IN THE MORNING, I don’t wake Miles.
As much as I would like to spend the morning making out, we were up late, and I’ll see him when he picks me up from work anyway. He’d texted Katya last night to see if she wanted his shift, and she’d replied not at all but I need money so I’ll take it, and so we’d decided to get dinner and drive up to a dark sky park.
While I’m dressing, I spot the note from Dad sitting on my dresser. When I was younger, I would’ve read it over and over, scouring for proof that he loved me, or clues about what I’d done to drive him off. Today, I just toss it into the trash on my way out.
I feel like Belle in the beginning of Beauty and the Beast, walking around with a shit-eating grin, greeting everyone like it’s the first day of the rest of my life. I’d be less obvious wearing an I’ve Had Great Sex sandwich board.
I stop at Fika for tea and order Ashleigh a latte too. When Jonah hands it back to me, a realization hits like a gong, reverberating through my bones.
Ashleigh.
I was supposed to paint with Ashleigh.
On my way out the door, I open my calendar and scan for her birthday.
Only, I never added Ashleigh’s birthday to my calendar. I’ve barely added anything in weeks, just like the whiteboard’s gone to the wayside.
An icy fist presses against the bottom of my stomach. It was this past Saturday, I’m positive.
She called in sick, I remember then, which triggers another nauseating lurch in my gut. She was sick on her birthday and I didn’t even check in on her.
How could I forget about her? How could I let this happen?
I practically run the rest of the way to work and get there right as Ashleigh’s locking her hatchback.
As I jog toward her, something flashes in her eyes, too quickly to read, and my heart turns over painfully as her expression settles back into neutrality.
I come to a stop, choke out, “Hey.”
When she doesn’t say anything, I hold her coffee out to her. She looks at it, her hand tightening on her purse strap for a second, before grudgingly accepting it.
“I’m so sorry,” I blurt out. “About Saturday. I just—my dad was in town, and then he left really abruptly, and I was completely distracted and Miles and I—god, I’m really sorry.”
She snorts, shakes her head. “You know,” she says. “It was your idea to do something for my birthday. You insisted. And weirdly, you even got me excited about it.”
“I know,” I say. “You shouldn’t have been home sick alone on your birthday. I understand why you’re upset with me.”
“I wasn’t sick,” she says. “I took the day off.”
“You never take the day off,” I point out.
“Which is why I did, for my birthday. I stayed home and got ready to paint my bedroom a horrendous shade of pink, just because, and watch Real Housewives with my friend.”
My face heats. “I’m so sorry, Ash. Why didn’t you call me?”
She scoffs. “What, more than those nine times? Call me old-fashioned, but once I hit the double digits, I start to feel a tad desperate.”
“Oh my god,” I groan. “The beach! We didn’t have service.”
“We,” she says.
My throat tightens. “I really can’t believe I missed it.”
“It’s fine,” she says.
“It’s obviously not,” I say. “It’s unbelievably shitty.”
“Seriously, Daphne, don’t worry about it,” she says. “I knew you were a we-girl and now you’ve got a we. As the internet likes to say, when someone tells you who they are, believe them.”
“Ashleigh!” I cry. “What are you talking about?”
“Miles,” she says. “That’s who you blew me off for, right?”
My heart feels like there’s a perforated line forming down its middle, a force tugging at each side. “I’m not a we with Miles. We’re not . . . that.”
“Maybe not,” she says. “But clearly something changed while I was in Sedona, and whatever it is that the two of you are doing now, you don’t need me anymore.”
Her words knock me back.
Is that what I did? Is that who I am?
A person who treats people like loosely penciled-in backup plans, in case nothing better comes along?
I feel sick.
Worse, I’m about to cry.
I try to rein it in, but my voice crackles: “You’re right. I treated you like a fallback, and that’s shitty. I’m sorry. That’s not what you are to me.”
She drops her eyes to the concrete. “Look, I’m trying to be on time to work, so if you don’t mind, I’m going to just . . .”
“Yeah,” I scratch out. “Of course.”
She walks away without looking back.
My heart breaks a little, and I have no one to blame but myself.
Miles isn’t here yet, so I pace along the curb, trying to burn off the cortisol flooding my system.
After a while, I go sit on the sun-hot bench and try to read. For once, I can’t seem to escape into a book. My mind keeps going back to Ashleigh.
A part of me just wants the comfort of being wrapped up in Miles’s arms, everything else temporarily obliterated. But then again, that’s how I got here.
I let myself get absorbed, again.
Still, I’ll feel better when he gets here. I’ll figure out a way to make it up to Ashleigh, to prove I’m not that person. I won’t let myself be.
I check the time. Twenty minutes late and no word yet. With how often Miles forgets his phone or lets it die, that’s not a huge surprise.
I pull my laptop out and angle it against the sun. I’m still connected to the library’s Wi-Fi, so I pull up my Read-a-thon checklist and keep working.
The parking lot empties. The streetlights pop on as the sun begins its slow plod toward sunset.
Forty minutes have passed, and a pit opens in my stomach.
I snap my computer shut and call Miles, trying not to picture him unconscious in a ditch on the side of the road, or in any other of a million worst-case scenarios.
The call rings out to voice mail.
I type everything okay? and hit send, then start pacing again.
You’re being ridiculous, I tell myself. He’s fine.
I check my phone.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Nine times.
Finally, on the tenth, my phone vibrates. I nearly throw it in my hurry to get it eye level.
shit day got away from me sorry but ya all good here u
I take it to mean, All good here, you?
Which begs the question, where is here?
At first, I’m just so relieved he’s alive and well—or else kidnapped by someone who texts exactly like him—that I literally sit down in the middle of my pacing, right on the library’s lawn, and say aloud, “Thank god.”
But then, slowly, a new feeling simmers through me.
This is Miles, I remind myself. He’ll have an explanation.
I’m backsliding toward the pit I’ve found myself in a hundred times before, waiting on someone I know in my gut isn’t coming.
But in the length of our friendship, Miles has never stood me up.
The things he said the other night—about the men in my life not wanting to be seen, running as soon as they are—play back, like a siren, a warning I missed.
It doesn’t make sense. I’m missing something.
I hammer out another text: I thought you were picking me up.
Miles types for a second, then stops without sending a message.
My body goes hot, my skin too tight. Suddenly I need to move. I need to get away. I can’t stay here another second.
I grab my stuff and walk. Leave the parking lot. The sun has started setting, but I’ll make it back before dark.
Except the idea of going home nauseates me.
In a temporary fit of deluded ambition, I pull my phone out to Google CrossFit gyms. Maybe I could burn off this anxiety by throwing tires, or whatever.
Miles is calling.
I try to answer, but I’ve just missed the last ring. A car honks, and I realize I’ve stopped in an intersection. I wave an apology and run across, dialing him back.
Straight to voice mail.
He must be leaving me a message. As I power walk, I eye the screen every few seconds, waiting for the message to buzz in. Instead I get a text alert: ya sorry something came up im really sorry
Three sorries deep and no closer to an explanation.
At this point, I feel stupid and a little angry.
I take a deep breath.
Things come up. We don’t owe each other anything, I tell myself. We made no promises.
But the truth is, Miles made me feel so safe, and now I feel completely discarded.
This is what you get, a voice taunts in my mind.
When you make all the same mistakes again and again.
When you choose the wrong people to trust and let down the right ones.
When you let someone in who’s told you in every conceivable way not to rely on them.
Trust people’s actions, not their words.
Don’t love anyone who isn’t ready to love you back.
Let go of the people who don’t hold on to you.
Don’t wait on people who don’t hurry for you.
Instantly, I feel so tired. Exhausted. As badly as I don’t want to go home, there’s nowhere else for me to go.
I’ve just started back toward the apartment when my phone rings again.
My heart soars in anticipation. He’ll have an explanation, something that makes sense of all of this.
Except it’s not him calling. It’s an unknown number.
I answer, just in case, trying to sound cool, calm, collected, and overall diametrically opposite how I actually feel. “Hello?”
“Hi!” a chipper, feminine voice says. “Is this Daphne Vincent?”
“Um.” I sniff, modulate my voice. “Who’s this?”
“My name’s Anika. I’m calling from the Ocean City Public Library.”
It takes three full seconds for me to make sense of what she’s saying.
“We were really impressed by your résumé,” she goes on, “and we’d love to set up a virtual interview.”
I press the heel of my hand to my forehead. The world keeps spinning.
This is what I’ve been waiting for, hoping for.
“Hello?” she says.
“Sorry,” I stammer. “Yes, I’m here.”
“Would you be available for an interview sometime in the next two weeks?” she says. “Assuming you’re still interested.”
It feels like I’m swallowing a rock.
“Of course I am,” I force out.
I’m not even sure which part I’m agreeing with—whether I’m available, whether I’m interested.
But it’s the only answer that could possibly make sense, right?
The escape hatch I’ve been waiting for, right when the whole house of cards is falling down, and I should feel happy, or at least relieved, but all I can feel is this whole-chest ache, yet another loss of someone, something, I didn’t even have to begin with.
“Fantastic!” she says. “Could you just send us your availability and we’ll set something up?”
I clear my throat. “I’ll check my calendar as soon as I get home.”
Home. I ignore the ping in my heart at that word.
It’s just an apartment. It’s never been mine.
