“You good to lock up?” she asks now, while texting. Another thing about Ashleigh: she’s always late, and usually leaves a bit early. “I have to pick up Mulder from tae kwon do,” she says.
Yes, her son is named after David Duchovny’s character from The X-Files.
Yes, every time I remember this, I inch closer to death.
I’m now old enough to have kids without anyone being scandalized by it.
Hell, I’m old enough to have a daughter named Renesmee on one of those U-5 soccer teams where the kids take turns kicking the ball the wrong way, then sitting down midfield to take off their shoes.
Instead, I’m single and unattached in a place where I only know my coworkers and my ex-fiancé’s inner circle.
“Daphne?” Ashleigh says. “You good?”
“Yep,” I tell her. “You go ahead.”
She nods in lieu of a goodbye. I circle the library one last time, flicking off the fluorescents as I go.
On the drive home, I call my mom on speakerphone. With how busy she is with CrossFit, her book club, and the stained-glass class she’s started taking, we’ve started opting for more, quicker calls these days, rather than twice-a-month hours-long catch-ups.
I tell her about how things are shaping up with planning the library’s end-of-summer fundraiser (ninety-one days to go). She tells me she can now deadlift one hundred and sixty pounds. I tell her about the seventy-year-old patron who asked me to go salsa dancing, and she tells me about the twenty-eight-year-old trainer who keeps trying to find reasons to exchange phone numbers.
“We lead such similar lives,” I muse, parking on the curb.
“I wish. I don’t think Kelvin had salsa dancing in mind or I might’ve said yes,” she says.
“Well, I’m happy to pass along this guy’s number to you, but you should know my coworker Ashleigh calls him Handsy Stanley.”
“You know what, I’m good,” she says. “And I’m also sending you pepper spray.”
“I still have the can you got me in college,” I say. “Unless it expires.”
“Probably just gets better with age,” she says. “I’m almost to book club. What about you?”
I open my car door. “Just got home. Same time Monday?”
“Sounds good,” she says.
“Love you,” I tell her.
“Love you more,” she says quickly, then hangs up before I can argue, a bit she’s done as long as I can remember.
Miles lives on the third floor of a renovated brick warehouse at the edge of Waning Bay, in a neighborhood called Butcher Town. I assume it used to be the city’s meatpacking district, but I’ve never Googled it, so I don’t know, maybe it’s named after an old-timey serial killer.
By the time I climb the stairs and reach the front door, I’m clammy with sweat, and inside I drop my tote and wrestle out of my cardigan before toeing off my loafers. Then I check my phone calendar against the whiteboard. The only thing that’s changed since last night is, I agreed to host the Thrills and Kills book club on Thursday while Landon, the patron services assistant who usually runs it, recovers from his root canal.
I scribble the book club onto the board, then grab a glass and fill it with cold water. As I chug, I amble toward the living room. In the corner of my eye, a sudden movement surprises me so badly I yelp and slosh half my glass onto the rug.
But it’s just Miles. Lying face down on the couch. He groans without so much as lifting his face out of the squashy cushion. His furniture is all comfort, no sex appeal.
“You looked dead,” I tell him, moving closer.
He grumbles something.
“What?” I ask.
“I said I wish,” he mumbles.
I eye the bottle of coconut rum on the table and the empty mug beside it. “Rough day?”
I’d been caught off guard by the Bridget Jones incident three weeks ago, but now it’s almost a relief to see him looking how I’ve spent the last month and a half feeling.
Without lifting his face, he feels around on the coffee table to grab a piece of paper, then holds it aloft.
I walk over and take the delicate square of off-white parchment from his hand. Instantly, he lets his arm flop down to his side. I start reading the elegant script slanting across it.
Jerome & Melly Collins along with
Nicholas & Antonia Comer joyfully invite
you to celebrate the marriage of their children,
Peter & P—
“NO.” I fling the invitation away from me like it’s a live snake.
A live snake that must also be on fire, because suddenly I am so, so, so hot. I take a few steps, fanning myself with my hands. “No,” I say. “This can’t be real.”
Miles sits up. “Oh, it’s real. You got one too.”
