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“Why, Mom?”
Marcella Medlock had the nerve to blink her big, brown eyes at me as if I had somehow baffled her.
“Well, you guys were pretty close, weren’t you?” she tilted her head. “I thought you were friends.”
I supposed she wasn’t wrong. Her logic made sense even while my suspicions tingled.
“She gave me a book,” I said.
Mom seemed to be waiting for me to say more, but I gave her a grin and continued out of the apartment. My feet ate the distance to the elevator just short of a sprint. I didn’t exhale until I was shut inside the box and heading downwards.
The Alexander had thirty floors and five hundred luxury condos stacked in neat, pricy layers. The majority of our residents were celebrities, CEOs, and politicians. Very few could afford the exorbitant price. The only exceptions were Kas,Sasha,and Kami. Their units were right beneath the rest of us with my parents’ being at the very top, followed by mine, then Lavena and Edmund sharing a whole floor. My floor was shared with Milo but had been empty for the last ten years. Mom still kept it clean and maintained but essentially, I had the place to myself until his return.
I arrived on my floor with its familiar red carpeting and cream walls. The paisley pattern felt almost surreal as I crossed the narrow hallway to the last door at the very end and let myself in.
The air smelled different.
It was my first thought as I stood in the foyer overlooking my entire life dipped in shadows. It held nothing and everything. It was familiar and completely foreign. I couldn’t recall what ithad smelled like before, but I guessed the lemon polish was new. The unlived vacancy of a place, absent of inhabitance for a long length of time made me think Mom had kept it dusted, aired, and tidied. Not a single item was out of place when I walked amongst my things and really appreciated them for the first time.
I wandered down the hall to my bedroom. I placed my bag with the empty phone case and Kami’s gifted book on my bed and just stood there, hands on hips, staring at the wild tangle of civilization outside the wall of windows overlooking my city. The veranda beckoned me to get closer, to breathe in the air of freedom but the smog and weight of this air didn’t compare to the air of the lodge, and I wasn’t ready to let that go.
Leaving the view, I started back towards the bed when the phone dinged in my pocket. The unfamiliar vibration against my thigh almost made me jump.
I freed it and peered down at the single word from an unknown number.
“Hey.”
I studied the greeting, knowing exactly who it was just from the fact that every contact my father thought I needed was already saved, business and family. The only person he wouldn’t think to add but had my number was the one person I would have given anything to be with at that moment.
“Hey kitten.”
Her response was immediate, as if she’d already been typing it out.“I don’t want to bother you. Just wanted to see how you were.”It was followed by a smiley face and a cute,“Hi.”
“I fucking miss you,”I wrote only to delete it and say instead,“Just left my parents.”
“Were they excited to see you?”
I felt myself grin at the question as I tapped out a response.“I think so. What are you doing?”
“Unpacking. I think I brought half the sand from the island back with me.”
“Build your own island,”I suggested and set the phone down on the bed, exchanging it for the bag I’d dumped there.
I unearthed the book with its torn cover and examined the pages. Someone had highlighted whole paragraphs with dull, yellow ink. Black pen defaced the edges. Whoever the vandal was had had many opinions about everything, but all I could think about was Kami reading out the words to me in between choked whines as I played with her tight, little body. I had absolutely no idea what the book was about or what she’d even read, but it was now my favorite book in the whole world.
“Do you think the building owner would appreciate that?”said her text when I picked up the phone again.
“I know the guy. I’ll put in a good word.”
I could almost hear her laugh when she replied,“Thanks.”
I tucked the book into my back pocket and adjusted my blazer overtop. My phone was immediately back in my hand. She hadn’t said anything else, and I wasn’t ready to let the conversation go.
“What’s the plan after you finish building your island?”
I probably should have let her go, let her finish doing what she was doing. We weren’t at the lodge anymore and things couldn’t be the same. We couldn’t be the same. But I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t bring myself to end it the way I knew was necessary.
“I’m going to finish unpacking and take a shower before getting ready for dinner.”
