Page 137 of Gave Proof Through the Night

I need help.

I think about her every day, even doing mundane tasks, like going to the post office. Or when I go to get frozen bananas on Balboa Island and think, she’d inhale three of these before I finished my first bite. Or that record store in Laguna she would’ve had opinions about. Or when I pass the Great Park on the freeway and think about taking her up on that big orange hot air balloon. How they transform it into a jack-o’-lantern face for the month of October.

How, for the rest of my life, the Fourth of July will never be the same.

I finish my coffee. It’s cold now.

I need to get out of this house before I spend another day narrating my own heartbreak to an empty kitchen. I grab my keys off the hook by the garage door, then change my mind and head for the front instead. Maybe a walk will do me some good.

I open the door and every plan I had for the day flies out of my brain. For a second, I just stand there, not believing my eyes.

There’s a yellow Lamborghini parked crooked at my curb. It is… a very aggressive yellow. And Erica is leaning against the side like she’s been expecting me to walk out of my house any minute.

She looks better than anything I’ve built up in my head for three months, which is saying something, because I’ve built up a lot.

I don’t stop to think or decide anything. My legs just go.

“You’re here.”

I kiss her before she can answer, both hands finding her face like I need to confirm she’s real. She kisses me back immediately, her hands fisting in my shirt and pulling me in like she’s been missing me just as long. She’s leaning against the car, and I press her into it, one hand sliding to the small of her back, and every rational thought I’ve had since July evaporates.

“I thought I’d lost you,” I say against her mouth, and I don’t care how that sounds. “I thought that was it.”

“I’m sorry.” She says it between kisses, breathless, her fingers finding the back of my neck. “I’m here. I’m here.”

I kiss her jaw, her cheekbone, back to her mouth, and my heart is racing. Her hands are shaking a little, or mine are, I honestly can’t tell whose pulse I’m feeling anymore.

Then someone clears their throat behind me.

It doesn’t register the first time. Then they clear their throat again, this time louder and pointed.

I pull back. Erica’s lips are pink and her eyes are wide as she looks over my shoulder. There’s a middle-aged man standing on the sidewalk behind me with his arms crossed.

“Do you mind getting off my car?”

I look at Erica. Erica looks at me.

“This isn’t your car?” I say to her.

“I thought it was yours.”

We both start laughing at the same time, right there at the curb, and the man watches us like a father who’d caught his teenaged daughter kissing the school bad boy.

“Sorry, man.” I raise a hand at him. “I’ll pay to have it waxed.”

He runs a palm along the door panel, checking for scratches. “It’s all good. Just…” He looks at us. “Maybe less PDA next time?”

“You got it, neighbor.”

I get Erica inside before either of us can embarrass ourselves further.

“He was pretty chill,” she says once the door shuts behind us.

“It’s the perfect weather. Nobody’s uptight out here.” I glance at her. “Mostly.”

She’s already tipping her head back, taking in the vaulted ceiling, the curved staircase, the kind of house that looks bigger from the inside than the outside promised. I watch her circle slowly in the entryway.

“If I had a flashy car like that I wouldn’t park it on the street,” she says.