“I’m sorry I haven’t been out more since you bought the house.”
She shrugged. “That’s okay. You’ve been busy, you’re working, and I’ve made it to where you are a handful of times, so I get it.”
“Do you miss it?”
“My house? I do. I have the kitchen how I want it, I have the yard how I want it, I have everything where I want it. And not for nothing, I don’t live around five hundred boxes of somebody else’s stuff.”
“Would you ever come back here?” Ryan looked over at her. “It seems like you’re having fun seeing Nick.”
She shook her head. “I told him I’m going home when this is over. I think he sees me here, he sees me in Dot’s house. He envisions it, maybe. Or he did, for a second.” She sighed. “I don’t know. We like each other. But we always liked each other.”
* * *
—
They’d been lying on their backs, on a blanket in the grass at Cobble Creek Park, talking about fall break, when she finally stopped rehearsing it in her head and just said, “I think we have to break up.” It was fast after that; she didn’t even say most of what she’d planned. She just got it over with. She had said she wanted to be friends—a hedge against a bone-deep terror at the thought of not talking to him practically every day. She didn’t know at twenty that being friends was going to be impossible. He took her home. In the car outside her house, she asked if he wanted his hoodie back and his books. He said he guessed so, and two days later, she left them in a box on his porch when she knew he was at work.
They bumped into each other twice between that day and the day she went back to school, and both times they didn’t talk, and both times, she came home after and went straight to bed and didn’t come out of her room, even though the first time, it was three in the afternoon.
* * *
—
“We’re here,” she said to Ryan, pointing to a white church with a signboard out front that said POP-UP ANTIQUES EVENT!!! and, under that, TRUST IN GOD, AND NOT JUST ON SUNDAYS. There were cars parked on both sides of the street while tables, some of them with tents protecting them from the sun, ringed the parking lot. She parked a couple blocks down, and when she turned off the car, she faced her brother. “Remember, you don’t have to be fancy. Ideally, we’re going to get in and get out of this today. Don’t make it more complicated than it has to be. Don’t tell him anything he doesn’t ask. This is only going to work if it’s fast.”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ve got you.”
“You still don’t know what Matt gave him. You’re going to have to think on your feet a little.”
“Listen, whatever Garbage Dude came up with, I’m ready to deal with it.”
“And you have the paper?”
“In my back pocket,” he said. “Don’t worry.” He tucked his Bluetooth earpiece into his ear and slipped on his Red Sox hat. “I’ll call you. Give me two minutes, then you can follow.”
“Good luck,” she said. “And thank you.”
He grinned. “You’re welcome. We never get to have fun together anymore.”
Laurie watched as Ryan went up the sidewalk and then ambled into the parking lot. He started to look at one of the tables, and then she saw him take out his phone and step away, looking down like he was texting. Her phone lit up with his picture, and she answered. “Hello, Snoopy to Pop Tart,” he said. “This is Snoopy to Pop Tart, come in Pop Tart,” he said quietly.
“Okay, settle down,” she said. “I’m coming over.”
It was hot, and June had confirmed her sundress was very Instagram Mom. She slid the huge tortoiseshell sunglasses on, but she had to step out of the car before she could add the enormous hat. With the tote over her left forearm and the rhinestone water bottle in her right hand, she started toward the parking lot.
“Antiques” did not mean only “antiques,” it turned out. Or, at least, not what she would have considered antiques. There were not one but two entire tables of trading cards, one of which was exclusively basketball, and one guy had boxes and boxes of old magazines. As Laurie passed his table, he unloaded five years of National Geographic to a guy in khaki shorts, a black Metallica shirt, and a cowboy hat. She was hyper-casually eyeballing a display of vinyl records when she heard Ryan’s voice in her earbuds.
“Hey, good morning,” he said. “How’s it going?”