Page 26 of No Place Like You

“It’s fine,” she repeats herself, sounding so far from fine I want to punch myself in the gut.

She steps away from her suitcase, now slowly filling with wrinkled clothes and toiletries that were left undamaged. Her foot catches on the edge of the mattress, and she trips toward me. I reach out to her, catching her fall, and she lets out a small squeak. “Sorry,” she whispers with her eyes downturned.

“Lucy,” I say, trying to get her attention with her arms gripped in my hands.

“I’m sure the super will fix the door as soon as I get a hold of him. I just need to?—”

“No,” I argue.

She gives me an incredulous glare. “No?”

“I’m sorry about what I said before. I really am, but you can’t stay here for another two months.”

“Where the hell am I supposed to go?”

Stay with me,I think. I have the spare bedroom I’m going to put her up in tonight, the same one I haven’t been able to fill since Hayden moved out. I want to blurt out the offer for her to stay with me while she’s here, but I feel like it might be too rash for her to take as a sound offer. It definitely doesn’t sound too rash on my end. In fact, it feels like the perfect solution.

I stay silent, holding back thestay with mewhisper-chants in my head, and she doesn’t say anything else, almost like her question was completely rhetorical and she just proved a point. Instead, she brushes off my concern with a breezy smile, something Janet would probably do. In fact, I’m noticing how Lucy and Janet are so alike. They’re both so independent, they’d never let a man tell them what to do (believe me, Charles and Iknow), and they’d never intentionally burden anyone with their own troubles. I see it in the way Janet is shouldering through her chemo and the way Lucy moved all the way out here without telling her family, knowing they’d most likely overwhelm her with worry and skepticism. I must have done something right in my life to surround myself with strong women full of tenacity and spunk. But right now, it’s definitely not working in my favor.

“Lucy,” I urge again, hoping she’ll see my point and hoping even harder that she herself will ask if she can stay with me instead of coming back to this hellhole.

“Dex, I appreciate you letting me stay at your place tonight, which is probably a smart thing to do considering this damn door doesn’t even lock right anymore, but I’ll be fine once it’s fixed. Plus, like you said, this is temporary. I’m going back to Seattle once this internship is over, and I can pretend like I didn’t spend my days sharing a toilet seat and shower stall with complete strangers.” She says all of this to the floor, to her suitcase, to her toaster oven as she picks it up and places it on the nearest countertop. To every inanimate object in her room except to me.

I try to flip through a mental catalog of things that have worked on Janet in the past. All the things I did as a teenager to get her to do what I wanted. Ididthreaten to hawk a loogie at her once when she refused to give up the TV remote. Or maybe a bribe? I huff a sigh of frustration. None of that’s going to work. I’m just going to have to stay quiet and let her work through this on her own.

The rest of the time spent in Lucy’s apartment is silent. I replace the mattress onto the bed frame and upright the rest of the small appliances that made their way onto the floor. Lucy fills a garbage bag of ruined items, clothes, blankets, and towels. All items that she can thankfully replace. Except for that necklace. When she’s packed away the last of her belongings into her suitcase and I’ve taken the broken glass in a dustpan down to the dumpster, we survey our work.

“Thanks for your help, Dexter.” She huffs a small sigh and slings a large tote bag over her shoulder at the same time I grip the retractable handle on her suitcase.

I give a close-lipped smile and solemn nod. “Let’s go,” I say before turning to leave the apartment.

15

Lucy

“Holy shit! Are you okay?”

A deep sigh slips through my lips louder than I mean to. From my sprawled out position on the full-size bed in Dexter’s spare bedroom, my elbows pressing into the soft mattress and my chin resting on the heels of my hands, I offer a sad smile to Annabelle through my phone screen.

“Yeah,” I say through a deep exhale. “I’m fine.”

I’m as fine as I can be, considering half of my belongings have either been ruined or stolen. Along with my MacBook. MyfuckingMacBook!

Every time I think of all the work I have saved in my laptop, the pictures, I want to crumble into a pile of mush. A gloopy, hundred-and-twenty-seven-pound Lucy mush pile. And I can’t even afford to replace it right now. How am I supposed to get any work done without a laptop? I guess I should consider myself lucky I had my camera on me when I got robbed. I think ifthatwere stolen along with my MacBook, I would’ve called it quits and taken the next flight home.

I peer at my luggage still standing upright with the handle retracted and realize how lucky I am that I had Dexter to call too. I considered calling my sisters, but then the idea of calling Dexter popped into my head, and it felt like the better alternative to ambushing my sisters with my presence in New York Cityandthe burglary that left me a sobbing mess.

When he got to my apartment, it felt so right. He knew exactly what to say, how to comfort and console me. He even knew when to stay quiet and let me simmer with my own thoughts. Having him there while I dolefully picked up my ruined things made it less scary and daunting. And it was really sweet how he rolled up his sleeves and started collecting the mess with me.

“And who’s this guy you called?” she asks, a hint of concern and suspicion cloaked over her face. “Don’t tell me you hopped on Tinder in the month you’ve been gone.”

“He’s an old friend,” I explain. “My sister’s marrying his old roommate.”

“Hold up.” Annabelle stops me. “Is it…Mr. Wrung You Out Like a Dish Towel Three Years Ago?”

“I was hoping you wouldn’t remember that conversation.”

“How could I forget the best sex of your life?”

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