Page 61 of My Cosplay Escape
I’m tired and still have to walk all the way up Yost Drive. “Sure. Send me your chapters, and I’ll read them and—”
Daniel’s whiny laugh on the other end of the call makes me bristle. “You’re not reading my manuscript.”
“So I’m supposed to agree that you can say whatever you want about me, our marriage, and my pregnancy? Go to fudging—”
Daniel tsk-tsks half a world away. “Still can’t swear like an adult.”
“Grow up, Daniel.”
“I have. See, that’s the difference between the two of us.” His sigh is grotesquely self-indulgent. “I grew from our journey together. That’s why people need my memoir. That’s why Molly wants to publish it. I have so much wisdom. What happened was just as hard for me, but I chose to learn from life’s hard lessons. Not run away from them.”
My shoulders sag, and I feel sore, stiff, completely worn out, and defeated. “Let me think about it,” I squeak.
“What’s there to think about?” Daniel presses. “Some docs show up in your mailbox, you sign them, send one back, and then we never have to speak to each other again.”
Goldfish, I hate him. “Sure, whatever. Mail them to me.” Anything to get rid of Daniel forever.
Chapter Nineteen
My mom’s dwarf Meyer lemon tree is magical. Somehow it is always, without fail, bursting with lemons.
I didn’t appreciate my mom’s lemon tree for what it is—a miracle. Soft, juicy lemons. An abundance of them, areliableabundance from the day we moved in. And what did I do with this treasure? I occasionally pulled off a lemon and rubbed it on my hair when I was desperate for highlights. I rolled my eyes and complained whenever Mom asked me to head out to pick lemons. I begrudged the little tree its thorns.
Sure, there was the one summer when I did the lemonade stand every weekend and ended up buying a season pass to SeaWorld. That was before the wholeBlackfishdocumentary thing. It was also before people like my mom bought stainless-steel straws. Not that SeaWorld was ever the paradigm of cool. Okay, maybe when you were finally tall enough to ride the roller coaster, but still too little to drive a car, and realized that the gift shops were filled with junk you could never afford.
I thought of that tree every day when I was stuck in that crappy apartment in Michigan, sick, pregnant, and alone. I craved lemonade. Craved it. And not the store-bought kind. And not the kind you make from the thick-skinned yellow rocks that cost a dollar at Walmart.
Two cups of fresh lemon juice, one cup of sugar. Fill Mom’s heavy glass pitcher with water up to the base of the neck. (I finally got around to measuring, it’s eight cups.) Add a cup of ice. Stir. Magic in a glass. Every single time.
Now that I have access to the magic tree and can appreciate the culinary virtues of the humble lemon, I realize what a numpty I was all those years. Who cares that the house we moved into after Dad’s accident had only two bedrooms and one bathroom? It had a backyard with a Meyer lemon tree.
I grab a glass and a stainless-steel straw from the cupboard and pour myself an enormous glass of fresh lemonade. Making a pitcher and sipping on it after a hard run might be my new favorite form of recovery. Because while my life may be seriously fudged up, stretching under the shade of the jacaranda tree while sipping on lemonade makes everything seem okay.
My phone pings, and the email icon lights up my screen. My lips twitch into a smile, and my heart pulls all taut as I bend deeper into my kneeling quad stretch. I am blushing. To be this excited over a man’s email is embarrassing, even when I am completely alone. I shake my head because I am a colossal idiot, but I flip over onto my back and read Adam’s email.
What are you doing this Friday?
I toss the phone down and move into a downward dog. A breeze whips my hair across my beaming face. And I’m totally confused. I feel like squeeing. Adam was the one to reach out, right? That’s got to mean something. But maybe this is the post-run euphoria and lemonade. I glance down at my phone. Shouldn’t my wounded ego and bitchy streak be surfacing about now? Shouldn’t I be furious, annoyed, irritated at the very least? And seriously, who uses email in place of a text?
People who don’t have other people’s numbers.
People who avoid giving out their numbers for fear that their alter ego will be discovered with an inadvertent pocket dial. I’ve accidently called Gwen with my Google Voice number a number of times. I get my head back and remind myself that in real life I’ve never made out with this guy in a car. He never pushed me off him and then fired me. I pound out a reply.
Studying.
You want to study in my car on the way to and from Leto Con?
