Page 32 of Love Always

As I watch Cory take the stairs up to the porch to The Inn one at a time, I say “Yeah. We’re good.”

“I have to head back to work, get back to my place, but maybe I’ll see you next week?”

“That sounds perfect,” I say. My heart literally skips a few beats and then, somehow, finds its own rhythm again.

“Stay away from Colleen,” he adds. We’re walking up around the corner of the porch between The Inn and the clinic. He’s heading to his company car and there’s the blip of the door unlocking. Just then Finn leans around from the front and waves to us.

The three of us. It feels good. Like we’re a unit.

I decide this is not the time to tell him Colleen wants to meet me for lunch up the road in Rockland and I had already agreed. And it’s also not the time to tell him that Professor Cruz asked me to deliver another package and then a third. I turned both requests down. I think he’s just using these requests as an excuse to get closer to me. If I tell Mateus, he’s liable to march into that classroom and destroy any good grade I might still have.

Mateus follows Finn, and I figure they must have some important meeting on the second floor. Chloe is looking out the side window so the last thing I want to do is wave with some sappy look on my face. Instead, I put my head down, join my son on the porch, and take his hand.

“Did he say goodbye?” Finn has been working with Cory on manners.

“Yes, down on the beach and he said to tell you goodbye.”

“But I didn’t get to say goodbye to him.”

“That’s fine, don’t worry,” I say and think fast about a topic to shift him to avoid a possible tantrum. But he diverts himself.

“Momma, what is worry?”

How can I answer that? How can I define something I work so hard not to carry with me all the time? I don’t want to give it power. Instead of answering, I point to the back door and Chloe standing there with a blueberry muffin on a little dainty plate.

“I melted the butter,” she says, and Cory lets go of my hand.

΅

I’m pissed. I'm walking up and down Main Street, one eye on my phone as I text her and one eye casing the sidewalks.

Laurel: Where are you?

If Colleen doesn’t show up soon, we won’t be able to even have lunch—I’m going to have to leave for my mini-shift at work. I gave up my run to do this. She told me to meet her across the street at a little place called Andy’s Dinner with the second “n” lingering even though it has a strike mark through it, changing it to Diner. Stepping back inside, the waitress shows me back to my table. This is my sixth text to her:

Laurel: I am here! Where are you?

Another minute slips by but now it feels like ten. Where the hell is she? When you don’t have to plan for daycare, a job, or apparently anything, I guess you can be cavalier with other people’s time. This is why I don’t have friends my own age. They’re assholes.

No, they’re not, I tell myself. You used to be just like that.

The waitress, with dyed red hair and a half inch of graying roots, warm blue eyes and orange lipstick returns and refills my glass. “Not here yet?”

“No.” I try hard not to pout.

“Well maybe she got the time wrong and she was here, came and went.”

This was a distinct possibility: Colleen was not good with time and was late to class, meeting at the Student Union, rides.

I skipped to my photo gallery. I have one shot of Colleen from last night. “This is her.”

She pours some water and takes a peek. “Oh yeah, she was here.”

I roll my eyes. “Are you kidding me?”

“No—she was here, but she left.”

Typical. Fuck me.