Page 52 of The Burning
“They were lucky I didn’t want to put that bottle down.” Mendoza fake-punched the air and Elodie giggled in the back.
“You better put those fists down before your wife whoops your ass,” I said, nodding to his house when we pulled up a few minutes later.
Gloria, now in her pajamas, walked down the porch and toward us the moment my tires touched the driveway. I guess she’d heard my exhaust rumbling as we drove up. That was the only thing I hated about my truck; it was fucking loud.
She wrapped her arm around her husband’s back as we all told them good night. He was slurring now, drinking from the bottle the second he was out of my car.
As their front door shut, Fischer’s eyes caught mine in the rearview mirror.
“Should we be worried about him?” he asked, his voice soft.
I put my gearshift in reverse and looked back at him.
“Yes, we should be,” I said, wondering if I would be back there later that night.
Chapter Twenty-One
Karina
“His kiss was sweet enough that when he kissed me, the salt in the water around us turned to sugar,”Elodie said, reading aloud from a little poetry book I had bought when I lived in Texas.
She’d found it in the couch that morning when we were vacuuming under the cushions. We had been cleaning the living room all day and getting ready to paint. I even moved the furniture. Elodie obviously didn’t move any heavy stuff since she was pregnant; instead she dusted every part of the room and helped by tidying the books on the shelves under the TV, wiping each one down with a rag and whatever brand of nonchemical Lysol she’d found at Target. It felt good to clean things out, but it was already late in the day, and I hoped my enthusiasm wouldn’t burn out before we had our planned movie night.
I had this urge for change lately. I needed it. I was unsettled, I could feel it, and I knew that I wouldn’t be able to feel at ease until the space surrounding me was different—like I could erase the memory of Kael, of my ex, Brien—of everything. The dark colors in my living room needed a refresh, kind of like my new hair and my new chair.
Elodie and I both had off work today because Mali had closed the spa for the week while her daughter was having a baby. I had just gone on my Starbucks run of the day to make us feel extra-productive and pinned a bunch of pictures on a Pinterest board without knowing that all of my Facebook friends could see every single one. They seemed to like what I was posting and my phone kept going off as they repinned or saved the stuff I was finding. Of course, on my tiny budget, my house would never look like the Pinterest board of my dreams, but anything would be better than the random blend of décor I had collected over the years. Some of it would stay, but most needed to go.
I had entered a new phase. As of today, the new carefree, light, and airy Karina who didn’t overthink everything was going with the flow and focusing on her own life. Spending hours on Instagram looking at motivational, self-help, and mental-health memes inspired me. So, it was tan and light-gray pillows from Target, a concrete table decoration (even if I wasn’t exactly clear on what itwas), and anything that had a “chill” tone to it (whatever that felt like in the moment).
I began to paint the walls a crème brûlée color from some old paint cans that had been under the kitchen sink since I bought my house. The original plan had been to paint the entire living room and kitchen today, but it ended up taking way longer than I expected.
As the paint dried, I dragged the couch across the floor and moved it to the wall that separated the kitchen and living room. Over the last few days since I had found the flea market, I had been subtly moving things around. Today was the payoff; we took the painter’s tape off the baseboards and plopped down on the clean couch. I had successfully distracted myself from obsessing over Kael for a few days. He came and went inside my mind, but I was almost at the end of it—I hoped.
After a short rest, and some more vacuuming, Elodie returned to the little poetry book and became fascinated with it. I went through a poetry phase when I was eighteen-ish and had spent an entire summer thinking I was going to either become a poet or marry one.
“She was the electricity that kept me going. But what I did not know was that I shared her with him. His ghost claimed more of her than I did, until they vanished together.”
“How melodramatic,” I huffed, remembering how deep that little book had felt when I’d read it over and over that summer. Back then, every poem had spoken to me personally. Now it all sounded so different. I had tied my own meaning to it back then, when my problems seemed so small compared to now. At that time in my life, I had no clue what love was. Not even close.
“Oh, come on, Karina. Don’t be such a downer.” She pressed the little book to her chest. “These are beautiful.”
“Sure.” I snorted. “I loved them when I read them, but I’m done wasting my time chasing some fairy-tale man who doesn’t exist on planet Earth.”
Elodie rolled her gorgeous eyes. The blue cotton romper she was wearing made her eyes even brighter than usual. She was stunning in a casual, breathtaking way. Inside and out.
“No duh. But we can at least pretend and read poems and things to make us long for it. Romance has to live somewhere, even if it’s not in our lives.” As she said it, she slid the book onto a shelf between my old textbookTrail Guide to the Bodyand another poetry book that I last recalled seeing covered in dust.
“How are things with Martin?” she asked with her back to me, rubbing a cloth along the entertainment center.
“The same as before: nonexistent.” I tossed the pillows back onto the couch. The living room was almost done and my back and head hurt.
She frowned. “But even after the other day? He hasn’t called you or anything?”
“What do you mean the other day?” I’d never spoken so fast in my life.
Her eyes widened. “Uhm, I mean . . . the market?”
Great, so Kael had told her. Jealousy, annoyance, embarrassment, violation, all rose up.
