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“I’m good,” she says. She pulls out her phone when we stop at a red light, frowning at the screen, then frowning harder before she shuts the phone off again and shoves it into her bag.
“Everything alright?” I ask. She nods. Then, before I can suggest ice cream, or a movie, or any excuse to extend our evening, she says, “I talked to Audrey.”
I flick on the turn signal, the clicking like a clock. “About what?” I ask, while I try to remember if Audrey is the colleague she admires or the one who’d beat themselves with their sawed-off arm to avoid working with her.
She snorts. “We mostly just sniped at each other,” she says quickly. “But I don’t know. I guess we ended things on...steadier ground?”
“Oh. That’s great. Right? What did she say?”
Lulu is silent.
I glance over at her as I slow down to turn onto her parents’ road.
“A lot.” She sounds hesitant, a bit nervous. “I don’t think she trusts me yet.”
I don’t know much about academia but it’s never struck me as the type of career where you have to actively watch your back. “Why wouldn’t she trust you?”
Lulu winces. “My dad helped me get my job,” she says. “It’s one of the reasons I’ve been feeling so isolated at work. I’m trying to prove to them that they can trust me after that but Dad can be...overly helpful at times.”
“I get that. Between Pop and Dad it was a foregone conclusion I’d be a firefighter, but it was hard at first, for vets and rookies to trust that I had their back. I had opportunities that others didn’t.”
“But they trusted you in the end, right? Marcus and...” She points to just below her nose. “The guy with the mustache. They genuinely miss you.”
“Buck.” I laugh. “Yeah. They did. They do. It’s different, though. When you’re about to go into a fire together all that really matters is knowing that the person beside you has your back.”
Marcus has texted once or twice since we saw each other at the grocery store. I wish I could say I’ve kept my promise to him, but at least I haven’t left him on read. I’m avoidant but notthatavoidant. I’ve actually been busy. I’ve been saying yes, to Lulu, to George, to Betty, to Trey.
“Have you finished the history book you were reading?” she asks. “About witches?”
“Yes.”
“And?” She’s so excited, eager for me to love the things she loves.
“It was easy for me to understand?” I say, perhaps unhelpfully.
“How so?” She sounds hopeful.
“Like...” I pull into her driveway and the shocks on the Bronco don’t do their job as we bump toward the farmhouse. “It was boring at first but it made a lot more sense than that Derrida guy.”
“I...what?” She shakes her head. “You’re reading Derrida?”
I scratch the back of my neck. “That...philosopher guy you mentioned at the grocery store? I thought I’d read his work.”
She shoves me. “And?” I underestimated Lulu’s potential excitement level, which was my bad.
I shrug and rub my shoulder. The philosopher’s theory is...confusing. “I flew through the history of witchcraft book. It was actually, like, interesting.”
She hums. “Derrida is interesting.”
“I believe you. I know he’s supposed to be interesting. I just have to have my dictionary next to me so I can look up every other word. I’m definitely going to have to renew the library book before I’m finished reading it,” I admit.
She throws her head back and laughs. The sun is almost down and the light is orange and pink and Lulu is vibrant, her hair a bit wild and her skin glowing and warm. “I have some copies you can borrow. They’re in my house.” She hops out and doesn’t look back. So I follow her. As if there was any other option.
“Have a seat,” Lulu says over her shoulder as her front door closes behind us. The only place to sit is the bed. I perch my body on the edge of it before she can notice that I’ve been staring at it for too many seconds.
Her kitchen is in the corner of the room, small and clean with a tiny apartment stove and mini-fridge. The rest of the space is devoted to her bed—covered in a white bedspread with blue flowers—and books, so many books. Three stacked on the bedside table, piled beneath the small desk pushed up against the wall beside the door. A paperback laid flat on one of her pillows. Some as old as the farmhouse, some with a white tag on the spine from the university library. She already holds two in her hands but keeps browsing the bookshelf across from her bed. “Do you want something to drink?” she asks absently.
I clear my throat, suddenly parched. “No thanks.”
