Page 57 of Fated

And then Mila runs to us, skipping between us and grabbing our hands. She pulls us into the light, her red hair flashing in the sun, and then we’re walking hand in hand down the path, off to have pastries and coffee.

We’ll spend the morning together, me, Max, and Mila. It’s the same as a hundred mornings before. Yet looking over Mila’s bouncing head to Max, I acknowledge it’s also very, very different.

21

I fallasleep thinking of Max, worrying at the way he squeezed my hand when he said goodbye. I worry that the only place I’m capable of loving is in the safety of my dreams. Although I don’t even know if I’m capable of loving there.

The warm weight of the gold pocket watch settles in my hand, the ticking vibrating through me like a heartbeat.

I wake up to neon-bright sunlight shining over my eyes. The light hits like an ice pick and I flinch, fluttering my eyelashes open. I’m on the lumpy rattan couch in the living room of the cottage. The worn canvas fabric scrapes against my bare skin, and my thin cotton dress tangles around my legs.

The warm, humid air thick with old wood and salty sea drags over me. There’s the bracing scent of brewing coffee mixed with the lingering smell of bonfire stuck in the fabric of my dress. My legs are tucked tightly into my stomach, and when I look around, the room tilts like a sailboat tossing about on a rough sea.

I moan, dizzy, and the noise ricochets, hammering through my head.

My mouth is cotton-wool dry. It tastes as though I ate a bucketful of sand.

“What happened?” I ask, and my voice comes out like the croak of a dying frog.

“You got drunk.”

I blink and even the fluttering of my eyelashes is painful.

Amy sits cross-legged on the floor in a pair of blue pajama shorts and a tank top. Her hair is a mass of messy curls, some of them sticking straight up in the air. She has on a pair of round glasses and she’s holding a three-inch-thick novel—Dostoyevsky.

“It’s too early for Dostoyevsky,” I tell her, burying my head in the scratchy couch cushion. The rubber nipple of an empty baby bottle pokes me in the cheek. I shove the bottle deeper in the cushion and open an eye to peer at the capricious light of the living room.

Amy isn’t impressed.

Sean squats nearby on the wooden floor, gripping a wooden hammer. It’s one of those toys where babies hit colorful pegs, nailing them into a wooden block. He whacks a peg.

Bam!

I moan.

Bam!

Oh no.

Bam!

Apparently, these toys were made to punish parents for drinking.

Except I didn’t drink. “Howmuchdid I drink?”

Amy shrugs, sticking a finger in her book to keep her page. “Oh, I’d say about ... hmm ... there was the rum shots, the daiquiri, the piña colada. It was enough to make you stand on top of the dessert table and sing ‘Kokomo.’”

“What?”

“And then there was the tequila, which is when you decided to dance with Robert on the same table.”

“My word. Why? I would never do that.”

Why would my dream-self keep sabotaging me by making terrible decisions when I’m not around?

“Mom, please.” Amy flips the pages of her book, the noise a quick fluttering, and then she slams her finger to the page. “‘Above all, don’t lie to yourself.’” She looks up, a bit of pride in her smile. “See? It’s never too early for Dostoevsky.”

Oh gosh. I press a hand to my skull. The hammering there beats in time with Sean whacking his toy hammer on his wooden board.

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