Page 60 of Under the Weatherman
Evan:you think I’m a machine?
Me:I think you’re more than meets the eye.
Evan:that…
Me:oh no
Evan:no, I’m just laughing. I thought you’d hit rock bottom with the iceburg joke.
Me:my joke was hall of fame.
Evan:for worst jokes?
Our text banter went off-and-on throughout the weekend, light and breezy. No mention of that kiss. Nothing about what it might have meant, and that was more proof this was a one-way infatuation.
Since I’d worked at the inn all day Sunday, I didn’t get a chance to catch up with Chelsea until Monday morning, when I stopped at the coffee shop on my way to the library. Yawning, I considered ways to get a break from the grind. “We should move our vacation up, like to next week,” I suggested.
“What’s up with you?” she asked, pouring milk into a metal pitcher. “You’ve been a zombie lately.”
“Just tired. I’d love to disappear and sleep for a month.” I felt like I was attempting to juggle neurons to keep my brain firing twenty-four hours a day.
“Have you considered witness protection.”
“More like a medically induced coma?” I considered other ways to escape responsibility for a month. “I could strategically get hit by a bus.”
Her brow furrowed. “Maybe you should consider telling Kate you need some time off.”
My heart squeezed at the suggestion. Why couldn’t I give up the job that wasn’t paying my bills? Why was I holding on so tight to a career that would never materialize? Maybe it was time to grow up and stop dreaming of a fairytale ending.
“Bas is coming over tonight to watch Evan’s first weather report,” Chelsea said, moving like a whirlwind. The buzz of customers acted like white noise, lulling me to sleep.
“What?” Again?
“Yeah.” She stared at me, waiting for me to tease her for crumbling before the battering ram that was Bas, but I loved this for her.
I leaned against the counter. “So what’s going on with you two?”
She shot me a look. “You remember how you putinvite a neighbor overon the checklist?”
I chortled. I never thought she’d actually do that. I didn’t think she could name a single person who lived on our street, and watching the news together was the flimsiest of pretexts. “Bas isn’t exactly a neighbor,” I said, but we’d fudged things on the list to be in the spirit, if not the letter, of the intent. “But I’ll allow it. Is he cooking?”
“No, I am.” Her eyes widened comically, and I coughed a laugh.
“Lord, save him.”
Once she handed me my latte, I hopped on the free trolley to the university, pulling out a paperback for the short ride. I could have just stayed home, curled up in my pajamas in bed and worked there, but with the temperatures dropping and the fall leaves changing colors, I had such a strong urge to be among the students with their backpacks slung over one shoulder, hurrying to class.
By the library, I breathed in the air of scholarly knowledge, and a memory of Evan hit me sideways, picturing him standing not so far from here, with the same look of reverence and nostalgia I felt every time I stepped foot on university grounds.
I should have invited him to join me. Would he have come?
Deep in the stacks, I found a quiet area and began the last few pages of “Diderot’s Dream: He Said/She Said,” an incomprehensible wall of text about the fuzzy nature of discourse vis-a-vis reality. The last eight hundred words had taken longer to edit than I’d anticipated, but I’d managed to wrangle some order to it and made it flow more logically.
A quote attributed to Diderot read, “Mind what you do; if you deceive me once I shall never believe you again,” and the low-hum of regret twisted in my gut, leaving me sad that one lie had done so much damage.
Why had Chelsea dared me to lie to someone who’d interested me on all levels: mind, spirit, and body? The one guy who’d put himself out of reach, using the job as an excuse to rebuff me. What if he wasthe one, and I’d blown it with tricks and bad timing?
Becoming friends somehow only made things worse. Not because my crush was unrequited—not only that. But because the more I knew of him, the more I liked him. And I couldn’t stop imagining what might have been.
