Page 88 of The Fall Classic

When I was little, I had a terrible case of separation anxiety. Being away from my mama caused so much stress and worry for young me, she joked I wasn’t glued to her side, I was stitched. As I grew, I managed the anxiety, but I could never shake the feeling of homesickness if I so much as spent the night at my grandparents’ house. I would cry quietly in my bed until my grandmother would either drive me home or sit at the edge of the bed and tickle my face to help me fall asleep. I missed my dad, too, but I was used to him being gone.

When she died, my homesickness died with her.

I could go anywhere, be anywhere, and I didn’t care. I barely thought about my dad when he left town. After he married Marlowe, it makes me sad to admit I turned my attention to her, became so desperate for her to love me, approve of me, acknowledge me, that I stopped needing him completely.

Logan’s being so open about his interest in me, but I can’t give him the same thing. I’m not the girl things work out for, and that’s okay. I don’t need to have all my wants met to be happy.

Besides, resignation is so much easier than hope.

So I give him one word—one small word—because it’s all I can spare.

“Okay.”

He takes my hands and pulls me up into a tender hug, his arms cradling me like he’s afraid I’ll break. Then he slowly presses his lips to my cheek—so warm and certain, my eyes close with want.

“Are you going to be here all afternoon?” he asks in my ear before letting me go.

“Yeah, why?” I ask.

“Around one, specifically?”

“Yes. Why?”

“You’ll know it when you see it.”

He grabs my hands and kisses them, and then he’s walking out the door, leaving me to sit in the quiet of my apartment and ache and breathe.

After a moment I pull my laptop toward me and send my professor the most dignified apology I can write. Then I grab a textbook from the stack, and a slip of paper slides out from underneath it.

I pick it up.

On it, there’s a sketch of a wall. My wall—the long one opposite me that leads from the main room into the bedroom, and it’s been drawn in precise, almost obsessive detail. He’s measured the distance from the floor to the ceiling and noted it in the margin. He’s measured the width of the wall, the doorframe, and the space above the baseboard. There are dimensions to the side, but I don’t get the point of them. I look from the paper to the wall.

When and why did he take everything off this wall? Was he cleaning it?

Planning to paint it?

I’ll have to ask him tonight after the game.

For now, I have homework.

***

At one o’clock, there’s a knock at my door.

I open it to find two men in matching shirts with a clipboard.

“Ashman?” one of them says.

“Yes?”

“Bookshelf delivery and assembly. Where do you want it?”

I look at them, speechless. “Um.” I look at the clipboard. I look back at them.

And then I think of Logan’s paper. I laugh to myself. “Against that wall, right there,” I say, pointing to the wall Logan was measuring. I escort them inside and hand them Logan’s careful sketch, which makes sense now.

The taller one looks at it and nods. “Got it. We’ll get to work.”