We fall into an old rhythm without even trying. Over a bottle ofwine, we trade stories that aren’t new but still make us laugh, the kind of inside jokes that survived college, marriages, cross-country moves. Time is an accordion compressed, and we are seventeen again.
Then she taps her phone to check the time. “Oh, gosh, I better skedaddle. Lots to do to get ready for tomorrow.” She pulls some cash from her crossbody purse, lays it on the table, then stands and gives me another kiss on the cheek. “I’ll see you bright and early, girlie. We start at 9AM, sharp.”
“See you then,” I say.
And, just like that, she’s gone, and I’m left alone, the soft white light of the chandelier now a spotlight. Without Kennedy Claire as my shield, I’m feeling the eyes of the room on me again. Exposed and stripped down to my bare skin, a dead body on an examination table.
I flag the waitress for the check, but instead, she sets down a cocktail, frothy with grapefruit and charred rosemary.
“From the gentleman at the bar,” she says.
I follow her glance. A man I don’t know is staring right at me. He’s handsome, with sandy-colored hair and a strong jaw, and far too young for me. He looks to be in his mid- to late twenties. He smiles, a warm, mischievous grin that dimples one cheek, like we’re in on the same joke. I wonder if he’s been watching me this whole time, as I laughed with Kennedy Claire, as I swept my long, dark hair over one shoulder. I guess he liked what he saw.
And something about a man that good-looking seeing me, wanting me—it sends a surprise of butterflies through my abdomen.
Then an alarm goes off on my phone, a rising scale of electronic bells. I don’t need to look to know it’s my spontaneity alert, but I do,YOLOflashing on the screen, a silly phrase for a silly practice.
I want you to practice spontaneity, Sheryl said once at the end of a session. I like that Sheryl gives me homework. So, I started scheduling in a spot for spontaneity on my calendar. “Scheduled spontaneity” is ludicrous, I know. But there is something intoxicatingabout the practice. About asking myself: What do you want? Right now, in this moment, what do you want, Ingrid?
I even randomize it, so I don’t know the day or time each week when my phone will send an alert, and I have to do something unplanned.
The first time it went off, I took an hour-long bubble bath on a Tuesday night. That’s how it started in the beginning, with self-care. But over time, the guardrails came off. I threw out the salad I’d prepped for lunch and got Taco Bell instead. I popped into the corner store, bought a pack of cigarettes, which I hadn’t smoked since I was seventeen, took a few drags and tossed the rest. That nicotine buzz kept me floating high all morning long.
I silence the alarm.
When I look back at the bar, the young man is up from his seat. He’s taller than I realized, and he’s already halfway to my table.
CHAPTER SIXTEENMELANIE
Before I’ve even put the van in park, Waylon is out the front door. His blue work shirt is only half tucked in, his hand large enough to hold both the Igloo cooler with his dinner inside and a large metal thermos of coffee. They swing at his side as he marches down the drive. He looks tired. We’re down to one car. The other’s still broken down in the driveway.
“Sorry I’m late. I stopped by to say hi to Cat and ended up in traffic.” There never used to be any such thing as traffic in Anhalt. You could get clear from one side to the other in ten minutes. When I say I’m sorry, I mean it. I hate being a burden on anyone. I hate that any part of me might make his evening worse.
“Yeah,” is all Waylon says, taking the keys from me and turning his back.
Frustration knits tight in my chest, because all I want is a little reassurance.
“Is everything all right?” I ask, touching his shoulder as he’s tossing his Igloo onto the passenger seat.
“Just going to work, Mel.”
I chew my bottom lip, hating when he gets in these grumpy moods. I want him to turn around and pull me into one of his big bear hugs, kiss the top of my head, and tell me not to worry about anything. Maybe thank me for one of the hundreds of things I’ve done for him, for this family—washing the work shirt he hason now, picking up Nathan’s allergy medicine, tracking down the lunchbox Levi lost again, and reminding everyone about dentist appointments and spirit days and overdue library books. But if I keep pushing it, he’ll get frustrated right back at me, saying that I should already know he appreciates me.
Then he’d go off to work and never give the exchange a second thought. Meanwhile, I’d stew on it all night, slamming drawers while I made the kids supper, playing out whole arguments with Waylon in my head. But then the better half of me would be wallowing in guilt—thinking about how he’s only grumpy because he’s tired, that he’s only tired because he works so hard to put a roof over our heads—my stomach sick with the urge to call or text him an apology, to be told the thing I crave the most from every single person in the world:I’m not upset with you. That I am a good person.
So I try a different tactic. I slide my hand from his shoulder up to the back of his neck. “How about I sleep in that big T-shirt you like? You can wake me up when you get home.”
That gets him turning my way. He grabs me by the waist and pulls me in. “Oh, yeah?” It’s funny how quickly people’s demeanors change when they get what they want.
I reach up on my tiptoes and give him a kiss, his whiskers rough on my face, and then Waylon is off. I hear Barney at the door barking for me already. They say dogs love you unconditionally, but I went and ruined that too, sneaking him bacon in the mornings before work. Now I’ll never know if it’s me he loves or what I have to offer.
There’s a package at the door from Amazon marked to Hannah. She opened her own account after getting that job up at Smoothie Palace, which I wasn’t a fan of. It makes me think she’s being sneaky, buying things she doesn’t want me knowing about. I reach down to pick it up so I can bring it inside for her, but it rattles when I lift it, and it’s like someone has reached into my ribs and wrung my heart out like a dirty sponge. I squeeze the package, my hand gripping round the shape of a pill bottle.
I’m tearing the envelope just as the door swings open. Hannah steps out, looking nothing like herself, her auburn hair twisting into corkscrews that glimmer in the porch light. When she was a kid, Hannah never would sit still long enough for me to fix her hair. She always had better things to be doing, jumping on the trampoline or riding her bike down the street, so I let her, let her be wild and free.
She sees the open envelope, sees the pill bottle in my hand, and her face fills with embarrassment, but she’s quick to mask it with anger. “Mom, what the fuck?”
Barney runs out, circling my feet and jumping up to scratch at my calves.