Page 59 of Like A Daydream
Normally, he would think that an anxiety attack was coming, but this time he knows that it’s from the girl who had just disappeared behind the door. It’s a thrill running through him, not terror. Even though he thinks it should be a combination of both.
Danielle emerges from the bathhouse a few minutes later, cut off shorts over her bikini bottoms, a tan long sleeve shirt with a map of Adirondack Park on the back pulled on to fight the chill.
She’s smiling at him, and she looks every bit the thirty-two-year-old she is, nothing like the working-her-ass-off single mom that life has thrown in her direction.
Andrew can’t decide which version of her he likes best, so he decides he likes both. Both sides make Danielle, and he’ll take her over anyone, any day of the week.
“I want to show you something,” she says, reaching for Andrew’s hand, “come on.”
He lets her pull him along behind her, through the woods and up a narrow, almost non-existent path. No one follows them, no one is coming. They’re completely alone.
She stops when they’re halfway up the hill and she turns back towards the lake. “Look.”
Through the clearing on the trail, he can see the town across the lake, light buildings dotted between the trees. He hasn’t seen the town like this before, and it makes his heart slam against his ribs.
Which sounds silly when he thinks about it, but it’s a place he’s found healing, a place that he knows, a place where his entire life is going to stay when he’s back in Raleigh.
“In the fall,” she says, nudging her shoulder against his gently, he hooks an arm around her waist and pulls her to him, “the leaves change and it makes the buildings look so pretty, even prettier than they do right now.”
He shifts her so she’s in front of him and hooks his chin over her shoulder.
“Emerson and I used to come here a lot,” she says, relaxing back against him. “It was kind of our thing. When we were in high school we would come and do homework on the trail, just looking at the village.”
“You guys were really good friends, weren’t you?” he asks, knowing that he has to keep her talking when she’s feeling like this.
“Have you ever heard of the idea of platonic soul mates?” she asks. He nods. “She was like that. It was deeper than normal friendship, like we were destined to share the same space at the same time.”
“I know that feeling,” he says with a nod.
JT had been similar for him when they had finally gotten over their stupid college rivalry and became friends.
“I don’t have any siblings,” Danielle continues, “and I love my parents, but high school was complicated. I always had Em, though. She understood me and had my back when I didn’t have anyone else, and this was where we would come when we just needed to be.”
She pulls away from Andrew, but takes his hand and pulls him over to a bench he hadn’t noticed, sitting down. He joins her, sitting close enough so their thighs are touching, but not expecting anything else.
She leans into his side, traces a pattern in the dirt with a stick she grabbed off of the ground.
“Tell me more about her,” he says, quietly, staring out at the town across the lake. “I want to know about her, too. She was important to you, so she’s important to me.”
Danielle releases a breath, as if she needed permission to talk about her best friend.
“She was this bright, burning energy,” Danielle says, “and I was happy to be in her orbit. She had all my secrets, knew all the little pieces that made me. When she and Jack had Harper, it was like something else clicked into place for me. I got to watch her be a mom, and fall in love with her daughter, too.”
Andrew slides a hand up her spine, rubbing the base of her neck gently.
“People don’t ask how I am,” Danielle says, “it’s like they don’t want to talk about it. And I know that grief is a hard thing for anyone, but it feels good to talk about her. Most of the time I think people just don’t want to hear it.”
She pauses, and releases a breath, as if she’s been holding all of this in for weeks, and she’s just now able to tell him about it.
“I went to her grave before I came here,” she says, “just to try and get some stuff off my chest, but it didn’t feel right. Not when it’s like this taboo thing.”
“I can’t imagine trying to go through it when it feels like you’re alone,” Andy says, rubbing a hand up and down her arm.
“Even her brother won’t talk about it with me, and that’s hard. Besides Harper, he’s the one person I have left who knew her like I did, and it just doesn’t seem fair. I want to talk about her, and not act like her death was this big tragedy. It was, but I want to be able to celebrate her life and remember her and for people to ask. I don’t want to avoid it anymore like everyone seems to do because it’s the comfortable thing.”
“Grief is just processed differently by everyone,” Andrew says, “and that’s okay. That’s why I’m asking you to tell me about her.”
“I know… It would just be so much easier to get through this if people talked about it. Two months ago, I was single, enjoying life, running my business and trying to figure out what came next… Now I’m a mom? And the only thing that’s on my mind every day is that I hope I’m doing right by her,” she says softly, “with the whole parenting thing. With her parents back in town, it’s hard to know for sure, and it’s scary. I feel like I’m under a microscope and they’re just waiting to take Harper from me.”
