Page 101 of Fall for Me

“I want to be happy with myself first. Then I want to do it right.”

I knew it was a risk. A huge risk. Seamus could easily find someone new in the time it took me to get my life sorted the way I wanted it to be, on my own, without leaning on someone else. But I knew as I said it that it was the only way. I’d lost myself before, and I never wanted that to happen again. That was the biggest risk of all—giving Seamus anything less than the person I knew I could be.

“You know that’s kind of why I ended things with Reese,” Eli said, his hands still tense on the wheel. But they were loosening as he spoke. “I was in a shitty spot, fresh out of my divorce. She didn’t deserve the messy pile of human I was then.” He turned quickly to me. “Not saying that’s what you are.”

I laughed. It felt so good I kept laughing. Then Eli grinned too and shoved me in the shoulder, which only made me laugh harder.

When we pulled into the parking lot back at the apartment, I put a hand on my brother’s arm.

“I owe you one, Eli.” I’d meant it for pitching in for me back at the party. But I hoped he knew I was talking about tonight—and the past few weeks, too. I’d thought Eli would be a disaster about all of this, but he’d been a rock.

Eli winked. “That’s what big brothers are for. Now go get some rest while I show these guys how to clean up a party.”

After waving him goodbye, I ran up the stairs and into my dark apartment filled with gratitude. I’d owe Eli for everything he did for me tonight. But that was for later. Right now, I was buzzing with something I hadn’t felt in a long time: hope.

I’d have to apologize to Jamie for leaving. And I’d have to take on some more ad hoc jobs on the weekends before I could leave the Rolling Hills. But I could do it. One step at a time, I could do it, I know I could.

Once inside, I headed straight for my closet, the place those new blazers hung, waiting for me to start my new life. I pulled one of them off its hanger and slipped it on. It felt good. Like I’d taken an important—if baby—step there. After that, I pulled on my winter parka along with the wool hat I’d worn the other night. Next I rummaged around in the giant crate in the back marked camping supplies, grabbing the battery-powered lantern and a folding chair. Then I reached far into the back for what I was really after. A package in brown paper.

I headed up to the roof, where I could turn away from the Quince, where I could point myself east. Then I shook the contents of the paper bag out on my lap.

It was the sketchbook and pack of drawing pencils Seamus had thrust in my hands back in his office.

I opened the book, poised the pencil, and before I could think too hard about it, began to draw.

I thought I’d be rusty, or just plain bad, drawing images from memory. But I made myself go loose and easy, and before I knew it, everything in my mind started appearing on the page. The view from the ridge at Seamus’s place. That sweater he wore, slung over a chair.

My mom’s face, her wide smile that Eli shared.

Her tombstone, over in Quince Valley Memorial Gardens.

Cass’s island in the river.

Seamus’s cottage. The chickens.

Lola.

I drew even as my hand ached, filling the pages of that notebook with a pent-up explosion of everything I’d tucked in the back of my mind.

I love you, Seamus, was the constant refrain in my mind as my pencil filled in the shadows and light. I love you, I love you, I love you.

I drew until the first rays of golden light arced across the sky, touching my face like a tender hand.

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