Totally and Completely Fine(25)

There were lots of nights I couldn’t sleep.

The bed was just too empty. I missed Spencer’s snoring, and the way he’d sometimes mumbled when he dreamed. How he’d sleep through thunderstorms but always woke up the second Lena cried as a baby.

I’d come downstairs, bleary and cotton-mouthed, to find him bouncing her around in the kitchen, singing made-up songs to her.

Now, every time I came downstairs in the middle of the night, there was no one there. Organizing was an escape. If I couldn’t figure out anything else in my life, at least I knew where the glue gun was. And the Bundt pans. And the duster thing we used to clean off the top of the fans.

“Please tell me you haven’t sorted your buttons by size,” Allyson said, answering herself as she pulled open a drawer labeled buttons. “Oh my god. It’s sorted by color as well.”

I’d done that around midnight a week or so ago. There was something extremely satisfying about the sound that buttons made when they were dropped into their proper place. How it felt to slide your hand through a box of them, lifting and letting them fall through your fingers. Not that I was going to tell Allyson that. I didn’t need to provide any more kindling for this fire.

Maybe she was right to be worried, but we didn’t have time for that now.

“I thought you were going to pick some fabric,” I said. “It’s over there.”

“I know,” Allyson said, finally making her way to the other side of the wall. “It’s very clearly labeled.”

She pulled out a box labeled fabric scraps for pockets and let out a dramatic gasp. I knew what she was looking at. A jumble of fabric pieces without any discernible organization.

“Shut up,” I said. “I haven’t gotten around to that one.”

“There’s hope for you yet,” she said.

I rolled my eyes. “Just pick some fabric,” I said.

As she dug through the bin, I began taking out the side seams on the pretty blue dress she’d found at the charity council shop last week.

“Here.” Allyson put down two different plaid pieces. “How about this?”

“Mismatched pockets,” I said. “How daring.”

“You know me,” she said. “I love making a statement. Quietly. Invisibly.”

I could have easily done the pockets with plain muslin, but there was always something about having a little secret tucked into your clothes.

“Lay your hand here,” I said.

I’d folded each piece of fabric and stacked them on top of each other. Pockets like these weren’t too complicated—all you needed was a basic teardrop shape that I could easily eyeball once I had the sizing right.

Allyson’s hands were petite, but I gave her some extra room anyway. I couldn’t remember a time when I’d wished a pocket was smaller. Once I’d traced the shape with washable ink, I began cutting them out.

“You know the whole lack of pockets thing is because of sexism,” Allyson said.

She’d perched herself on the edge of my sewing table.

“I know,” I said.

She’d told me this before. Multiple times.

“Pockets are important,” she said. “They’re a symbol of freedom.”

“I know,” I said, thinking of Ben’s harp tattoo.

“It’s like with high heels and wire bras and all that stuff,” she said. “All the ways that fashion limits and restricts us.”

“I know,” I said, thinking of how Ben stared at my tits in my black bra.

“And don’t get me started on makeup,” Allyson said.

I looked up from the fabric I was pinning to the dress’s seams.

“You’re wearing lipstick,” I reminded her.

“I know!” she said.

I laughed.

Allyson had moved to Cooper about two years ago from the Bay Area. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would have willingly left such a place, and as it turned out with Allyson, it wasn’t entirely willingly.

“I could actually afford a house here,” she’d told me. “Good thing I moved when I did, because you know it’s going to be impossible in a few years.”

She was only one of many out-of-towners who had come to Montana looking for a cheaper, simpler life. All the while driving up the prices of said life. Luckily, Cooper was still too small of a town for most people.

It wouldn’t last, though.

Nothing did.

Allyson wasn’t here because she was looking for something.

She was here because of her ex.

“He’d never come to Montana in a thousand years,” she’d said. “He’d be lost without Trader Joe’s.”

I knew all about Trader Joe’s—Gabe was also obsessed with it. It seemed like a nice enough store, but we had Costco, which had everything, including but not limited to motor oil and muffins.

Cooper wasn’t a big town, but it had everything I needed.

Mostly.

“You need to get out more,” Allyson said.

She was once again looking at the wall.

“I just got back from Philadelphia,” I reminded her.

“That was months ago,” she said.

“It hasn’t been months,” I said.

She gave me a look.