I walk past Decadence. It’s called Juna’s now. It’s still a coffee place, but it’s not dark and moody and perfect anymore. It’s all yellow tile and big windows.
I get a cup of tea from the bakery across the way, from the little lady with the long white braids. She doesn’t recognize me. She sees kids come and go over and over. I’m just another face.
I sit outside on a bench and watch people, looking for faces I recognize. I see all the same types, but not the same people. It’s the next crop of college kids. The faces who fill in for the ones who have left. I know it’s ridiculous to look for who I’m looking for, but I have a flash of a perfect happy ending in my head. Of Adam and me raising Max together, making pancakes for him in the morning. And then the more I think of it, the less it feels like our ending. That’s not the life I want for Max, those lies I’d still have to tell.
Adam was my port in the storm and maybe I was his. It’s easy to fall in love with someone when you need them, but that doesn’t make it real or right. I don’t think how we were in our time together is how we’d always be. There’s a way you hold yourself in when love and need get tangled. It’s hard to know what would last and what would wear too thin to keep.
I hope the thing Adam remembers about me isn’t the part where I left. I hope what he remembers is that for a moment we shared a bright little corner of life. That’s how I will choose to remember him. But I want to believe that love can exist on its own. I want Max to believe that too.
I stop looking for Adam and I just look. Watch the wind scrape dry leaves across the concrete and the way the light comes through the bare tree branches. I watch this guy with a wiry red beard, sitting at a table by the window at Juna’s, reading a battered paperback, chewing on his bottom lip. And then I see Carly, through the window. Her hair is long now, black and past her shoulder blades. She’s wearing a blue dress and she has a big green tattoo winding its way up her arm into her sleeve. I can’t tell what it is. A snake, maybe. A vine. She looks like a mermaid or a superhero or a warrior. She looks beautiful. She pours coffee for the paperback guy. He says something to her. She throws her head back and laughs a real laugh. The kind you can’t fake. And I love that she looks so happy, so different and new. Like maybe she doesn’t hurt the way she used to. Maybe I don’t have to either.
I walk back toward my car. On the way, I stop in Woolworth’s and buy a big envelope, the yellow kind with the metal clip to close it.
When I get in my car, I carefully strip the lining of my guitar case and shove all my letters in the envelope. The thin metal clip scrapes at the calluses on the tips of my fingers as I press it closed.
I scribble Carly in bumpy letters on the top with an old marker so spent I have to lick the felt to get it to write anything. I lock up my car and walk back to The Commons. There’s a crack in the bottom of one of my boots. A click when I step with my right foot. I’m not sure if I can hear it or I’m just feeling it, the way the broken rubber sticks to itself and breaks apart every time my foot flexes.
* * *
I sit on the bench again and watch Carly ring up customers at the register until she walks away and I can’t see her through the window anymore. I get up and walk closer and I still can’t see her. She must be in back. Hopefully it’s a smoke break and I have time. I want to run, make it quick, but I figure it’s better to walk in. Not call attention to myself. I don’t think I can run anyway.
The bell on the door may as well be a siren. Part of me wants her to catch me. The rest of me doesn’t want to hurt anyone anymore. I don’t want to impose on the life she has now. I just want her to know that even though I left, I never stopped thinking about her. I just want her to know what happened.
I place the envelope on the counter near the register and walk away before anyone comes out of the kitchen to try to take my order. I walk out the door and the bell rings again. It’s all there. I’ve left it. Everything. The paperback guy watches me, still chewing at his bottom lip as I walk past the window.
— Chapter 68 —
The campground is closed for the season. I park my car off the road down the street and drag a blanket and my guitar around the gate. I can barely walk. It’s more of a waddle and all the muscles in my back ache. But I make it to the right place and build a fire with twigs and left-behind wood. I play Dylan songs to the lake, even though my belly makes me hold the guitar funny and my singing is breathy because my lungs don’t have enough room anymore. One song after another. My fingers throb and my throat is raw. Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right bleeds to All Along the Watchtower and runs into Tangled Up in Blue.