a display of paperbacks—the kind that always had an impossible-to-remove sticker that screamednow a major motion picture!—when the front bell jingled. I looked up just in time to see him.
Brooklyn.
