Page 77 of No Place Like You

She stays quiet, her hands running over the edges of her laptop.

“What?” I ask.

“Are you okay? With her going back home?”

I shrug. “I don’t really have a choice.” I fidget with the water bottle in my hand. “She lives all the way across the country. I can’t just ask her to move here on a whim. And I can’t move over there, at least not without us discussing a future.”

“So then discuss it.”

I turn to face her, my face deadpan.

“What?” she says innocently.

“I can’t have that kind of talk with her.”

“Why not?”

“Because…”

“‘Because’ is not a reason, loser.”

I sigh. “Because we already did.”

“When?”

“A while back,” I explain. “We decided we’d hang out and just let things happen, and when she leaves, we’d go back to how things were before she moved out here.”

“So what were you guys? Friends with benefits?”

“Jan, no. We aren’t even…It’s not…” I stumble over a few words, letting the ambiguity of my silence do the talking.

“You two aren’t having sex?”

“You know, it’s really weird to have this conversation with you.”

She rolls her eyes. “Stop being such a baby. We aren’t talking about sex; we’re talking about you and Lucy.”

I rub a hand over my face and pause. This has all been sitting on my shoulders for a while now, weighing on me, with the load growing heavier and heavier each day. I wanted to talk to Lucy about it, maybe revisit our talk and see if we could renegotiate our terms or discuss an “after” once the wedding is past us. But then the other night happened, when I thought fora second maybe she wanted the same thing, and it was obvious she had no intention of revisiting anything. She’s going back to Seattle, and I’m going to stay here in Brooklyn.

“She hasn’t given me any kind of hint or clue oranythingthat she’d want to continue this beyond what we already discussed. I don’t think she wants to complicate things. She’s already talking about finding work when she gets back home. And what if…”

“But what if?”

I look at her. And what little pragmatic reasoning I have left dissolves. Because what if? What if I asked her to move out here permanently or I considered moving out to Seattle for the sake of being near her? What if the future of Lucy and Dex could go beyond the next few weeks? It could go on and on, indefinitely.

But then the whispers of that what-if start to fade away, making my heart fall while I picture my life without Lucy in it, imagining the fallout from the mere mention of a future. I couldn’t bear it, her shooting me down while reminding me this was never meant to go beyond the days we agreed upon. This is how it was always meant to be. “She’s going home after Hawaii, and I’m coming back to New York. That’s it.”

Janet leans forward, placing her hand on mine. “And you can tell me how snorkeling went when you get back?” she jokes morosely.

I shake my head. “I’ll go to a luau,” I reason.

She makes a disgusted look. “Lame!”

35

Lucy

I zipup my carry-on bag, a large black tote bag with neon green stitching and a wide zipper. My suitcase is packed to the brim, the last remnants of my belongings stuffed into every nook and cranny. I turn to look at my room, the emptiness of it sitting too loudly for me to ignore. The small bedside table missing my phone charger and hand lotion. The six-drawer dresser no longer holding my jewelry and perfume bottles on top. The bed, neatly made and without the messy pile of clothes I’ve been keeping in a heap at the foot of it. I no longer live here. My stay here has officially expired, and I’m moving on to the next chapter of my life.

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