The picture he took is still onscreen. I’m midword, my lips practically on his face, and he’s smiling, a slew of his disjointed sailor-style forearm tattoos draped across my chest in an easy yet vaguely suggestive way.
We look very much like a couple, if you ignore the fact that we also look like two people who’d have exactly nothing in common. Then again, I guess that’s how straitlaced Peter and free-spirited Petra look side by side.
It’s just that Petra wears the aesthetic like an edgy pop starlet, and Miles looks kind of like the guy from high school who intentionally failed his senior year to stick around for a while, then started selling bootleg cologne out of the trunk of his car in the mall parking lot.
Not that I look much better. There’s a smear of avocado on my chin.
“What am I supposed to do with this,” I say.
“Whatever you want.” Miles crumples the paper sandwich sheath and tosses it into the trash.
“Meaning?”
“Daphne.” He slumps forward on his elbows, raking a hand up through his hair. It stays put, defying gravity. His beard is likewise sticking out in dark tufts like he’s a bedraggled and hungover young Wolverine. “You know what I’m getting at.”
“You want me to post this so he’ll think we’re dating,” I say.
“No,” he says, bemused. “I personally want you to post it so Petra thinks we’re dating.”
“Why can’t you post it,” I say.
“Because I don’t have any social media,” he says.
“Right.” I remember Peter telling me this. I’d been scrolling through Petra’s—frankly, professional-grade influencer—feed and not only was Miles not tagged in any pictures, but his face wasn’t even in any. When I asked Peter about it, he rolled his eyes and said something cranky about Miles being too good for social media.
Just the thought of it now is enough to tip me over the edge.
I don’t write a caption. I just post the picture.
Miles grins and high-fives me.
“Are we evil or just immature?” he says.
“I think maybe just bitter,” I reply. “Hey, thanks for the breakfast sandwich, by the way.”
“Thanks for the pep talk last night,” he says.
“When did that happen?” I ask.
“Halfway through the fourth time we played ‘Witchy Woman,’ ” he says.
A fuzzy memory surfaces, just for a second, before submerging into the wine-and-liquor haze again: standing on a sticky floor, in the glow of a neon sign, holding on to either side of Miles’s face as I enunciated as clearly as I could manage: It’s going to get easier. This time next year, you won’t even remember her name.
If we keep drinking like this, he replied, I’m not sure I’ll even remember my name.
Miles grabs the sriracha, and twists the lid back onto the syrup jar. “I’ve got stuff to do, but if you hear from your ex, tell him I said . . .” He holds up his middle finger.
“If you hear from yours, tell her thanks for the new boyfriend.”
“Gladly,” he says, and turns to go.
6
FRIDAY, MAY 24TH
85 DAYS UNTIL I CAN LEAVE
The following Friday, I’m playing my least favorite kind of Tetris at the reference desk: choosing which fall releases to buy for our branch. Rearranging and reprioritizing them, cutting title after title until the moment the cost dips into our budget.
Every time I go to remove a book, a different face flashes in my mind, the kid or kids I specifically picked the book for.
A superhero picture book for Arham. An early reader about mermaids for eight-year-old Gabby Esteves. A dense upper-YA fantasy that reminded me of the first time I read Philip Pullman, for Maya, the braces-wearing preteen with a Smiths patch on her backpack and a reading level so far above her age that she’s started giving me recommendations. She’s shy enough that it took months to get her to really respond to my attempts at book-related small talk (the only kind I can do). But now she’ll happily chat for forty minutes at a time about books we’ve both read and loved, an informal two-person book club. I’ve been working on convincing her to join one of the teen readers groups, but she’s very politely informed me that she doesn’t like “group activities” and is “more of an independent type.”
Basically, she’s me at twelve years old, if I’d been nine hundred times cooler. Right down to the fact of being the only child of an overworked but lovely single mother with a penchant for eighties British goth rock. During the school year, Maya walks the short distance from the junior high to the library, and her mom picks her up when she finishes her paralegal shift.
The new hardcover fantasy I handpicked for her is the most expensive book on the list, but I can’t bear to cut it. Ordinarily, I talk this kind of thing over with Harvey, the branch manager, but he left early for his youngest daughter’s med school graduation (the other two are already doctors; he’s apparently created an army of high achievers).
Back in the office we all share, the adult librarian, Ashleigh Rahimi, is on the phone, the shut door reducing her words to a flat rumble.
On the desk, my own phone buzzes with a notification from Sadie. My gut rises expectantly, only to plummet when I see that, instead of a message or even a comment, she’s simply Liked my most recent picture.
The one in which I appear to be milliseconds away from licking the side of Miles’s face as he hangs over me, arm latched across my chest.
I tap over to Sadie’s account and instantly regret it. She uses social media as infrequently as I do, which means there, right in the top row of images, three shots back, is a picture of her and Cooper with me and Peter at Chill Coast Brewing on their last visit—beer being the one thing Peter breaks his low-carb diet for.
I personally hate beer. Obviously Petra loves it. She’s a walking fantasy, and I’m a librarian who actually does wear a lot of buttons and tweed.
From behind the office door comes a frustrated shriek-groan. Not an outright scream, but a sound loud enough to cause kids gaming at the computer bay to spin toward the desk in unison.
“It’s fine, everything’s fine!” I tell them with a wave.
Behind me, the door flings open and Ashleigh, five foot nothing with a topknot the size of a melon, storms out. “Never make friends with moms,” she tells me before stomping over to her rolling chair.
“You’re a mom,” I point out.
She whips toward me. “I know!” she cries. “And that means I have basically one night, every two weeks, when I can do something fun with other adults, except all those other adults I used to call are also parents, and in many cases partners. So half the time, the plans fall through because someone’s puking or fell off a trampoline or forgot they have to build a fucking volcano for science class by tomorrow!”
“Ashleigh!” I hiss, jerking my head toward the row of teenage gamers.
She follows my gaze and greets their stares with a blunt, “What?”
They spin back toward their screens.
“I want to get out,” she says. “I want to look hot in public and drink alcohol and talk about something other than Dungeons & Dragons.”
And as she’s saying it, I’m picturing myself at home, alone, watching happy couples shop for or renovate the homes of their dreams on HGTV, just like I did last Friday night, and the Friday night before that, and basically every night since the breakup, barring my drunken MEATLOCKER escapade with Miles.
