But I was desperate not to.
When I returned to the groundskeeper’s cottage, I sank down at the table. My mouth still felt raw from our kiss, the sound of his breath in my ears, his hands cupping my cheeks, muttering about how I tasted—
“Stop it, Soph,” I told myself. “You’ll be gone soon. It’s not worth it.”
The Magic 8 Ball sat in the middle of the table. I started to reach for it, like I always did when I was unsure, but then I stopped myself because I wasn’t sure I wanted to be wrong. Not that I was.
So I forced myself to my feet. I made a cucumber salad for dinner. I scrolled endlessly on my phone, happening upon social media posts from coworkers and people I’d dated and college friends, during birthday parties and anniversaries and banal workdays, snapshots of life. On my feed, Sanchez’sannouncement finally came up, and that reminded me that I had never responded to him. I needed to do that, at least.
Congrats on everything, I texted.I hope you have a great life—and I mean that. You deserve it. <3
I wasn’t sure if I meant it, but I wanted to. So I sent the text and went to take a scalding shower.
I ate a chocolate for dessert.
Sanchez texted me back.You deserve that, too, Soph. Have a good life.
A good life. What did that even mean to me?
Was that a long career at the New York Botanical Garden? Was it published papers inNational Geographic? Was it a cozy house in the woods with a small garden that kept getting eaten by rabbits? A white picket fence in a neighborhood where every house had two point five kids?
My entire life, I hadn’t planned very far ahead because I hadn’t seen the point. When I was little, I was always moving, and when I was an adult the world kept changing faster than I could think up a dream.
But I wanted a good life, whatever that meant.
I wanted that so badly.
It was why I couldn’t let myself have it—even if I couldn’t get the kiss out of my head.
Did I do the right thing?I wanted to ask the 8 Ball, though I was afraid the die would tumble onto an answer I didn’t like.
I picked up the toy and set it down three different times.
I wished I could talk to Harrie, but I made do, finally, when I picked up the 8 Ball for the fourth time, and asked it, “I made the right choice, didn’t I?”
And I shook it.
The die tumbled and tumbled in its blackish liquid—
The sound of my phone going off distracted me. I blinked, coming back to myself, and abandoned the 8 Ball on the table to answer.
“Hello?” I greeted without looking at the caller ID, figuring it was Mom.
It wasn’t.
“I need you,” Juliette’s voice warbled. She sounded like she was crying. “I hate men. I hate all of them.”
“Where are you? What happened?” I asked, snapping myself back to the moment.
Juliette’sdatetook her to the Hook, the Italian restaurant down in Odette, and halfway through the dinner told her that he was seeing someone else and had decided to go monogamous with them instead. Then, to add insult to injury, he still expected her to pay for dinner.
Of course she did, but she couldn’t stomach him driving her home so she demanded that he leave her at the restaurant. She’d get home some other way. The closest Uber was thirty minutes away, and it was storming too badly for her to walk back to the boathouse she rented, so I told her I’d be there in twenty.
I wasn’t sure I could comfort her—I was never good at dating. I didn’t do it often. I didn’t know what she needed, what would help, but there was no one else to call, either.
“I don’t want to stay h-here,” she said with a sniffle. “Pick me up at the Wharf?”
The town’s only bar. Where there were drinks.
