Page 17 of Business Casual
We begin a slow, shuffling walk-dance to the shuttle. My phone, purse, and shoes are back at the reception, but that’s fine. I’m sure Beckett will grab everything before he leaves for the night. Or I can swing by the farm tomorrow and collect them.
Vanessa mutters the step count beneath her breath. I watch her feet to make sure she’s not about to chassé her way over a tree root. I link my arm with hers.
“Hard heart,” I mutter. Would someone with a hard heart make sure their drunk sister didn’t embarrass herself in front of the whole town? I don’t think so.
“What did you say?” Nessa shouts into the darkness.
“Nothing,” I sigh. “Don’t worry about it.”
?Vanessa is practicallyasleep on her feet by the time we make it home.
I rouse her enough to make her drink an entire glass of water and take two ibuprofen before tucking her in on the couch with the quilt my mom made when I was six years old. All the tassels on the ends are faded and losing strings, but the colors make me happy.
Satisfied she’s not going to tumble off the deep cushions to her death on the refurbished wood floors, I shuffle my way into my bedroom. Islip out of my dress and drape it over the back of an overstuffed armchair, pulling on an old crew neck before slipping beneath my collection of blankets and comforters. I left one of my windows cracked before I left tonight, and my room smells like wet leaves and smoke from the fireplace next door. Fresh night air and the hydrangeas I planted right below my window. I close my eyes and will myself to settle, but I feel untethered, unmoored, slipping and sliding my way over my thoughts.
The things I have to do at the tattoo shop before I open. The stack of papers I left on the top left corner of my desk. The chairs I still haven’t put together and the floorboards that need painting in the front.
Vanessa and her tear-stained cheeks shining in the moonlight. Her knuckles rapping against my chest and her words, muted but honest.
A bubble-wrapped heart.
I know I’m not soft. I know I’m not gentle. I can be abrupt and to the point. But I don’t think I’m unapproachable. I don’t think I’m cold.
I lift my arm and twist it beneath the faded yellow light that filters in from the streetlamp on the corner, finding the ink that decorates my skin. One tattoo in particular.
Five strands of ribbon, twisted and braided. Each slightly different than the others, but together something strong and unbreakable.
I rub my thumb over it and frown, hating the unsettled press right beneath my ribs. When sleep finally does claim me, I tumble into restless dreams where I’m dancing through a field of trees beneath an open moonlit sky, a warm hand at the small of my back holding me steady.
?I wake upannoyed.
At the universe, mostly, but also at the blankets I’m tangled in, thebirds squawking through the crack in my window, and the rumble of a car passing in the distance.
Charlie, for getting in my head.
At myself, for allowing him space there.
I probably wouldn’t be this twisted up if he just came home with me like I asked.
I fumble my way out of bed and dig my shoes out from the closet, slipping on an old pair of sweats I stole from Beckett in high school. I tiptoe down the stairs and through the front door, my body still not fully awake, but my head and heart needing the steady thrum of movement and breath to sort myself out.
I run until the ghosts of last night’s embarrassments are no longer clinging to my heels. Until I’m not thinking about anything at all.
By the time I circle back to the house, my legs are wobbly and my lungs are burning with the brisk morning air. But my head is clear and everything feels slotted back into place. As much as it can be, anyway.
Nessa is sitting up on the couch when I wander in, my blanket wrapped tight around her shoulders. She frowns at me and digs her knuckles into her left eye.
“Morning.” I stretch both arms over my head and collapse forward with a groan, trying to stretch out my back. “How are you feeling?”
She squints at me and mutters something that would definitely make our mother blush. I toe off my shoes and toss my keys on the kitchen table with a clatter.
“Nova,” she whines. “Are you trying to kill me?”
“I think you took that upon yourself last night when you drank enough moonshine to serenade my garden gnomes upon our return.”
She sat in my front yard and plucked all of my garden fixtures out of the mulch bed, lined them up in a neat row, and sang song after song until Mr. Hale from across the street came out on his front porch and threatened to call the cops. Too bad the only cop on duty last night was Sheriff Dane Jones, and the last I saw of him, he was swinging his husband around the dance floor.
Nessa slumps dramatically over the arm of my couch. “Were you running? What’s wrong with you?”
