“Did I?” I picked up my own glass. “Didn’t mean to. Maybe I’m not used to compliments?”
“Maybe,” he said slowly, as I took a sip. My mother, across the patio table, was looking at her phone, another new habit since the vacation. John had already texted three times since I’d picked them up, by my count. “Well, I for one will miss you terribly and am selfish enough to hope you get bored out of your mind and decide to rejoin us on the front lines. But I’m not in love.”
“Yet,” my mother said, eyes still on her screen.
“Yet?” I asked. “Can you arrange a timeline for something like that?”
“No,” she replied, putting the phone aside. “But you can set up a date with potential for it. Which is what William agreed to do while we were away, with his cheese friend.”
“He’s not my cheese friend,” William said immediately. Now he was blushing. “And I made that promise after a night of champagne on an exotic island. I can’t be held responsible.”
“Nonsense,” my mother said, waving her hand. “It counts. And you’ll reach out to him this week, because John and I both saw you swear to it.”
“John again,” William said to me. “Get ready to hear that name a lot. I know I have. Next thing you know he’ll be moving in.”
“Doesn’t he live in St. Samara?” I asked.
“He has a house there, for the necessary and all-too-rare act of recharging,” my mother explained, as William rolled his eyes again. “But he’s based in Lakeview and spends most of his time traveling, giving lectures. It’s a fluid lifestyle, allowing for adjustments as needed.”
“This is what I meant when I said she memorized the book,” William told me. “She speaks in bullet points and catchphrases now.”
“It’s very good!” my mother said. “In fact, John is having additional copies sent for both of you, along with the accompanying workbook. I think you’ll really benefit from it.”
“Louna is seventeen, Natalie,” William said. “She doesn’t need to worry about being a workaholic yet.”
“The term is a workhole, and it’s not just about that,” she replied, as her phone lit up again. Immediately, she grabbed it. Eyes on the screen, she was nonetheless able to say, “It’s about the courage to go for what you want, not just what you think you need. Sometimes, we don’t even know what that is.”
“Well, I need to get home,” William replied, standing up, his hand on his hat. “We’ve got that meeting at the office first thing tomorrow with Amber Dashwood about her three-ring circus of a wedding.”
“Circus?” I asked. “How did I miss this?”
“It’s a recent development,” my mother said. “Apparently she decided a couple of weeks ago she wants a theme after all. So we’re calling the tent a Big Top and hiring acrobats.”
“Wow,” I said, regretting for a second I’d decided to sit it out. “Sounds insane.”
“She wanted exotic animals, too, but that’s harder to pull together permit-wise,” William said, collecting his bag. “Also, liability. Maybe Ambrose can bring that dog of his and we’ll pretend?”
“He’s not exactly ferocious,” my mom said. “But what is she expecting on such short notice?”
I had a flash of Ira, his wiry snout and eyebrows, the way his tail thumped hard against whatever was nearby whenever Ambrose appeared. True love, that was, instant in the second he was rescued and we carried him away. As I thought this, I felt William looking at me again, and wondered if my face had yet again changed. But this time, he said nothing.
It wasn’t until later that night, when he was gone and my mother had retired to her room with her already dog-eared and highlighted copy of Workholes: How to Be the Person You Want to Be and Do the Job You Love that I realized in the hours we’d spent together I’d never even mentioned the news about my own love life, and Ben. This didn’t really mean anything; we’d talked mostly about their trip, with me leaning over their respective phones to look at pictures (William: scenery, food, and sunsets; my mother: herself in front of sunsets and scenery, with John). And anyway, the next morning during Daybreak USA, when she brought up my birthday, I said right away I was seeing someone that I wanted invited to the dinner she was hosting. In the weeks following, after William worked up the nerve to invite Matt, his cheese friend, out for drinks (twice) and dinner (three times) he’d decided to bring him along as well. Now here we were, all of us paired off, planning to come together to celebrate, well, me. Things were surely different. But not totally: we were still doing it a day early, as a wedding rehearsal was booked for the actual date.
As for me, with free days for the first time in recent memory, I’d been getting stuff for school, hanging out with Jilly and the kids, and trying to get used to not being at work, which was harder than I’d expected. The first couple of days felt totally decadent, sleeping in, eating bowls of cereal in front of marathons of Big New York and Chicago in my pajamas, then reading until dinner. Then I’d finally drag myself into the shower so I could meet Ben, either alone or with his friends, for dinner or to hit the various farewell parties that were already starting. After a week or so, though, I was finding it harder to keep busy. Maybe I was more of a workhole than I realized.
When it came to Ben, though, everything was easy. We already knew each other enough that there were no real surprises. Word had gotten around school after the Brownwood shooting about my relationship with Ethan. He’d never mentioned it then, but the subject had come up a couple of times since we’d gotten together—that was part of our story, too, the events that came before—and just as easily been discussed before moving on. That was the difference, with a person you knew and one you didn’t: I couldn’t have kept that secret from Ben even if I wanted to.