Page 6 of 32 Days in May

“Jesus Christ.”

“Exactly. That guy. All his stuff. He loved to be alone and wander around. In deserts. What a pill. At least I’m at the beach.” I clear my throat. “I’m totally fine.”

“Okay.” Liv sighs again. “You promise?”

No, I don’t. I am tissue paper in a windstorm, but she can’t know that. She’ll start listing other people we know who have blown away. Other people who made promises they couldn’t keep.

I set down the knife. “Yes, Liv. I promise.”

Thursday, May 4

“Why?” Allie is sitting cross-legged at the kitchen table working on a Diamond Art portrait of an alpaca farm. She does this every day before work to help steady her nerves before an entire day of being, voluntarily, locked in a room with teenagers. She calls it meditative, but I fear it may be compulsive.

“I told you why.” I sit across from her. I’ve invited myself into Soph and Allie’s half of the duplex. I do this whenever I wake up at a respectable time. They’re allowed approximately three hours of daily alone time before I start to feel like they’re conspiring against me, plotting to replace me with another forlorn straight woman.

When my parents bought their half of the wood-shingled bungalow, the first floor was occupied by a sycophantic palm reader addicted to diet pills. When Tamra passed, the Fabiola family was left with a gaping hole in our hearts. Who now would tell my sister and me we were too fat for our tankinis? Who now would inform our little brother that he had Ted Bundy’s unibrow? A few years ago, Soph and Allie moved in. A few months ago, I attached myself to them like a barnacle. They’re better neighbors than we—or Tamra—could have ever predicted. We share a wraparound porch, a carport, five beach chairs, and a shed. It’s an intimate situation.

“It was too much effort. Wash days were exhausting.” And my hair was an emotional and physical ball and chain, draining me of my last vestiges of sanity. Plus it was thinning and every shower I came away with a palm-size hairball that left me cosmically bummed.

Soph sets a mug of darkly brewed coffee in front of me. They make coffee so strong, it temporarily allows me to feel human again.

“Do your parents know?” Allie asks. She grew up in one of those freaky Protestant families where moms don’t let their daughters cut their hair before their first blood. There’s a lot of hand-wringing and crying over little girls being all grown up, as if it’s never happened before.

“Why”—I pause to sip—“would I tell my parents?”

“Any word from Hot Doctor’s Hot Cousin?” Soph interjects, clearly bored with all the hair talk.

“We don’t know if he’s hot yet,” I warn them. “Maybe Hot Doctor got all the hot and Hot Cousin was left with the genes that make you mean about board games.”

Soph and Allie grumble in unison. This risk is not unique to heterosexuality.

We clear the table of coffee cups and breakfast plates. Allie kisses Soph goodbye. I busy myself at the sink, awkward and unkissed.

I don’t work on Thursdays, but I’ve been such a sack of shit lately that I force myself to help Soph, my current employer, paint a new sign for the produce stand. Busy season starts soon and we have many local septuagenarian competitors we need to bury.

I spend three hours fastidiously painting PEACHY GREENS FRUIT & VEG. LOCALLY GROWN in MALAGA COUNTY, NJ onto a slab of wood. Getting out of my cross-legged sitting position in the carport takes another three hours. The sun has moved across the sky, and I am still shaking the blood back down to my ankles.

Allie and I are sitting around the kitchen table, enjoying a predinner doom scroll, when I get a text from a 212 number.

Hey Nadia, it’s Marco Antoniou. My cousin gave me your number. Any chance you’re free for dinner? :)

My jaw drops so viciously, I pull a muscle. “Hold the fucking phone.”

Soph turns from where they’re caramelizing onions for a galette that will bring me as close to cumming as I’ve been in months.

“Marco Antoniou,” I say out loud, and I almost can’t believe it.

“Jennifer Aniston,” Allie replies.

“Betty White,” Soph adds.

“What?”

Allie shrugs. “We’re naming Greek celebrities.”

“What? No.” I hold up my phone. “Marco Antoniou. He just . . . he just fucking texted me?”

“Holy shit.” Allie, hunched under the weight of the work bag still around her shoulders, finally looks up from her phone. Then, she shakes herself free and appears almost instantly at my elbow. “Antoniou! How did we not piece this together? Celebs—they’re everywhere.”