AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I get home, the excitement of the day buzzing through my head, and when I walk in the door, Aly is singing to Lizzo in the kitchen.
I stand in the entrance for a solid minute, watching them shake their hips and use wooden spoons as microphones as they make a pot of spaghetti.
“Faye!” Aly squeals when she sees me. “When did you get back?”
I take a breath, and then I tell them that I’m moving.
55
zeke
“How was speech today?”Zach grins as I glare.
I would just curse right at him, but my jaw already aches from working on open vowel sounds and he’s not worth the extra energy.
“That good, huh?” He drives down the hill, and I’m grateful he’s able to pick me up so I don’t have to ride the tram and deal with that parking lot.
Too many people, too many chances to get jostled or sick or recognized. But really, the worst part of doing that is thinking about how Faye did this the night we met.
“Just drive,” I snap. I take a breath and let it out slowly.
This is a side effect of the concussion: sudden mood swings. They’re worst when I’m tired. With a soft chuckle, Zach turns onto the curvy road up into the hills.
It’s been two weeks since I left the hospital, fifteen days since I last saw Faye. At first I thought I’d dreamed it. That maybe was a side effect of the concussion. But Zach confirmed that he picked her up from the airport where she’d taken a red-eye from New York to see me.
It felt so good to hear those words. That she’d literally dropped whatever she was doing and flew home. But the initial elation faded with each passing day that she didn’t return. I texted her a thank you when I got my hands on my phone. She responded, for the first time since the wedding. It was a simpleYou’re welcome. Each day I’ve texted an update, and I can see that she reads them. But she doesn’t respond with more than a quick, single word, or emoji.
I never thought I would grow to despise the thumbs up emoji.
Then there was the day I returned from a checkup appointment with my oral surgeon and Rachel ran to me with a stuffed bird in a stuffed birdhouse. Apparently Faye had visited with gifts for the kids and news that she’s moving. Sarah tried to cut Rachel and Ivan off, but they were so excited to tell me all about how she’s going to go to a new school in Corvallis where she’s going to study bird brains.
Sarah filled me in, that Faye stopped by with the presents, and was sorry to miss me. Faye was taking a spot in the winter term at Oregon State in Corvallis, not quite two hours south of here. She’d be studying the effect of climate change on the neurology of migrating birds. She didn’t text, didn’t leave a note or anything. But Rachel said she left me a box.
I take it to my apartment to open it in private. I don’t know what I expected to find inside, but something inside of me collapses when I open it to find it is full of my things. My socks. My sweatshirt. My dog-eared copy ofName of the Wind. My necktie.
The necktie just about kills me. I bought that stupid thing to look better than I felt. To look good enough. Like I belonged. I spent way too much time trying to figure out how to tie it right. And yet, when I take it to the trash can, I can’t bring myself to actually toss it.
“You coming to dinner tonight?” Zach asks, turning onto their Portland Heights Street.
This neighborhood feels older than time. It’s as if it stopped changing around the same time Beverly Cleary was writing books about Klickitat Street on the other side of the river.
“Are you making something chewy?”
“Sarah made soup.”
“Yum,” I mumble. All I’ve been eating is soup and smoothies.
“Be nice. She’s a hell of a cook.” His words are sharp, but not enough to sting.
He sets his jaw and pulls up in front of the house, parking in the garage below my apartment. I’ve spent nearly every day here since the injury. The league is taking my concussion seriously, and I’m out for four weeks, at a minimum, not even taking into account the jaw surgery. It’s fine. But I’m going stir crazy. Especially when I don’t have to manage my own meals because Sarah has turned this month into Soup-tober.
“I didn’t mean anything by it,” I say. “She’s a great cook.”
“Yes she is. And she cares about you.”
“How didyouget so lucky?” I snap before I can realize what I’m actually saying.
The last night I was with Faye, the night I asked her to make love with me, I said those same words.How did I get so lucky?I swallow hard, reaching for the door handle, but Zach stays where he is.
