Page 86 of Wide-Eyed
I beamed, and barely restrained myself from bouncing up and down. “Are you sure?”
“Of course. Be here at half five if you want to have a good gander at all the china,” he continued. “There’s heaps of it. Caroline and Mike’s grandmother used to nick china. It was a whole situation.”
I did jump up and down then, and I threw my arms around him.
Kev was surprised but patted my back. After promising punctuality—I’d have to set about six alarms as timeliness didn’t come naturally to me—I went back inside Levitate to find the silk scarf I’d left there this morning. My plan was to share a champagne toast at home with Mike, then put together the perfect family dinner outfit. Something with a knit. And a collar. With a bolero! Ooh, but Mike and Kev always wore plaid shirts, so maybe I could do something in plaid? Then I’d really look like part of the family. For family dinner.
I was so happy I could have jumped in the air and clacked my heels together. If I had the coordination, I would have.
“Lyssa?”
Caroline was beside Levitate’s counter, talking to Aroha through the hole in the wall that led to the kitchen.
“Caroline!”
Guilt suffused me, slow and thick, like a thick glob of nail polish sliding down the side of the bathtub, which I’d spilled because I tried to balance the bottle there while painting my toes.
I’d been so wrapped up in Mike—making out with Mike, being driven around in Mike’s car, having orgasms with Mike—and shooting content in Cilla’s garden that I’d forgotten that my best friend had traveled halfway around the world to be here at the same time as me. I’d felt so abandoned when Caroline had first fallen for Chase, and now, I’d done the exact same thing—except worse, because I was doing it in her family home, while LARPing as a Holliday.
For a moment, I was lost in my panic and guilt.
This all abated when Caroline threw her arms around me.
We bounced up and down, hugging, screeching, until I tumbled over a chair, and Caroline, who was tiny, cleared all the sugar packets off the counter with one pointy elbow.
“I missed you!”
“I missed you more!”
If I hadn’t known for a fact that Caroline had traveled for about twenty-two hours yesterday, I wouldn’t have believed it. Her skin was smooth and glowing, her cheeks and lips the same shade of pink as her bouncy hair, which swooped dramatically from her deep side part.
Chase walked into the café then and kissed his girlfriend, then we hugged too. Part of me had wanted to hate Chase for luring Caroline out of mine and Root Beer’s home, but he was just too nice—sometimes boring. But always nice.
As ever, he wore his uniform of a tan sweater and a button down. My fingers itched to get my hands on his Black Amex and dress him properly; but he’d never let me. Chase was a creature of habit and would die in that boring sweater before he would let me dress him. It just didn’t do him justice! Chase was handsome, in a nerdy-professor way. If he and Caroline ever decided to procreate, their kids would be cute as hell. Vertically challenged, because Caroline was tiny and Chase wasn’t much taller than me; but cute.
“How are you finding Aotearoa, Lyssa?” Chase asked.
“It’s beautiful. This is your second time here, right?”
He nodded. “I still can’t get over how calm everything is. Listen to that?—”
I obligingly stood still, ear tilted. A few cars went past. One of the ducks in the courtyard—probably Zachary, he always had something to say—honked.
Eventually, I asked Chase, “Hear what?”
“It’s the sound of nothing.” Caroline rolled her eyes. “Soon you’ll be missing late-night bodegas, cabbies leaning on their horns, and that subway busker who sings about rat genitals.”
“Jerry! Oh, I miss him.”
“He has a new song about a cockroach disco, and it’s honestly a banger.”
Chase, who had never taken the subway, looked confused.
“The dairy here—that’s like a bodega, or a corner store,” I explained to Chase, “closes at five. You have to make sure you’re totally stocked up on stuff like chocolate, because if you get a late-night craving, you can’t do anything about it until nine the next morning. One time I had to pull all of the chocolate chips out of some cookies Mike had in the cupboard.”
And Mike hadn’t even been mad when I forgot to clean the unwanted cookie bits off the counter. He was a good man.
Chase checked his watch. “Sorry to dash, Lyssa, but Caroline, we should get going. We have to get to the supermarket over in Pie—um. Pie … Floss, how do you say it again?”
