“I’ve never been here,” Jack said as he parked. “This is some twee shit.” We got out and started walking. “There it is.” He pointed at a redbrick building on the other side of the street.
There was a taco place a few doors down from it with a sign that said “Cold Beer,” and I started to suggest we duck in for a drink, but Jack took my shoulder and physically steered me toward Gretchen’s building. The front door stood open, and I swear to God, I had a rush of stage fright worse than any I’d ever experienced.
What waswrongwith me?
We’d stepped into a big empty space with maybe a dozen people milling around. At the back, a couple people were swinging sledgehammers at some built-in cabinetry. I could hear music thumping from the floor above us.
I saw her before she saw me. She was wearing a hard hat and her back was to me, so I’m not even sure how I recognized her, except that Iknewher. In any context.
And that made the damnedest thing happen: it made all my fear evaporate.
And I suddenly understood why I was here. It had nothing to do with Anna’s recording session. Jack had been right.
I was in love with Sourplum.
Of course I was. She had floated with me in the lake, in her ruffly marshmallow swimsuit, and told me—gently—what was wrong with me. She told me how to fix it. And I let her do that because she understood me. Because in a lot of ways, we were the same. She was ambitious and brave and a fighter. She was also a bunch of things I wasn’t: wise and cheerful and beautiful.
We’d talked so much about contexts. About what was and wasn’t allowed. We could sleep together because we weren’t dating. It was “allowed” because we were at camp, which was somehow a different category from reality. She’d set it up as if we were exploiting a loophole.
I didn’t want a loophole. I wanted reality, a reality that included camp. But also this. I wanted all the contexts.
“I’m going to do it,” I whispered to Jack.
“Holy shit. Really?”
Yes. I was going to shoot my shot. I had never been more sure of anything in my life.
Overdue reckoning was about to come due.
My surety took a hit when I realized that Gretchen was low-level freaking out. I motioned to Jack to join me in hanging back to the side of the entryway, and to my surprise he did so without comment.
Gretchen was talking to a tall man also wearing a hard hat. “What do you mean?” she asked, her voice high and thin.
“It’s not the end of the world. It will add some time and money, but not a catastrophic amount of either. And there’s no mold, so it must be recent. Maybe triggered by when the seller uninstalled the dishwasher before the move.”
“Thisislike one of those shows where the contractor brings the bad news,” Gretchen said, her tone verging on hysterical.It was strange: I hadn’t known hysterical was a mode Gretchen did.
Rory, who had been huddling with Gretchen and the tall man, saw us and made her way over.
“Is everything OK?” I asked, still eyeing Gretchen.
“It will be. The contractor discovered a leak in the kitchen upstairs. Gretchen is taking it uncharacteristically hard.” She tilted her head and watched Gretchen take her hard hat off and run her fingers through her hair. “She usually rolls with the punches better than this.”
Yeah. Like her voice, Gretchen’s overall energy was very not Sourplum. She was stiff and she started pacing. I was no expert on body language, but to my mind she didn’t look like a person celebrating a milestone birthday and a business triumph. She looked like someone who would rather be anywhere but here.
“Do you think this is a good idea?” I asked Rory carefully. “The new studio, I mean.”
She whipped her gaze to me. “Doyouthink it’s a good idea?”
“You know her better than I do.”
“Do I?”
She seemed to want me to talk, so I did. “I don’t know. Just that at Wild Arts, Gretchen started doing some choreographing. Not for the studio, but some kind of personal project. I don’t know that much about it, except that she was on fire with creativity and… well, it was something to see her like that. And then it all went away when she was getting ready to leave.”
Rory nodded as if she’d expected this answer, but when I asked, “She told you about it?” she switched to shaking her head no.
“But I can tell something’s been going on with her since she got back.” We all watched Gretchen pace as Rory added, “Shewanted to do something else. Something more. She thought this”—she gestured around—“was it.”
