“Thanks,” I tell her.
“The closets are small, there’s horrible water pressure, and I guarantee the teenage boys who take care of the lawn will be absolute piglets when they see you, but it’s cute and quiet and there’s a washer and dryer in the garage you can use whenever,” she says.
“It’s perfect,” I say, looking around. “A washer and dryer sound like absolute heaven and I can definitely handle piglet teenage boys.”
“Yay!” she says, smiling wide, and for a tiny, desperate heartbeat I can imagine living here, taking the bus to school, starting to figure out my life in the sweet studio above her garage. I want to tell her, Please, let me move in right now.
But of course she’s rational, and with a tiny apology in her eyes asks me to fill out the background check form. “I’m sure it will be fine,” she says with a wink.
I’VE ONLY BEEN gone a few weeks, but checking into a motel in my hometown makes me feel like I’m returning to a city that has long since evolved without me. As I drive to the motel, I find a hidden pocket of San Diego I’ve never explored before, and although the corner of my dark city feels oddly foreign, the idea that there’s a different future for me here from any I had imagined before is powerfully reassuring.
My mother would kill me for not staying at home. Harlow wants to kill me for not staying with her. But even in the dim light and the cacophony of the I-5 freeway just outside my window, it’s exactly what I need. I check my bank balance for about the fiftieth time since landing. If I’m careful, I could make it to the start of school, and by then—thanks to my former advisor and the man who has gained me entrance to the MBA program that once heavily courted me at UCSD—I’ll have a small, rare stipend to help make ends meet. But even though the rent is reasonable in the studio, it would still be tight and my stomach flips imagining having to ask my father for money. I haven’t talked to him in over a month.
You are married? You have a husband, no? Ansel said, and God, that night feels so long ago. Curling into sheets that smell like bleach and cigarette smoke instead of summer grass and spice, I struggle to breathe and not completely lose my shit at eight at night in a dark motel room.
My neglected phone suddenly feels heavy in my pocket and I pull it out, let my finger hover over the button before I finally power it on.
It takes a few moments to load, but when it does, I see I have twelve missed calls from Ansel, six voicemails, and even more texts.
Where are you? the first one says.
You’ve left, haven’t you. Your suitcase is gone.
You didn’t take everything. I imagine him waking, finding me gone, and then walking from room to room, seeing the things I must have chosen to bring with me and the things I left behind.
Your ring isn’t here, did you take it? Please call me.
I delete the rest of the messages but not the voicemails, a secret part of me knowing I’ll want to listen to them later when I’m alone and missing him. Well, missing him more.
I’m not even sure how to reply.
I realize now that Ansel can’t be the answer to my problems. He fucked up by not telling me the truth about Perry and their past, but I’m fairly sure it had more to do with him being a stupid boy than wanting to keep me in the dark. This is why you get to know someone before you marry them. And the truth is that his lie was convenient for me, too. I’d been hiding in Paris, using him and the thousands of miles between France and the States to avoid the things that are wrong with my life: my dad, my leg, my inability to create a new future for myself beyond the one I lost. Perry might have been a total bitch but she was right about one thing: the only one moving forward in this relationship was Ansel. I was content to sit there, waiting, while he went out and conquered the world.
I roll onto my back and instead of replying to Ansel, I write a group text to my girls.
I think I found a place to live. Thanks for sending the list, H. I’m really trying not to lose my calm right now.
Let us come to your motel, Harlow answers. We’re going nuts not knowing what the hell is happening.
Tomorrow, I promise them.
Hang in there, Lola says. Life is built of these little horrible moments and the giant expanses of awesome in between.
I love you, I reply. Because she’s right. This summer was the most perfect stretch of awesome I’ve ever had.
Chapter TWENTY-ONE
JULIANNE REALLY IS a goddess because she calls before eight in the morning. With the time change, I was awake before five, and have been pacing the tiny motel room like a madwoman, praying it would all work out and I wouldn’t have to spend another day apartment hunting.
“Hello?” I answer, phone trembling in my shaking hand.