Page 122 of Cackle

“I bet it looks good,” he says.

“Yeah? How much you want to bet?”

“Seventy thousand dollars.”

“Yes, but how much in gold?”

“Bars or doubloons?”

“Pfft. Doubloons, Sam. Don’t you know me at all? Always doubloons.”

He laughs. “I know you, Annie. I know you.”

“Yeah,” I say. “So, what’s up?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “I miss you. I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately, and I miss you.”

“Do you?”

“Yeah. I’ve missed you since you moved out.”

“When I first moved here, I told you that I missed you and you didn’t say it back.”

“I didn’t know it then. It took me a while to realize.”

“Okay. What about Shannon?”

“This isn’t about her,” he says. “It’s about us.”

The smell of my dirty socks is fairly potent, and it contributes significantly to how surreal this moment is. Is this really happening? Does he really miss me? Do my feet really smell that bad?

“I want to see you,” he says. “I want to talk in person. Can I come see you?”

“Come here?” I ask, trying to angle toward my suitcase.

“I think it would help give us both clarity if we saw each other again.”

“Clarity on what?”

“Annie.”

“Clarity on what?”

“If we made the right choice.”

I’ve been waiting for this since the moment he broke up with me. I’ve wanted it so badly. But now that it’s here, now that it’s happening, I’m surprisingly salty. Why did it take him so long?

“If you don’t want me to, I won’t come,” he says.

“No,” I hear myself say, “I want you to. I want you to come.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes.” It’s his voice. It’s unraveling me. I picture chaos inside my skin. Muscles dissolving. Bones crumbling into dust. I’m spineless. “I miss you so much.”

I hear a faint tapping. Ralph is awake. He’s at my bedroom door.

“Next weekend?” Sam asks. “Saturday?”