(It’s hard for me to really believe that. Whatever else Jonah might be, I don’t think he’s a player. But I don’t trust my judgment these days.)
Besides, as outrageous as Jonah’s behavior might be, as angry as I am with him. . . . I’m angrier with myself. For someone who’s spent a lot of her life being guarded, I folded pretty fast when the right temptation came along. And that temptation is repellent. Wrong. I should have kept fighting it instead of instantly surrendering.
Every memory I have of that night with Jonah changes within my mind. At first it seemed so perfect. So liberating. So fucking hot.
Now I can only think I made a fool of myself.
About three weeks afterward, I finally decide to stop moping. Back to reality. I pick up an extra macchiato for Kip one morning, to return the favor. “I see your evil twin has finally left the premises,” he says between sips.
“Yeah, she has a time-share in the Florida Keys. She tries to make the most of it.”
“Good riddance.” He smiles. “Welcome back, darling.”
And maybe it’s just that simple. I walk on, and I hold my head high. Nobody except me, Jonah, and Doreen will ever know what happened that night, so I can pretend it was just a really disturbing wet dream. Things would be easier that way.
Saturday night, I even go out.
“Oh, come on. It’s almost sunset,” Geordie says as he glances out at the bridge. “When are they going to get started?”
“Patience,” Carmen says between sips of her wine. We’re sitting on the grassy bank of the lake, a bottle of wine in the open ice chest at the center of our blanket—the perfect vantage point for the best free show in town. It always begins around the time darkness falls, but there’s no predicting the exact moment.
My wineglass is cool against my palm; the sauvignon blanc gleams the color of candlelight. I’m wearing gray leggings, a long boho top, and more jewelry than I usually bother with. It feels like a special occasion, not that I can explain why to Carmen and Geordie. But I don’t have to explain. I can simply enjoy the moment.
“So, how was your meeting with Dr. Ji?” I ask Carmen. The graduate program in mathematics is dramatically different from the art department—understandably—and I still don’t quite get how it works. All I know is, Dr. Ji has a lot of say over whether Carmen gets to go on for her PhD.
She folds her arms in front of her, and her fingers tug at the sleeve of her peasant blouse. When Carmen fiddles with her clothes, it’s a sure sign she’s nervous. “Okay, I guess. He’s so hard to read.”
“But your paper is solid.” Not that I’m a great judge of higher mathematics. Still, I know Carmen—how thorough she is, how bright. There’s no way she would ever turn in anything less than top-notch.
“The work has to be more than solid,” Carmen says. “It has to be brilliant.”
“It’s not like you’ve got to win a Fields Medal to get your PhD,” Geordie says. When Carmen gives him a look, he laughs. “Yes, some of us math civilians know what the Fields Medal is.”
I have no idea what that is, but it doesn’t matter. “Come on,” I say to her. “You’ve got this. You always do.”
Carmen hesitates. In that moment, Geordie gulps down his wine and points to the bridge. “Here they go!”
At first we only see a couple of black shapes fluttering upward. Then a few more. Then a dozen. And then an enormous wave, dark, chaotic, and swirling like a tornado rising from the river—a hundred feet high at least, and spiraling outward, wider every second.
Geordie lifts his glass. “To the bats.”
“To the bats,” Carmen and I repeat, and we clink our plastic wineglasses together.
Years ago, when the bridge across Lake Austin was built, nobody realized that something about it would really, really appeal to bats. Now we have one of the largest bat colonies in the world. Sometimes their nighttime rush from the bridge results in guano raining down on the unwary. (We’re sitting beneath a shady, broad-leafed tree for a reason.) But everybody loves the bats anyway. For one, they eat the mosquitoes that would otherwise bite all summer, which is definitely a public service. Mostly, though, they’re just an essential part of the overall bizarreness of this town—one more reason our unofficial slogan is “Keep Austin Weird.”
I always wish I could show Libby the bats. She would love that. But that would require a family visit to Austin, which means it’s probably never going to happen.
The bats disperse for the evening’s hunt. Geordie tells us a funny story about some court case where a house was somehow declared haunted as a matter of law. By the time I’ve finished my glass of wine, this actually feels like a good night.