Page 140 of Here & There

“I can come up on the weekends, though,” Shelby says, clearly scrambling to try to revive the mood.

I’m being a dick. I should help her. But I down the rest of my beer. “It’s a long drive,” I say.

“It’s not bad. Only three and a half hours, including the ferry. Totally doable.”

I clench my teeth and nod. I won’t fight her on it. But I get up to clear the table. I’m done eating.

As Shelby and I sit down by the fire pit later under the sunset, I try so hard to just enjoy her. Everything, in this moment, is as it should be. Shelby’s here, at home with us.

But when her arm lands on the arm of her chair next to mine, it feels nothing like it did that first night we sat here.

“Nadine says she’s moving back,” I say.

“Oh,” Shelby says. There’s a long, empty space where I want desperately to tell her I’m sorry for the way I’m being. To beg her to forgive me.

“She won’t,” I say, my voice bitter.

“Why do you think that?”

“Because Nadine never stays in one place for long. She just crashes into people’s lives and then peaces out.” I take a swig of my beer but find it empty. Thank Christ I didn’t bring the whiskey down here. I’d be chugging it from the bottle.

I drop the bottle onto the grass. It’s unlike me not to set it neatly next to the things I’m bringing back upstairs.

I can feel Shelby’s eyes on me. I can practically hear all the questions.

We talked a little about things before she left. I told her about how Nadine was a few years older than Annie, how she’d gotten her into all that trouble. But when she came back to town all those years later, she seemed to have done okay—she was in a moderately successful rock band. Men at the bar she’d found me at in Swan River were ogling her. But she only had eyes for me.

“Were you in love with her?” Shelby had asked.

“No,” I said. “Never.” My heart had broken that she’d had to ask me that.

I was too ashamed to tell her I’d been lonely. Depressed. Drunk. It was my mom’s birthday. It’s why I was drinking out of town. It would have only been her forty-fifth birthday. She was so fucking young when we lost her. WhenIlost her.

“It was one night,” I told Shelby. “One terrible, broken, shitty night.”

Now she looks at me with concern.

“Fuck,” I say out loud, rolling my hand into a fist on the armrest.

I sit up before she can touch me, leaning over so my elbows are on my knees.

If she touches me, I’ll fall apart.

I rub a hand over my head. I’m furious at myself that I’m right back where I was. I promised myself I’d be calm this wholeweekend. That I wouldn’t let Nadine’s presence be felt. But I’m so fucking angry.

“It’s seeing Nate get his hopes up that upsets me the most,” I say, my voice a croak. “He’s had so many people leave him. Nadine. His grandmother, when Nadine picked him up and dropped him here last year. Nadine a-fucking-gain.”

“She might stay?—”

“She won’t!” The words are harder than I mean. “And I don’t fucking want her to.”

I feel so fucking ashamed.

Which makes the words I say next even more absurd. “It sounds like work is going well.”

A beat passes. Shelby doesn’t say anything for a moment. “It is, actually. It’s going to be hard to say goodbye.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t.” I reach for the empty beer, forgetting I finished it.

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