Page 38 of Happy After All

I need to get a few last-minute things before the barbecue tonight, even though everyone pooled their money to buy most of the ingredients, which was wholly unnecessary.

But they’re insistent on treating me for my birthday, despite the fact that Elise made me a pie last night. Idothink it’s lovely.

I get lost in that loveliness. It’s a choice. One I made when I moved here, one I made often. When I was moving out to Rancho Encanto, I was behind the slowest moving Volvo I’ve ever seen, and it had a bumper sticker that said:Don’t postpone joy.

I was in pain, and I had every reason to wait until I healed to start enjoying sunsets and pie and new friends.

I took it as a sign from the universe. To try to let the joy exist alongside grief.

If I can do that, I can definitely choose to just enjoy the day.

Because it’s much easier than pondering Nathan.

Nathan is easier than accepting that Christopher is going to come here, to my bubble. So this explains the perseverating.

I choose to focus on the scenery.

The sky is glorious blue, the mountains on the horizon purple. The spiky grass ripples in the breeze, and the naughty arms of the Joshua trees bend and sway as the wind picks my hair up off my shoulders.

I take in each feeling, each sound. I choosejoy. Dammit.

Just then, the sound of a footstep breaks my tranquility, followed by a whole man, who steps out in front of me from a path to the right.

I stop, and so does he.

Of course it’s Nathan.

Everything in me reacts predictably. My body does not choose joy.

It chooses an adrenaline rush that makes my knees shake.

“Oh,” I say, perhaps dimly, but this is the first time I’ve seen him out of context.

I’ve only ever seen him at the Pink Flamingo. Never anywhere beyond those hallowed walls, and here he is, seeming somehow taller and broader out in the wild.

“Going for a walk?” he asks.

This is near record-breaking friendliness for him, at least without the influence of alcohol.

“Yes. Though, not aimlessly. I’m just going to the grocery store for a couple of things.” I lift my arm, which has a few canvas bags draped over it. As if he needs evidence.

“That’s where I’m headed,” he says.

I don’t know if I should suggest we walk together or if that was the implication of him saying he was headed there himself.

I want to ask him that. I want to ask him a hundred things.

What I should want to ask him about is the fundraiser, and if he would be willing to help. Instead, I’m looking at the cut of his jaw.

“So,” I say. “This is an unusual time of year for you to come to the motel.”

I sneak a glance at him, and he’s looking at me with a completely unreadable expression. So far, so predictable.

“I’m finishing something,” he says.

“Oh.”

Still maddeningly opaque, even if Idoget it. I don’t want to talk about my works in progress either.

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