seven years ago
I thought I knew how our story would go, two parallel lines stretching into forever. But in retrospect, our lives were never destined to take that shape.
If I had to pinpoint the moment they started to veer toward each other, it would be a Saturday afternoon in college. Ren and I were at our favorite arcade bar, defending our Ms. Pac-Man high score, and I had asked him to be my plus-one for an old friend’s wedding the following week.
“You don’t already have a date?” he said, chasing down an orange at one corner of the screen.
I watched as he barely avoided a ghost in a tunnel. “I just remembered it was even happening.” I had RSVP’d months ago but forgot all about it until this morning, when I discovered the invitation buried under take-out menus, doodles, and Polaroids on my refrigerator.
“Ah,” Ren said dryly. He let the game sound out his death and turned to me. “So I’m a last resort.”
It was true that I hadn’t had time to find a date, but Ren Webster was my best friend, a part of all my favorite moments, and there was no one I’d rather go with anyway. I widened my eyes innocently,trying to emulate one of his many noteworthy expressions. I used to say I hated his big brown eyes, that they had a way of doing me in, but in the end, it was just another thing I had misread.
After a minute, he relented. “If you can beat our high score,” he said, smirking as he nodded me toward the game, “I’ll go with you.”
His reaction didn’t seem important or all that surprising at the time. Just a joke between friends, another way to addRAJ—Ren and Joni—to the game’s top standings.
And the wedding was yet another item to add to the list of all the dumb things we’d done together. I didn’t think it would balloon, turn into anything beyond that one weekend. I didn’t pause to think about the fact that he didn’t hesitate long, and his yes was as good as certain. That I so easily forgot the wedding, that I didn’t even try to find a real date.
I didn’t pause to think about it at all until everything was already ruined.
But like any good story, life has its twists and turns, and sometimes, just when you think things are going to end up one way, those two lines head straight for each other.
sunday
chapter one
I pull up to the salt-weathered house late Sunday afternoon, seagulls announcing themselves above and the ocean crashing in far below. As I step out of the car, I suck in the Pacific Northwest air, like it’s the first breath I’ve taken in two and a half years. It’s briny out here on the coast, where the sky stretches endless and blue over water that sparkles in tiny fractals, and where one week from now, my little sister will be married under the red-roofed lighthouse that juts out from the green headland a short walk away.
The trunk of the rental car heaves open with a groan, a stark contrast to the perfect Oregon day. It’s fitting that my return to the West Coast would not only be on the heels of losing my job, but involve a dented Mazda that sounded like a freight train running off the tracks the entire way from PDX. Coming back here was never going to be easy, but the journey could have been a little kinder.
Inside, the house is largely the same. The kitchen sits at the front, the long oak table that we can all fit around under the windows. Through a small mudroom opposite are French doors leading to the screen porch that runs along one side of the house.When everyone else arrives the day after tomorrow, there will be laughter rolling in from the yard, conversation in the kitchen, music playing.
For now, there’s only silence.
I drop my car keys on the granite island and walk my bags into the living room, where the sun streams in through the floor-to-ceiling windows. I should go upstairs and unpack, start the week on a responsible note, settle myself in before the others arrive. But a wave of all the memories this place holds suddenly washes over me, and I find myself unable to move another step. This house has seen me through so many versions of myself, and this newest one feels like a stranger here, an intruder.
I brace myself. If I’m going to survive this week, I need to pretend that I haven’t intentionally been staying away these past few years. I take another deep breath, pour a glass of wine, and fold my legs under me on the couch. It was this view of the ocean that sold my parents and the Websters on the place when they purchased it together twenty years ago. And now, with the familiar feel of the sun warming my shoulders, the sight of the waves shimmering before me, that same view quiets my mind for the first time in days.
Monday
chapter two
I wake up the next morning sprawled face down on top of the comforter, a dull throb behind my right eye. What started as one glass of wine turned into three on the back deck as I watched the sun go down over the ocean, curled under a well-loved Pendleton throw in one of the Adirondack chairs out there.
I close my eyes again for a minute, listening to the waves rolling in, enjoying the cool breeze drifting through the window as it brushes across my neck.
And that’s when I hear the front door.
My eyes fly open. I sit up and scramble for my phone, checking to see if Stevie has texted that she and her fiancé, Leo, decided to head up early, but I don’t have any new messages. Still, it wouldn’t bethatunlike my sister to show up unannounced. I stand with far too much confidence for a hungover woman alone in a coastal house, and shuffle downstairs.
Just in case, in the living room, I pick up a heavy geode from a sideboard and raise it above my head as I approach the kitchen, ready to—what? Pummel someone at short range?
At the sound of keys being tossed onto the counter, I lower the rock,my heart slowing. “Hello?” I call. “Stevie?” I poke my head through the door, catch sight of the person turning at my voice.
It is not my sister.
At first, I think I might be making him up, as if despite the energy I’ve spent repressing him since the second I stepped foot inside this house, some memory managed to spring free and wander around like a reminder of everything I’ve been missing. But this person is flesh and blood, fully corporeal.
