Page 22 of 32 Days in May

“Is this the spring musical or the end-of-year concert?”

“Musical.”

“Oh, fuck yeah, I’m in.” Allie’s an English teacher at Malaga County High School and their one-woman theater department.

She twists her hair, as blond and fine as corn silk, away from her face and lifts another handful of green beans from the crate at her feet onto the scale between us. “Half a pound.”

I stick a handwritten label to the front of a plastic bag before scooping them up. “Is that redheaded kid still the lead in everything?”

“Charles Roberto Jenkins? No, unfortunately he couldn’t audition this semester.”

“Man, what a star. I hope he thanks you in his Tony acceptance speech.”

My phone dings. I know who it is before I even look. Or, I think I know who it is, because I know what I’ve done.

Marco: First date?

“It’s happening,” I announce, like a woman going into labor.

Allie looks up from her dirt-covered hands. “What?”

“Marco.” I clear my throat around his name, embarrassment churning in my stomach. “We’re dating. Tonight. We’re dating.”

“What?” She scoots to the edge of the porch swing with such force, she almost flings a Birkenstock at my forehead. “Again? So soon?”

“Don’t get excited. This man is absolutely up to no good. I don’t know what his end game is, but I’m highly suspicious.” I can’t believe what I’m about to tell her—what I’m probably going to repeatedly tell people all month. “Have you seen the movie Sweet November?”

Allie shakes her head, zipping her hoodie up under her chin. “We were a Veggie Tales–only family.”

“Right. Well, it’s this rom-dram I brought up to him where these two morons promise each other that they’ll date for one month and one month only. Then—surprise, surprise—they end up falling in love. Now he wants us to Sweet November but different, which—within the context of the movie—just means I don’t ghost him and die.”

For the first time I’ve met her, Allie is stunned into silence. Eventually, she stutters, “Well, that’s very, um, that’s kind of . . . romantic, right?”

“Soph whittled you a whistle for your one-week anniversary,” I remind her. “You know, he’s so hot that it’s actually like, a joke, seeing him walking around Evergreen in the middle of the day. Oh, and he definitely hates it here—”

“Poor guy, leave him alone! Someone could say the same thing about you.”

“I make sense here,” I fire back, holding up a handful of dirty green beans. “I’m not some douchebag fallen from grace trying to—Jesus Christ.” My phone starts buzzing in my lap and I almost keel over from the shock of it. “He’s calling me.” Of course, I immediately put him on speaker before shouting into the receiver, “You’re relentless!”

“You’ve given me no choice,” he replies calmly. “I only have twenty-five chances to hang out with you.”

“Why are you in Evergreen?” I demand.

“I’m house-sitting for my uncle.” He sounds totally unfazed—amused, even. “Why are you in Evergreen?”

“Irrelevant. Why do you need a fake girlfriend?”

“There’s nothing fake about this. I want to date you. I need to be outta Dodge in a month. You don’t seem to want something serious. Simple.”

Allie’s eyes have quadrupled. “Invite him,” she’s hissing over and over, “to Mamma Mia! junior. Invite him.”

I turn away from her and take Marco off speakerphone. “It is fake. And Sweet November is not my favorite movie.”

My eyes settle on the Bracken house across the street. It’s the only beach cottage left on a block of totally gentrified beach house behemoths. For all of the summers of my childhood, the Bracken house had been inhabited by the elderly widow Eleanor Bracken. Even in my earliest memories of Evergreen, Mrs. Bracken was ancient—a frail, sweet-voiced woman with long gray hair she clipped away from her face with a mother-of-pearl claw clip. Back then the other houses on our street had also been petite Cape Cods, though none of them had dreamy lilac shutters and a screened-in porch like the Brackens’. Now, the cottage stood alone in its sun-faded, dilapidated charm. Even my parents had made a series of slow but significant improvements to the duplex, like painting the wood-shingled façade a rich, trendy navy blue and replacing the old cement lawn ornaments with WASPy little pinwheels. Last month, Dad had the carport freshly paved.

Eleanor passed away two years ago, finally joining her beloved Victor on the other side. In my funky lava-lamp brain, this realization hits me anew. I can still picture Eleanor pruning her rosebush by the buttercream-colored front door, waving to us as she smiled up from under her sun hat. She’d been missing Victor the entire time, hadn’t she? Distracting herself with the task of keeping their family home in tip-top shape. It had been a beautiful, meaningful task. But still, a distraction.

“Too late. You said it was.” Marco’s voice, lilting with sarcasm, snaps me out of my sudden plunge into sentimentality. Man, I really am lonely.