“I’m happy to help you get the costumes right, if that’s what you need. And I could probably get you some discounted supplies through Millie’s.”
“We need a great Satina. I’m a lot of things, but I’m not her.” Eliza scanned me up and down, much like the first time we met, but this time with something that felt like respect. “Promise me you’ll think about it,” she said.
The door opened. Max and Camden came in from outside, each holding a bottle of wine.
“Hi,” said Camden, hanging his head so his bangs fell across his eyes, then looking at me shyly through those thick eyelashes. I wasn’t sure which of these things wrecked me more.
“Hi,” I croaked.
“Sorry, Max and I went out to the garage to get something to drink with dinner.” He held up his bottle. “He’s making linguini with clam sauce. Did you eat?”
I thought of the dinosaur nuggets I’d inhaled before leaving, the ketchup and canned peas. “No.”
The sewing machine suddenly made a grinding noise. “Fuck!” shouted Eliza. “Sorry. It’s this thread, it keeps breaking.” She turned to Camden and batted her eyelashes. “Cam, do you know where I might find some good thread?”
Camden sighed. “You’ll buy her a replacement, right?”
“Sometime before she comes back, absolutely.”
He turned to me. “Want to see my mom’s studio?”
I nodded. He put the wine bottle on the table and motioned for me to follow him.
We left the house and walked across the lawn to the outbuilding. He opened a sliding screen door, then made an after you motion with his arm. I stepped inside and he closed the screen behind me, then turned on the lights.
I’d expected to see a chaotic space, free-flowing and abstract like Maeve’s art. But everything in the room had sharp corners and clean lines: a large storage unit with carefully folded textiles of a hundred different hues and patterns, a bookcase filled not with books but large spools of yarn arranged by shade. Stacked plastic bins held tufts of dyed something—maybe cotton or wool—in another tumble of color. One large table held a sewing machine; another was empty with a black surface so clean and shiny, it reflected light from the moon outside.
“It’s the only part of our lives she’s able to keep clean and organized,” said Camden. “When my thoughts get tangled up, I come here to think. I look at all the colors and pretend it’s the thing I’m worried about. Anything makes more sense when you look at it sorted like this.”
Camden slid a large plastic case from underneath the sewing machine, opened it, and pulled out a spool of thread. He held it daintily with two fingers, slid it into the pocket of his jeans.
“So,” he said, turning back to me. “Did Eliza do the cosplay ambush on you yet?”
I laughed. “Ambush is a good word for it.”
“Don’t do anything you don’t want to do.”
I couldn’t read his expression. “Do you want me to do it?”
“Uh, yeah. But that shouldn’t matter.”
He said that like it was the most obvious, most simple thing in the world. Then he drew a deep breath, took a step closer, and leaned toward me.
Yes. This. Please.
His expression, I could read now. Is this where we left off? Okay to pick up from right here?
Then there was a new sound in the room, and it took me a second to realize it was my cell phone buzzing in my pocket. I turned from Camden to check it. This was habit: if I wasn’t with Dani, I always checked it. “Sorry,” I said.
It was a text from Richard.
I’m feeling guilty. Just tell me there’s an adult there and I’ll leave you alone.
“Everything okay?” asked Camden.
I stared at the text and what it implied, the different levels of trust between Richard and me and Mom and me. The shifting loyalties and alliances. Sometimes I wondered if Richard bending the rules for me was his way of sticking it to Mom. Which, for the record, was totally fine by me.
“Would any of you be eighteen years old, by chance?”
Camden looked puzzled for a moment, then seemed to get it. “Actually, yes. Max turned eighteen last month. He took a year off to live with some relatives in California; that’s why he’s still in school.”
“Excellent,” I said. Then I answered Richard’s text.
Yes, there is one adult here. All good.
Camden watched me put my phone back in my pocket, bemused.
“My stepdad,” I said by way of explanation.
“Is he a good one?”
“Top of the line.”
Camden leaned against the worktable. “Two times, my mom came close to getting married. To guys who just plain sucked. Then there were the boyfriends, of course, and the not-even boyfriends. Who I won’t even honor with a mention.”
My mother had had a few dates before she met Richard on a matchmaking website. Each one seemed to destroy her in tiny ways. I remember her telling a friend she wasn’t cut out for that stuff.
“What happened to keep your mom from getting married those two times?” I asked, starting to move around the room, taking in every color and texture.
“I talked her out of it. They weren’t right for her.”