Page 44 of Already Falling

I hear a shout followed by the roar of profanities and a crash coming from the apartment. I don’t even think. I jump out of the car and rush upstairs. The door is still open, and I can see Chloe waving her arms around and about to throw a book. I grab it out of her hand and look over to see what she is angry about. Dane and his ivory ass are in my face once again, but this time Chloe is not underneath him. Instead, it’s another girl who looks petrified. She is scrambling to pull a blanket over herself. Chloe is yelling at Dane at the top of her lungs, calling him a man whore and trying to grab different objects to throw at him. I pluck each object out of her hand before she chucks it.

“Will you just let me throw something at him?” She whips her head back to me before trying to lunge toward him, clawing her hands.

“No, he’s not worth it,” I shout, grabbing her waist, pulling her back to me.

Dane doesn’t even protest. He just stands there and shrugs, barely covering his junk with his hands. I’ve never been so baffled at how nonchalant he can be in every situation. His girlfriend just caught him cheating on her, and he acts like it was a simple miscommunication.

I pull Chloe out of his apartment and make a mental note to cuss out Dane tomorrow and collect her things. Chloe is limp and lets me lead her down the stairs and to my car. She’s fuming and crying. I can tell she’s not sure which emotion to let control her actions.

She slumps in the passenger seat of my car as we ride back home. I look over at her as she starts to mutter something. “I’m going to be alone.” I see a tear fall down her cheek. “I don’t have Dane. I won’t have you. Maybe I can move back up to Ojai and live with your parents.”

“No, you’re moving to Oregon with me.” I don’t hesitate. “We are going to start a new chapter together.” She turns to me, tears falling down her face as she reaches for my hand.

“But you said you were doing this for you, not for anyone else.”

“And I want you to come with me. A lot is going to be new and different. I can’t think of another person I’d love to share this journey with. Take the week to think about it. But remember, every small town has a bookstore.” I give her a little smile which perks her up, and I squeeze her hand. “We’re in this together. Always.”

TWENTY-FOUR

ANNIKA

Boxes are scattered around our two-bedroom bungalow on Beach Ave in Auburn Hills. The street name may or may not have factored into my decision to pick this place. I’m simply obsessed with the beach, and if I am going to be a two-and-a-half-hour drive from it now, at least the street I live on will remind me of it.

As soon as we pulled our moving van up to the house, I squealed in excitement. The neighborhood is filled with grand old trees that canopy all the houses. And the air is still. No obnoxious commercial airliners are flying by every half hour or shrill young college students in the distance. My parents followed us up here to help us unpack and move into our house. Chloe’s mom was busy with work but made sure to say goodbye before we drove up. I thought it was nice that she made an effort, even if it was a small one. My dad had already introduced himself to all of the adjacent neighbors before we finished unloading. We had been in Auburn Hills less than an hour but it already felt more like home than Southern California ever felt.

The house itself is perfect. It is a one-story, two-bedroom, two-bath bungalow with pale blue siding, a yellow front door, and a white picket fence around the front yard. The vibes it’s giving off are fun-grandma’s-house. There is a big oak tree on the right side that shades a part of the house from the afternoon sun. The backyard is small but just what it needs to be. There is a dirt planter box begging for veggies to be planted in and a patch of grass. Our landlord is an old woman, Sheela, who lives a few streets down. She used to live in this house, and when she entered her seventies, she moved to an even smaller house so she had less to maintain. She decided to rent out this house instead of selling, and boy, am I grateful. She said the previous renters had lived there for five years and had just moved up to Portland. It was only on the rental market for a day before I applied.

The day after we moved in and our parents left, Sheela appeared at our doorstep with a basket of, according to her, famous apple crisp muffins. I don’t know how famous they are, and I don’t really care. They are the best muffins I’ve ever eaten in my life. We invited her in, and she gave us each a big embrace and proceeded to tell us all her favorite spots downtown. Sheela gives granny energy like a well-needed hug and surprise gifts on a Tuesday. The kind of granny that leaves sweet treats at your doorstep and sends letters in the mail of newspaper clippings from articles she read that reminded her of you. She noticed I had a framed poster-size collage of my favorite postcards I’ve collected through the years, so now whenever she gives us a basket of treats, there’s also an old postcard tucked behind the muffins. I am so grateful to have her in this new town.

It’s been a week since we moved in, and our living room resembles a shallow maze of cardboard boxes. Our kitchen and bathrooms are the only rooms that are fully unpacked. Chloe and I each get our own bathroom, which has already improved our friendship. I no longer get my feet tangled around her curly blond strands after she brushes her hair. My bedroom is set up mostly except for two boxes of clothes I still have to put away. I hung up my postcard collage above the couch in the living room, and Chloe made a little painting corner in the breakfast nook that overlooks the backyard.

The biggest difference between SoCal and Oregon is the weather. There are some sunny moments, but it tends to be overcast. I suppose we are still in spring, and things might brighten up as we get closer to May. Chloe seems both happier and sadder. She walks around with an empty smile on her face. The mask I’m familiar with has returned. I can tell she hasn’t fully grieved from her breakup with Dane. Even though they’ve broken up before, it’s never been from cheating. It’s for real this time. She donated all her romance books to a bookstore in San Diego before we moved and boldly announced that she was abandoning the genre entirely. She’s been sulking around reading books on the Roman Empire and thriller novels. If she gets a hint of a romantic subplot, she leaves the book on my bookshelf instead and ceases to finish it.

Luckily for Chloe, there is the same chain bookstore that she worked at in San Diego, in Medford, which is a twenty-minute drive from our house. She was able to transfer easily. The store manager had actually just left that store, and they were looking for a replacement. I feel like everything is perfectly falling into place. We are bound to have a misstep eventually.

TWENTY-FIVE

ANNIKA

Occasionally, I’m swept up in the feeling of adolescent guilt. My parents swear up and down that they are happy about my decision to move up here, but the look on their faces when we parted ways after moving in replays in my head.

My mom and I have a standing Saturday morning call where we catch up on each other’s weeks, and she proceeds to pass the phone around to my dad and my younger brothers. Joey and Wes still live at home with my parents since they are seniors in high school, so I’m glad I get to see their faces on the weekly call. They are inseparable, but that is a given since they are twins. They take the same classes, they both play baseball on their high school team, and they even dated sisters once. I thought that was kinda weird, but thankfully, that didn’t last.

They never wanted to tag around their big sister and yet I always felt the need to lead by example. Always trying to excel in school and go to college, so they knew a good example to follow. However, now that my path has shifted, I’ve taken a one-eighty on my teachings to my younger brothers. I tell them to follow their dreams and don’t think they have to do the thing everyone else does. They always just roll their eyes and then tell me about some big play from their last game.

I want them to be happy. They want to come up and visit me during their spring break from school, but my mom is afraid to let them drive alone. Last week, Joey told me he started looking at colleges in Oregon so he could be closer to me, and I almost cried. I love my family so much. I think this is why the guilt of moving weighs so heavily on me. Even though I’m in the same time zone, I don’t want them to slip away.

The weekly calls are the most I’ve spoken to my family since I moved away to college. Even though I lived only a couple of hours away back then, I would only see them on holidays or summer break. Only calling my mom when I was stressed or heartbroken. Another pang in my chest of a bruise that never heals.

This week, I take the call from my front yard. Last week, Sheela pulled up in a pickup truck with two white Adirondack chairs in the back. She said we needed a “chair moment” on the outside lawn. The spring weather in Auburn Hills is the definition of crisp. Sunbeams push their way through the dense cloud cover, and the air feels like a pinch on the cheeks. I’m bundled in a hoodie and blanket while I ring my mom on video chat. She picks up on the second ring.

“Ah! My little Anni bug!” My mom recently reverted to calling me nicknames from my childhood.

We have our normal catch-up about how we’ve spent our week. We’ve been here for about three weeks now and are feeling settled. The box maze in the living room has transformed into a box stack in the corner. I started my new job two weeks ago, and it’s scarily perfect. I can walk to the studio located a few minutes downtown. I spend my days talking to clients, editing photos, and planning photoshoots. I am shooting exclusively with film, and we are working to turn a closet into a dark room so I can develop the photos in the studio. I have a little experience developing film photos, but I’m excited to have this new skill to master. I told my mom about the shoot I had this week. A couple just got engaged, and we took pictures of them walking throughout the town. It was so sweet, and seeing their burst of love made me crave it for myself.

“I think I’m starting to warm up to the idea of dating again.” I pull my blankets in closer after I confess this to my mom.

She gives me a concerned look. “Take it easy, Anni. Follow your heart and trust your gut. Also, one call, and I’m up there ready to kick anyone’s butt for hurting you.”