I run into the walk-in, where I now realize I left my cell phone at the start of the day. Emma called exactly once, twenty minutes ago. It dawns on me that our ferry leaves in ten minutes. I say a quick good-bye to anyone who can hear me shout it out, and I bolt out the back door. It’s beautiful out. The sky is golden. Not just tinted by a golden sunset, but entirely golden, as if that’s a normal color for the sky. Not much is perfect in this world, but this isn’t far off.
I sprint, thankful I brought a button-up shirt with me, trying to keep it free from wrinkles in my clutched hand. Things don’t go wrong here, so I have faith in the island’s ability to do whatever it wants to time in order to help me out.
I’ve apparently forgotten that happiness is a knot easily untied. I arrive at the dock eleven minutes late, slipping into the shirt even though I’m about to sweat through it. I can see that there’s no one here anymore, and still I’m hanging onto some idiotic notion that this place does not adhere to the laws of nature. The ferry is fading into the horizon, steam billowing up and joining the golden sky. Stupidly, I look around the docks for her, phone pressed against my ear, saying “Fuck” every time it rings. It’s like burning a piece of food, this feeling. Like I know no matter what I do, the mistake is done; there’s no going back.
I know without the shadow of a doubt that things are useless, calling Emma again is pointless, except maybe to say how much of an idiot I am. No answer. Maybe she’s already out of service range. Maybe she’s pissed at me right now. Maybe she always will be. I check the upcoming ferry schedule and realize with a sinking feeling in my stupid gut that there aren’t any more tonight.
Night falls much faster than it has any right to. It gets dark in between phone calls, from one dial tone to the next. The stars are barely out. There are no clouds out to cover them up, but they’re hardly twinkling, as if they’re only showing up for a job they hate.
I stand there a reasonably long time, calling her, texting her apologies. I consider swimming to catch up with the ferry. I consider swimming all the way to Seattle, faster than the boat, so that when Emma steps off she sees me and I can pretend I left too early. I call again. The night gets darker. I stare at the horizon, unable to do a damn thing about it.
CHAPTER 28
NOTHING
METHOD:
The worst night of my life was all sobs and sirens. This one is much quieter.
It’s a slow dark walk through town back home, though halfway through I veer off into the woods. There’s nothing but the squish of my shoes on damp leaves, branches brushing against my clothes. My mind is desperate to find some explanation that doesn’t make me an asshole, coupled with the horrible feeling in my stomach (right above my stomach, actually, where shittiness is felt). I get too distracted and lose myself. I’m far off from any path that Emma might have showed me, pushing aside branches blindly. The moon should still be bright enough to see where I’m going, but it’s nowhere to be found. Even the fireflies are nowhere to be seen, perhaps prompted by my behavior to announce summer’s end.
Nothing looks familiar. I can’t find the meadow or the hill with the view. I can’t even find the lake. The thrill of the day in the kitchen is buried deep beneath shame and regret and a general mix of emotional awfulness. I’m not sure what time it is when I get back home, since I call Emma so many times that my phone dies along the way.
I flop onto my bed, knowing sleep won’t come easy. The sun rises almost instantly, the world decreeing that I do not deserve to rest. Emma hasn’t responded, except for in the millions of imagined conversations I’ve had while lying down. My alarm rings, pulling me out of bed. I feel half-dead, like I’m disappearing again.
All throughout the twenty-minute walk to the restaurant, my brain continues to point out how much I’ve screwed up. How Emma might be a forgiving person but definitely not when it comes to playing second fiddle to the kitchen. The betrayal, my mind tells me, started with the berry. As soon as I picked it up, I was telling the universe I care more about food than about her. And I want to argue but a) my brain is right, and b) my brain is one of those assholes who won’t even listen to arguments.
Felix doesn’t show his face either (any version of it), which is a damn shame because I could use some of his platitudes right about now. Something about second chances or losing track of time, the distractions of a dream coming true.
Even as I’m thinking this, I know what Felix would say, the real version of him. He’d say that I didn’t need to stick around in the kitchen the entire shift in order to stroke my own ego. I could have had my little moment and then left on time. Felix would have said all this calmly, softly, the way difficult-to-hear-but-wise things are always said.
I want to yell at my brain to shut up. On Main Street, everyone is having another summer day, taking their little jogging trips, getting breakfast before another day at the beach. They look like they’re basking in the sun already, even though the sun has barely risen and fog is smothering the light before it can really reach the people on Needle Eye Island. I grab my phone, desperately hoping all of this will be resolved with a miracle. I was confused about the day or something. Emma will text and say, Oops, phone died. Still on for our date tomorrow? Or maybe: No big deal. Had a pretty good time with my dad anyway. How was your day?
But there’s nothing there, no relief, which means I’ll be thinking about all of this on a loop all morning. Emma’s working today, I know, and I should at least be able to sneak away long enough to apologize in person.
I knock on the back entrance to Provecho. Sue opens the door and tells me that she and Chef are taking inventory and to go wait in the office. I take a seat and my stomach shoots out of my gut and starts pacing around the room, muttering to itself. God, what an awful feeling to have fucked up this badly.
Chef has me wallowing in it for what feels like an hour, just sitting there with no distractions except for the wall calendar sprawled with notes that I can’t read from where I am. If only I’d left an hour earlier yesterday. Hell, twenty minutes earlier. If only I’d been a decent person, appreciated the luck granted to me.
The wall clock ticks as loudly as humanly possible, just rubbing every passing second in my face, both the ones I wasted last night and the ones I’m forced to sit through right now. Why the hell can’t time be reversed, mistakes unmade?
Finally, Chef comes in, heading straight for her chair behind the desk. It’s (undeserved) relief to no longer be alone with my thoughts, to merely have another person’s presence in the room.