Page 19 of No Place Like You

I look at my sister. Her pleading, downturned eyes peer up at me, and her hand lightly grips my forearm. “Don’t let this cancer define me,” she says, a calm assertiveness in her voice. “I’m still me. This is just something I’m going to have to beat.”

I choke back the enormous knot in my throat through a nod.

This is my big sister. The one I’ve been looking up to for my entire life. She’s been my rock. When I graduated high school, she was the one standing front and center, waving a big sign with my face blown up and plastered on a poster board. She was the one who took me in when I first moved to the city, letting me crash on her couch for a week before I movedto my own place. She was the only one who was able to pull me out of myself when our parents died. What if I lose her? Who would I have? I would be all alone in this world. The version of myself that existed with Janet would be a distant memory, long forgotten with no one to relive those memories with.

I’m slowly walking back to my apartment, the heat dissipating into something cooler now that the day has eased into night. My gaze is settled on the concrete ground, aimlessly tracking the crooked cracks that trace between the divided squares. As I near the streets closer to my apartment, I get a text message from Janet letting me know she’s safely at the gallery and that Charles is already there with her, to which I respond with a quick thumbs-up emoji.

As I’m shoving my phone back into my pocket, I look up into a storefront. It’s a wine and cheese store. There are large cheese wheels on display at the window along with an entire wall of various wines on the opposite side. When I peer inside, I see people moving about the wine racks. Nothing out of the ordinary usual retail traffic. But then I see someone familiar perusing the large wine wall, right in between two wooden barrels showcasing triangle blocks of parmesan.

Is that…?

No, it can’t be. She should be thousands of miles away. On the opposite coast.

Curiosity getting the better part of me, I enter the store. When I walk toward the wine wall, I stop.

It is her.

“Lucy?”

The last image I have of Lucy engraved in my mind is of her sitting at the edge of my bed, her bare back facing me with the light cascading from the windows onto my messy bed, creating shadows that outlined her curves. Her arms were holding up the thin, flat sheet to cover her front, and she thought I was dozing off into a lazy, post-coital slumber. But I wasn’t. Instead, I was watching her through heavily lidded eyes. I peeked at the way her body rose from my bed and her blonde hair tumbled down to the middle of her back. I paid attention to how her body reacted when my fingers grazed over the two hollowed dimples between her hips, and she smiled at me over her shoulder. I swear, I would give my left arm to hear her giggle the way she did when I yanked her back onto the bed, the sheets tangling between us while she fell limp in my arms. And probably even my right arm to hear her moan the way she did when she wrapped her legs around my waist.

“Dexter!”

She’s dressed in distressed jeans, a loose fitting T-shirt, and white Converse. The large wine bottle she was examining slackens in her grip as she turns to face me. I look around to see a couple of faces turn in our direction after Lucy practically shrieked my name, looking equal parts shocked and panicked.

“Are you visiting Nat?” I ask, sauntering a step closer to her.

“Uh…um,” she stammers. Her eyes shift to the door, then back to the wine that’s still in her hand. She places it back on the wooden racks, shoving it into the nearest available slot. “I-I, um…”

“Is everything okay?”

She sighs and starts gnawing on her bottom lip while refusing to meet my eyes. “Dexter,” she finally says. “No one can know I’m here.”

My head jerks back, and my expression twists sideways. “Huh?”

She doesn’t answer me. She just shifts on her feet, looking so uncomfortable. Her hand comes up to her face, and she cups her cheek, her eyes turning down into the saddest set of puppy eyes.

“Lucy,” I say softly, getting her attention. “What’s going on?”

11

Lucy

Week one down,about eleven more to go. But who’s counting, right?

In case my dejected state isn’t an obvious answer to that rhetorical question, the answer is me. I am. I’m mentally drawing a thick red line through every passing week until I can go back home.

Sigh. I miss Jeremy.

My first week at Elevate Media has been stressful, draining, and outright dissuading.

I finally met Kyle Viotto, and his presence on set was enough for me to doubt every bit of my skill while clinging on to the need to please him. He’s just as Elaine described him. Talented and knowledgeable. But also curt and tough. He has enough rudeness in his presence for it to be considered complaining if I mentioned this character trait of his out loud. He’s short with us interns, barely answering our questions without leaving any room for follow-up and forcing us to figure things out on our own.

Today, when I asked him what exposure setting he wanted the backlight at, he walked away without giving me an answer, barely giving me a sideways glance and leaving me a little baffled and offended. But what am I supposed to do? This is what I signed up for.

After spending the entire week running back and forth between shoots and outfit changes and proper lighting techniques, all of which I was gradually learning and slowly getting the hang of with Elaine by my side, I needed something to relax. So I ventured into Scarlet Vino, a wine and cheese store I’ve walked past a dozen times since my arrival to the city. With each brisk pass I made by the storefront, I told myself I would save the purchase of a forty-dollar bottle of wine on a day when I really needed it, and today was that day. The last thing I expected was to run into Dexter while deciding between the shiraz or the pinot noir.

Instead of walking out with a bag full of wine, quite possibly two or three bottles, and a healthy serving of havarti, I’m now sitting at the steps leading up to my rented apartment.

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