Avery listened to me, her dark eyes warm, but reached to squeeze my hand when I’d finished talking. “Sorry, Ben. My dad won’t work that way.”
I nodded and thanked her, then left the shop. That night I stayed out late, alone. It wasn’t like me, but I didn’t tell my mom where I was going and refused to answer any of her texts when she tried contacting me. Instead I walked through the woods to the empty cliffs above the Eel River. In good years, when the water ran high, people would party there, diving from those cliffs to knife the glassy surface below. But the cliffs were empty. The water hadn’t been high for a long time.
I sat and watched the moon, the starry vastness of the sky. I was lonely, I suppose. But I wasn’t thinking of my girlfriend and all the ways I missed her. I was thinking of my mom. Of a fox caught in her headlights. My father had abandoned us both when I was two, never to return, and now she’d crashed our car on the only road heading out of town.
Where had she been going without me?
3.
ROSE WAS RIGHT, by the way. Things were different when she got back. At first I thought it was me. I got food poisoning the night before she returned and missed her texts when she landed at San Francisco International the following morning. I saw them when I crawled out of bed to call in sick to work around noon. Figuring the last thing she’d want to hear about was how I’d spent the last twelve hours unable to eat, writhing in pain, running to the bathroom, and praying I got my pants down in time, I texted back: Can’t wait to see you.
Her response: Dinner tonight at ERI. 8 pm. Dress nice.
I felt like trash, but ERI was the Eel River Inn and dress nice meant we’d be eating in the inn’s restaurant with her parents. So I wrote: I’ll be there.
—
There’s this mood I can get into sometimes. It’s hard to explain, but it can strike after a bout of sickness or hours spent dozing in the heat; after jacking off too many times in one day or staying up too late to watch the sunrise. I don’t know how to describe it other than to say I feel sort of dead—faded, really, or reduced, like there’s less of me or I’m not as much of myself. It’s as if I’ve forgotten who I am or who I’m meant to be or if I’m really even anything or anyone at all.
That was the way I felt walking across town that August night. It was ten to eight, the bottoms of my feet hurt, and I was sweating like crazy in my dress shirt and tie. The air was dog-day hot—it reeked of far-off fires—but the corners of the sky had begun to darken. A betrayal of sorts: summer days growing shorter as if they’d lost their will.
It’s Rose, I told myself, trying to snap out of my apathy. You’re going to see her. Finally. And I wanted to see her, I did. But something was wrong. Despite six weeks of loneliness, there was no spark of desire. Not in my gut, my heart. Not anywhere. It was as if that part of me had vanished, and now I was going through the motions of seeing my girlfriend because that’s what I was supposed to do.
I chalked it up to illness, my mood, the god-awful heat, and fingered the box rattling around in the pocket of my pants. It was a gift I’d gotten for Rose while she was gone—a vintage pair of pink-stone earrings I’d found in one of the local antique shops. The store owner had traded them for an old driftwood side table my lost artist father had made and left behind.
I really had missed her.
That’s what I told myself, anyway.
I reached the inn at last—a rambling three-story Victorian on the outskirts of town and set on eight acres of redwood groves and fern-lined trails. The renowned on-site restaurant resided in what had originally been the carriage house. Apparently it had even earned a Michelin star back in the eighties, but like most good things in Teyber, that star was long gone.
Shoulders hunched, I made my way down the pea-gravel drive toward the dining entrance. My legs were tired and everything smelled like lilies. I was late already—I should’ve left earlier—and that meant everyone would be waiting for me, and that meant Rose would be disappointed before she even laid eyes on my sweat stains. But there was nothing I could do to fix any of that.
The front porch light was on. I walked up the steps and opened the door.
—
After cruising the length of the half-empty restaurant, I found Rose seated at a table by the fireplace, which roared and crackled every night of the year, no matter the season. No matter the heat. Her hair was longer, prettier, and she wore a black tank top and jeans. My stomach started hurting again at the sight of her, although I couldn’t have said why.
“You look pale,” she said after I kissed her cheek.
“I’ve been sick,” I told her.
“Migraine?”
“Food poisoning, I think.”
“That happens,” she said.
I nodded. It did, didn’t it? I wanted to say something about her, something good. But the truth was, if I looked pale, she looked . . . exhausted? That wasn’t the word, not quite, but she didn’t look how I remembered her. She didn’t look like Rose.
“Where’s your family?” I asked, sliding into the chair across from her. The table was set for two.
“It’s just us tonight.”
“It is?” I glanced down at my clothes. The ones I’d dressed nice in.
Rose lifted an eyebrow. “Isn’t it better this way?”
“I missed you,” I said quickly.
She stared at me. She stared for a long time without saying anything. Rose had returned tan, despite the whole winter thing, but she had raccoon rings around her eyes from her sunglasses. Or something. I loosened my tie and shifted around under the weight of her gaze. Calculated the distance to the bathroom.
“That color looks good on you,” Rose offered, nodding at my shirt, right as I reached to unbutton my collar.
I paused mid-fumble, trying to discern what it was she wanted from me. When no further commentary came, I left the button alone.
“I missed you, too,” she said finally, like she’d just figured it out. “Tell me about your summer.”
We spent the next hour engaged in the type of stilted conversation that happens between old acquaintances or new strangers. I told Rose about my mother’s car accident and how I’d picked up extra hours at the market in order to get it fixed. Rose told me about Peru, but it was clear she didn’t want to. Her descriptions were superficial: what food she ate and the weight she gained and how much she hated spending time with her two teenage cousins. She didn’t once mention her brother.
“But I thought you liked them,” I said, referring to the cousins.
Rose waved a hand. “Those idiots want to come here for college. Have you ever heard anything so stupid?”
“You mean to the States?” I was confused. “Aren’t you going to college here?”
“But I have to. It’s not like I have a choice.”
I took a sip of ice water. Rose had always been excited about college. Had her heart set on Stanford, in all its Left Coast glory. She also knew my choice was not getting to go at all. “I’m going to be working with the orienteering club this fall,” I said.