Funny Story(31)

“So maybe it’s immature and stupid. But it does make me feel a little better, to think that maybe she’ll see these pictures and remember that, even if she’s not overall an asshole, she was the asshole in this scenario, and she didn’t appreciate you, and she should have. Even if all that meant was letting you go before telling my boyfriend she was in love with him, instead of keeping you on the back burner in case Peter turned her down.

“It makes me feel a teensy, tiny bit better to think she could see a picture of me sitting in your lap and staring adoringly at you and remember that you deserved that all along.”

His smile unzips slowly, from one side of his mouth. After a long moment, he leans forward and presses a kiss to my temple. “Thank you,” he says, arms tightening around me.

My body warms as if I’d cannonballed into a heated pool. “It’s just the truth.” I turn my eyes to the water, my blood humming with nervous energy.

We’re done taking pictures, but neither of us moves. It feels too good, to be wrapped in someone’s arms, protected from the wind and listening to the lake’s easy rhythm, feeling Miles’s breath move through him until mine syncs up without even trying.

“This is nice,” I say, sort of dreamily and entirely unintentionally. The few times I’ve smoked weed, this has always been the primary effect: a feeling that the cord between my brain and mouth has been snipped, and I have no control over what I’m saying.

Miles nods against the side of my head. “It is,” he agrees.

“Miles,” I say.

“Hm?”

I—and the weed—tell him, “I think you might be the nicest person I’ve ever met.”

“I’m not being nice when I tell you not to move away,” he says. “I like hanging out with you. And you’re the best roommate I’ve ever had by a landslide.”

“You mean I’m clean,” I say.

“Learn to take a compliment,” he says.

“See?” I say.

“See what?” he asks.

I turn to look at him. “Even when you try to be mean, you’re nice.”

His eyes seem to spark when he smiles. “I’ll try harder.”

We go back to sitting there, touching, watching bonfires dance and the water roll.





10




SATURDAY, JUNE 1ST

77 DAYS UNTIL I CAN LEAVE





Miles and I pass the next week without so much as brushing shoulders in the kitchen.

I don’t think either of us is actively avoiding the other—it’s more like, we both suddenly remember we don’t know each other and have nothing in common beyond our hilariously bad breakups. We’re back in the territory of polite nods, separate dinners, and conversation made via monosyllable.

When we got home, he made a big show of scribbling WANING BAY TOURISM on the calendar, drawing an arrow down the Sunday column, but since then, he hasn’t added anything else.

By the time my Saturday morning shift rolls around, I’m convinced that his adamancy about showing me around was a by-product of the joint we shared.

I’m out the door before he’s even up, the sun and birds out full force, though the air remains crisp. I’m early, as usual, so I decide to walk to work and even stop in at a whitewashed coffee shop overflowing with hanging plants to grab a hot chai.

It’s strange; I’ve driven this way dozens of times, but on foot, I notice new things:

A Tudor house with a lush flower garden and a wooden sign advertising it as a Montessori school. A hobby shop called High Flyers, whose theme seems to be a mix of kites and THC. Then I turn down a residential street, reading the yard signs as I go: one about Bigfoot, another promoting an upcoming arts fair, then a crooked For Sale sign in the shaggy, overgrown lawn of a taffy-green bungalow.

Its white picket fence is in disrepair, some slats entirely missing, and its diamond-paned windows are crawling with ivy. It looks like something from a storybook: magical and cozy, yet somehow wild, mysterious in that irresistible way of fairy-tale houses.

At work, I help Harvey swap out the programming corkboard for the week. Waning Bay Public Library is a small enough operation that it’s usually all hands on deck. You do whatever needs doing, regardless of job title.

While pinning a flyer for Build Your Own Terrarium Night, Harvey says, “You’ve been in brighter spirits this week.”

He bears more than a passing resemblance to Morgan Freeman, and his voice, although raspier and not quite so low, has the same kind of gravitas. It’s a voice that makes you want to do him proud.

“Sorry,” I say quickly. “I’ll be better. About not bringing all of that into work.”

Harvey harrumphs, pushes his gold wire-frame glasses up his nose. “It’s a library, Daphne. If you can’t be a human here, where can you?”

At his kindness, I feel a sting of guilt about my job search. About knowing there’s a technical services librarian position open in Oklahoma, a place I know nothing about that can’t be learned from the musical Oklahoma!

“We’re lucky to have you,” Harvey goes on, hanging the sign-up sheet for Friday’s Dungeons & Dragons tournament. “Just keep bringing your whole heart in for those kids. That’s all.”

The sting redoubles.