I shook my head, pulling on my jacket and scarf quickly and moving past Abdiel back inside the cabin. “I’m so sorry I wasted your time.” I offered him a smile I hoped wasn’t as pitiful as I felt. “I’ll show myself out.”
My cheeks flamed from embarrassment as I descended the stairs, but before I could rush out the front door, Abdiel stopped me.
“Wait!” he called out, carefully stepping his way down the stairs I’d just flown over. He was smiling through heavy breaths when he reached me, throwing his hands up. “Maybe we can make this work.”
“Really?” I asked, too eagerly I was sure, because Abdiel’s smile only widened.
“I wanted to make the sell before I traveled to see my family in Puerto Rico. I’m moving there, but there’s no rush. I’m retired, which means I get to make my own rules,” he added with a wink. “So, I tell you what. You pay me up front for the three months, you can stay for the summer as a rental. But you’ll have to take care of anything that breaks on your own, because I’ll be on the island. And, if you decide at the end of the summer that you want to buy, we can work out details then.”
Excitement rallied, but the realist in me squashed it down.
“And if I don’t buy?”
He shrugged, eyes still so warm. “Then I put the listing back up and you pay the gift of time forward one day when you have more of it to spare, too.”
It was in that moment that I learned my second lesson as a freshly divorced twenty-seven year old.
No one may have owed me anything, least of all kindness, but it didn’t mean they wouldn’t give it, anyway.
It didn’t take long for me to unpack, especially considering I’d left nearly a decade of things behind. I just referred to all of it as things—the furniture, the photos, the memories, the “marital” property, even though some of it was rightly mine.
How interesting that I’d spent so many years of my life collecting those things, but when the day came to leave, I didn’t care to take a single one of them with me.
Still, surveying my new home for the summer made me realize that I had a plethora of clothes, shoes, jewelry and makeup—and not much else. I had my laptop, tablet, and sketch book, of course, mostly because I needed those to work. My sewing machine was already set up on the desk downstairs. One box still sat untouched in the SUV with sentimental things from my childhood and I’d managed to take off with three of my most-used coffee mugs and my favorite blanket.
It wasn’t much, but I found I didn’t really need much.
I paused at the sight of my reflection in the dresser mirror as I packed away the seven different swimsuits I’d brought with me and stood straighter. My platinum blonde hair was the only bright thing about me, and I tied it in a knot at the base of my neck almost like I didn’t remember the fun girl it once belonged to. I’d taken my makeup off, leaving my face pale, wide eyes dark like the past I’d left behind, full pink lips in the same neutral position they’d been in since Abdiel had left.
I didn’t smile much anymore, which my team at the boutique jokingly told me was a good thing. Less wrinkles, after all. But I missed my smile—my real smile—and I wondered when it would come home. If it would come home.
I played that thought over and over as I waited for the sound I knew would come. And just like the sun sets and rises, my phone rang at exactly ten o’clock.
Keith had called me every night since I’d left. The first couple of weeks, I made the mistake of answering, but his pleading and denial had turned into anger and hatred. Our last phone call had ended in him calling me a shitty wife and telling me no one would ever love me.
I’d never answered again.
I thought the calls would stop once we filed, and I definitely assumed they would after our court date, but even when the divorce was final, he still called. Sometimes it broke my heart, because he loved me, and I had killed him by leaving. I knew that. I knew we had both been through hell, were still going through it, and neither of us would escape the flames without scars of our own to bear for the rest of our lives.
But his love had changed, just as mine had, and all that remained between us was a toxic opposition of values that left him angry and me resentful. The difference was that I still wished him happiness, but he only wished me to be his—the way he thought I should be.
I counted to eight once the buzzing of my phone had subsided until it began again. But this time, I smiled.
“Oh good,” Adrian said as soon as I picked up. “Just making sure you didn’t answer for Asshole.”
“Haven’t in weeks, babe.”
“I know, but I still like to check.”
I switched the phone into speaker mode when he paused, folding the last of my shorts and tucking them away into the bottom drawer of the only dresser upstairs.
“How are you?” he asked. “Are you... are you in the woods?”
“I’m in the cabin, yes, and I’m okay,” I lied, which made me pause. I didn’t know the last time I said I was okay and actually meant it.
“I almost regret telling you to go and I’d cover things here. Don’t get me wrong, the boutique will be fine, but I miss you already,” he said on a sigh. “This is going to be good, Wren. For your heart. For your soul.”
“I know,” I told him, picking up the phone from the dresser and holding it to my ear once again. “It physically hurts me that I’ve gone so long without being able to sketch. I’m just hoping I can, I don’t know, piece myself back together out here.”
“You will. It’s not in you to give up, Wren Ballard.”
I smiled. Adrian believed in me more than I believed in me most days.
“I never thanked you for letting me stay with you as long as you did, by the way,” I said as I slowly walked down the stairs into the living room. “I owe you and Oscar big time for taking a whiney adult in when you already have a newborn in the house.”
“Oh please, you know you are always more than welcome to stay with us. Seriously,” he emphasized. “Anytime.”
“I know. Thank you.”
Adrian sighed into the other end, and I pictured him running a hand through his always-styled fade. Even though it was late, I imagined he was probably still dressed like he was on his way to the boutique, suit ironed and shoes matching his over-the-shoulder work bag. No doubt he was still donning a perfectly-folded scarf or well-shaped trilby hat, too. Adrian’s style was pristine, and he knew better than anyone how to dress for his skin tone and body type. He was tall, dark as night, and handsome as hell—and he knew it.
“Please promise me you’ll call me often.”
“I promise.”
“And I promise to give you updates on the boutique while you’re gone. I think we’re going to—”
There was a muffled noise on the other end, his voice laced with static.
“Adrian?”
More static.
“Hello?”
His voice cut in and then out again and I pulled the phone back from my ear, noting a barely there service bar in the top left corner of the screen.