“Love you too,” Lily said, but Violet had already hung up.
Lily let out a full-body sigh and pulled her phone away from her ear, grimacing at the sweat left behind on the screen. In all the time that she’d spent on the phone with Violet, the train still hadn’t moved. How was that possible?
“Are you all right?”
Lily glanced up and the blonde girl was staring at her, sporting a concerned frown.
“You’re swaying,” she said. “You look like you’re about to faint.”
Lily noticed the people around them turn in her direction.
“I’m fine,” she insisted, even though she was beginning to see spots everywhere she looked. Maybe the conversation with Violet, and agreeing to another blind date, had stressed her out more than she thought. Why won’t this freaking train move? She forced a smile. “Thank you, though.”
She’d be off this train soon. She just needed to distract herself in the meantime. Planting her feet, she dug in her bag and pulled out her copy of The Elves of Ceradon, her favorite fantasy novel. She’d discovered it two years ago while working at a bookstore, struggling to find a full-time job in any field that was willing to hire people with an English degree. She’d never read a book about a clan of Black elves before, a story that made it completely normal for Black people to exist in high fantasy. Lily realized then that she wanted to help bring more fantasy like this into the world, but for kids. So began her long journey to break into publishing. Currently, she was working with Edith on slightly depressing adult nonfiction, but soon she hoped she’d make the switch to children’s books. And in her heart, she felt as though she had The Elves of Ceradon to thank for that inspiration.
The author, N.R. Strickland, was a mystery, though. The copy Lily discovered at the bookstore had been torn and tattered, published years ago by a now-defunct British press. N.R. Strickland’s bio was sparse, saying that he was born and raised in London and that The Elves of Ceradon was his first novel. He didn’t have a website or any social media. The plain, dark red book jacket didn’t even have an author photo. In today’s day and age, it was odd but a little admirable that he’d decided to forgo anything public-facing.
Lily carried the novel with her for moments like right now when she was stuck on a train and needed to kill time. She opened the book and tried to focus on the words in front of her instead of the heat but found it difficult. The struggle to read was giving her a headache. In a moment of blissful relief, the train started to move, only to stop after what felt like a few feet. Someone opened a window and a bit of the hot air inside the train was exchanged for the hot air outside. Lily swallowed thickly and tried to concentrate but the words began to swim on the page. Okay, so reading wasn’t going to help.
Instead, she pulled out her phone and googled N.R. Strickland on a whim, as she did occasionally, hoping to read news of a sequel, but ultimately expecting to find nothing. The search engine loaded and . . . wait, N.R. Strickland had a website now.
Shocked, Lily clicked on the link and his bare-bones website appeared. It didn’t provide any information that she didn’t already know from the bio on the back of his book. But what the website did have was a contact form. Amazing. Lily wiped the sweat from her forehead and grinned at her phone. Giddy and increasingly delirious, she typed out a message to N.R. Strickland, telling him just how much his book meant to her, how finding his story had changed the trajectory of her life.
Her heartbeat increased, and her palms grew clammier, but she chalked it up to her excitement. Even when her breaths turned shallow and black spots aggressively clouded her vision, she continued to type. It wasn’t until her phone slipped out of her hand and the train seemed to tilt off-kilter that Lily realized she was falling. Fainting, to be more accurate.
“Oh my God!” the blonde shouted as Lily hit the floor, clutching her copy of The Elves of Ceradon.
Minutes later, after Lily came to, and kind strangers helped her up, and someone offered her a bottle of water, and a mom forced her to eat a pack of her child’s fruit snacks, Lily was busy focusing on the fact that she’d just fainted. Her mind was so far from the email she’d feverishly drafted, unaware that it had been sent prematurely and was already on its way through cyberspace for its intended recipient.
Over three thousand miles away in the city of Amsterdam, Nick Brown was trying his best not to embarrass himself and cry in a room full of people who’d been strangers to him only a month ago. But he couldn’t help it. He was touched that they’d thrown him a goodbye party. And he felt slightly self-conscious to have so much attention on him.
“Remember us fondly, Nick,” Jakob Davids said, raising his glass, his lips spread in a genuine smile. “We look forward to reading the article once it publishes. Proost!”
“Proost!” the rest of the Davids family shouted, clinking their glasses.
“Proost!” Nick said quietly, lifting his glass as well, although it was filled with only water.
Rubbing the back of his neck, feeling both grateful for the goodbye dinner but also that he wasn’t worth the trouble, Nick looked around at the Davids family and tried to commit them to memory. He’d spent the last few weeks with them. They were an Afro-Dutch family who owned a Surinamese cuisine restaurant, and he’d been writing a piece about them and their business for his column with World Traveler. There was Jakob and his wife, Ada, who, at thirty, were only three years older than Nick, their young children, Jolijn and Christophe, and Jakob’s mother, Ruth, who’d migrated from Suriname, South America, to Amsterdam in her early twenties. They lived in a small town house a few blocks away from Sarphatipark.
Nick’s job made it so that he was constantly on the go. It was what he liked most about it. His life was a revolving door of faces and places. But something about the Davidses had latched on to him. Maybe it was because they were a close-knit family who actually enjoyed spending time together, something Nick had always craved. He didn’t want to leave the Davidses and wished he could soak in their togetherness for a little while longer. But he was off to Munich in the morning for his next assignment. He’d have to leave the Davidses behind.
And that was probably for the best anyway. The past few weeks had been nice. But almost too nice. It was making Nick anxious. He found that he was constantly waiting for the inevitable dropping of the other shoe.
“Thank you for all of this,” Nick said to the Davidses. “I’m grateful that you allowed me into your home and your lives.” He took a deep breath, fighting off the strong wave of surprising emotions. “I’m really going to miss you.”
“We’ll miss you too. You’re basically family now!” Jakob barked out a laugh, unaware of the effect that his words had on Nick. He clapped his hand onto Christophe’s shoulder. “Isn’t he, son?”