FULL NOVELXO : Chapter 23
ASIDE FROM THE radio silence about my Ocean City library application, I’m having a streak of uncommonly good luck.
On Sunday, Miles surprised me and (a less than thrilled) Julia with a drive down to a little town called North Bear Shores for a bookstore event with a romance writer Sadie had turned me on to years ago. After the signing, the shop owner and her geology professor wife ended up falling in love with Miles (obviously) and making a donation toward the Read-a-thon.
On Monday, two children’s book authors agreed to send videos for Read-a-thon prizes, while a third offered to do a live video call with the kids.
Tuesday, our monthly Fortnite tournament kicked off with our highest turnout ever, and today, when Maya dropped by the desk to pick up her holds, I’d finally managed to convince her to come to next week’s YA book club.
Mom screams with excitement when I tell her on our call as I walk home.
That or she accidentally drops some free weights close to her toes.
“That’s great, honey,” she says. “I know that kid’s been a tough nut to crack.”
“She’s just so shy. But the other kids in the group are really sweet,” I say. “And a couple are homeschooled, so she’s probably never met them, which could be good. A clean slate.”
“God, once, when you were having a hard time at a new school, I remember asking you if you wanted to be homeschooled,” Mom says.
I snort. “When would you have had time to homeschool me?”
“I wouldn’t have,” she says. “But you were so unhappy at school. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to just rescue you from your misery. Do you remember what you said to me?”
“I never even remember homeschooling being on the table,” I say.
“You said you’d miss your teachers too much.” She bursts into breathless laughter, which turns into a groan of exertion, followed by the clank of weights hitting the floor. “You were shy, but you were brave.”
“I was a little nerd, you can say it,” I say.
“Back then they used to call it ‘a pleasure to have in class,’ ” she tells me.
My phone beeps and I step under an awning. “Hold on a second,” I tell her, blocking the glare to read the screen. “What the hell?”
“Is everything okay?” Mom asks.
“Yep!” I say too brightly.
Everything’s great except that my dad’s trying to call me, and it’s not two weeks after a major holiday, when I’d normally hear from him.
I fire a text his way: Sorry, on the phone.
He replies immediately, an extreme rarity: Gimme a call when you get a sec. Fun news.
Anxiety corkscrews through me. Fun news, in Jason Roberts Speak, is usually: Hey, I’m dating a twenty-six-year-old! (Not for long.)
Or, I made a friend who owns a catamaran, so I’m going out of the country for a while. Send you a postcard when I hit dry land! (He won’t.)
“Daphne?” Mom asks.
“Everything’s fine.” She and Dad aren’t mortal enemies or anything, but she stopped having contact with him pretty much the moment I turned eighteen, and as good as my mom is at empathizing, laughing through the shit storms in life, she’s always gone out of her way to not trash Dad. For my sake, I know, but sometimes I just want her to stop being supermom and just agree with me that he’s the worst. So mostly we just don’t talk about him.
“Well, look,” she says. “I’m happy for you, and I’m proud of you, and I love you.”
“And you have to go?” I autofill.
“I do,” she says. “I’m going to the beach tomorrow with some friends, but talk next week?”
“No problem,” I tell her. “Love you.”
“Love you more,” she says, hanging up before I can argue.
When I pass the taffy-green fairy-tale cottage, the morning glories vining around the picket fence are in full bloom, little birds cheeping from the branches like one more good omen.
On a whim, I check the online listing. The price has recently dropped fifty thousand dollars, but it’s still well beyond my real-life range. Still, it feels good to daydream.
To picture myself in a place like that. Hosting dinners and watching action movies. Grabbing chai from the café up the street and filling vases with fresh-cut lavender. Drinking wine out back with friends during lightning bug season.
I can almost see it. I can almost see a life here.
“It’s your birthday?” I say. “When?”
She groans. “A week from Saturday. Forty-three. And no to big plans. It just so happens to fall on the weekend Mulder and I get back from visiting my mom in Sedona, so he’ll be at his dad’s place, and I’ll be at home rotting my brain to the tune of Bravo reality TV.”
“Why would you be home?” I say. “We should do something.”
Around her cigar, Lenore says, “You’re not gonna win this battle.”
“I’ve always hated my birthday,” Ashleigh explains. “It’s just one more reminder of how little progress I’ve made. I’m in exactly the same spot I was this time last year. Looking at the same four walls in the same house in the same town, only minus a husband.”
“Oh, sweetie, that’s not true at all!” Barb pipes in. “You left a stagnant marriage. You started therapy. You got Mulder through a tough year, and now you’ve brought Daphne into our little circle!”
“And it’s not a day to celebrate progress, anyway,” I insist. “It’s a day to celebrate existence. We have to do something.”
“Aren’t the roles a bit reversed here?” Her brow arches. “I’m the fun, take-charge one.”
“You are,” I agree. “But you can’t Ashleigh yourself, so someone else has to.”
“I don’t want to go out.” She sticks out her bottom lip.
“Then we won’t go out,” I relent. “What if I come over and we paint?”
Her face scrunches, an expression akin to disgust. “Like Bob Ross landscapes?”
“Like a room,” I say. “In your house. You said Duke never wanted you to, right? And you’re tired of looking at the same four walls. So pick a wall color, and I’ll come help paint.”
“I’m terrible at painting,” she says. “I get too impatient and fuck up the ‘cut-in.’ ”
“Well, you’re in luck, because I’m amazing at the cut-in,” I say.
She snorts. “You would be.”
“I’m not insulted by that,” I tell her.
She considers for a beat. “So you’ll come do all the hard parts, and I’ll pour the wine, while we watch the housewives throw drinks and scream ‘just own it’ at each other?”
“Sure,” I say. “Anyone else want in?”
Lenore guffaws. “I’m good, but you girls enjoy yourselves.” Harvey and Barb nod agreement.
“Okay, Vincent,” Ashleigh says after a moment of consideration. “Saturday night after next. I’ll pick a color. You wear your adorable friendship-montage overalls.”
“I don’t have those,” I say.
“Well, you’ve got all week.”
“I know a great farm supply store,” Barb offers helpfully.
“Now, can we please get to the cards?” Harvey says. “I’m feeling lucky tonight.”
And he is pretty lucky that night. He wins six hands.
I win the game.
I still wake up at seven, even without an alarm, and decide to ease into my day reading and sipping iced tea at one of Fika’s sidewalk tables. On a whim, I order matcha and like it more than I expected, but still decide to go back in for my usual before walking home.
The thoroughly facial-pierced barista looks up and calls brightly, “You’re back!”
“I am,” I say.
“Another matcha?” he says. “Or iced chai with milk?”
“Chai, please,” I say. “Plus an iced miel, and an iced hazelnut latte.”
“Big day?” he teases.
“For my roommates,” I say.
“Got it.” He’s scribbling my name on all three cups, without asking for it. I feel an embarrassing amount of pride at having become a regular someplace new, on my own.
“How much do I owe you?” I ask when he brings the finished drinks to me.
“On the house today,” he says.
“What? Are you sure?” I ask.
He looks around, then leans in. “My manager isn’t here, there’s no one in line behind you to demand their own free drinks, and you’re a good tipper. I’m sure.”
“Well, thanks.” I stuff the ten-dollar bill in my hand—part of last Wednesday night’s winnings—into the jar.
“Jonah,” he puts in, without me asking.
“Thanks, Jonah,” I say.
He beams. “Have a good day, Daphne.”
On my walk home, my dad tries to call me and I accidentally hang up. I forgot to call him back last week, which isn’t like me. But it’s not like him to call me, period.
At this point, we’re sustaining more of a casual texts every few months kind of relationship.
At a stoplight, I text him: Sorry, can I call you back in just a few? I’m terrible at multitasking even when the two tasks at hand aren’t as demanding as (a) navigating small talk with my semiestranged father and (b) navigating crowds of ice-cream-sandwich-carrying out-of-towners zigzagging in every direction.
No need, Dad replies. Just wanted to confirm the address your mom gave me.
So he’s mailing me something. Right when I’ve finally started clearing out the wedding junk.
If this surprise package is anything like Dad’s last few, I can look forward to an intriguing assortment of miracle-cure vitamins, essential oils, and weed gummies I did not ask for and likely are an actual crime to mail. For good measure, sometimes he throws in something vaguely nostalgic but ultimately misguided. Like a yellow snow hat he found in his attic and is convinced belonged to me as a kid.
In that case, I so thoroughly did not recognize the hat that the only logical explanation was: it belonged to whoever owned the house before Dad, and since he could only afford the place due to the fact that a violent crime had been committed there, you’d better believe that hat went straight into the trash.
I did, however, briefly burn the sage he sent me, in the general vicinity of the trash can, before tossing it in after the snow cap. I figure we reached net-zero on that particular “gift.”
Inside our apartment building, I check my phone again. The address Dad sent for confirmation is, in fact, Miles’s place. Still, I dial his number as I’m trudging upstairs, determined to talk him out of sending me anything.
The call rings out. I try once more. A message prompts me to leave a voice mail as I reach our door.
After the beep, I say, “Hey, Dad.” My key jams in the lock, and it takes some wiggling to get it to turn. “Sorry I missed you. Just give me a call back when—”
The door swings open.
I don’t open it.
Someone on the other side does.
A middle-aged woman with a 1960s-esque beehive and cleavage to her chin.
She looks every bit as surprised to see me coming into my apartment as I am to see her already standing inside it.
“Daphne!” she shouts, with pure ecstasy.
“Hiiii,” I say, trying furiously to place her and getting nowhere.
My dad steps out of the kitchen, into view, slipping one hand over the woman’s shoulder. “Hey, kid,” he says. “Surprise!”