All I need is a partner, and in eight weeks, I’ll be on my way to pitch competition victory.
Chapter Five
Making connections is as easy as listening, remembering, and recycling information. Nothing is ignored. Nothing is forgotten. Nothing is a mistake.
—Truth in Comedy
Eventually, I was going to have to go home.
After wearing my dove-gray pencil skirt in five different outfits this week, I need more of my work wardrobe. Amber’s no help—she and I are different sizes, and besides, a rainbow assortment of nursing scrubs doesn’t scream “promotion material.”
I’d like to breeze in like I wasn’t avoiding this moment, but as I learned in McHuge’s class, playing pretend is not my game. I’m a reality person, and the reality is, I’ve been afraid I’d have to put my head between my knees from the blunt-force trauma of seeing Tobin and not having him belong to me. Even people who don’t know when to quit get weak after days of not thinking about a certain angle of smiling lips, or an unintentionally artful splayof strong fingers. I used to feel that when we wrapped our arms around each other, both of our hearts recharged. Can I walk into a room full of his energy and not reach for it?
The cat trails me to the front door, Eleanor hot on his heels. “Yeti!” She reaches after him as he slips out from under her hand and through the front door. That kitty has a sixth sense for escape opportunities. So would I, if I could eat like a king at every house within meowing distance.
“He’ll come back tomorrow, honey. See you soon.”
It’s a crisp spring evening in the neighborhood. Though it’s less than thirty minutes from the wealth and glitter of Grey Tusk, Pendleton has a rough-hewn farming feel, its golden-green fields sternly flanked by gray-blue crags. Lots of Grey Tusk workers—including most West by North guides—live in the low-rise apartments that bracket Pendleton’s block-long downtown, where you’ll often see horses hitched to the false-fronted Old West buildings. The vibe is a little weird, a lot quirky, a ton of mind-your-own-business. That last part is especially noticeable on our street, on the free-spirited outskirts of town.
I grew up here, on the living edge of the wilderness, and this place is stitched into the deepest parts of my heart. The mountains feel so close you could breathe their breath. Sometimes I wake up and there’s a bear in my apple tree.
Yeti’s sunning himself on the front porch when I arrive. “Way to go, traitor,” I tell him. “You’re supposed to be on my side.”
I don’t mean it. My job is to pay the vet bills and be glad he’s well loved. He does a great job of being a cat, considering he’s half-blind and getting creaky. But I wouldn’t have moved a cat his age to Amber’s if he didn’t already crash there twice a week.
Yeti’s far from the days when Tobin and I, fresh off the high of moving in together, built him a haunted house out of an appliance box, dying of laughter when his paw snaked out from aspooky cardboard window to bat at us. Flat broke and stupid in love, we’d spent every dollar we had to buy the house from Mrs. Elias, the neighbor whose garden I used to weed in high school, who’d moved to Victoria to be closer to her grandkids.
Tobin wanted to wait to get a pet. He didn’t want to miss the puppy stage while he was away every other week in the winter, and two weeks out of three in the summer. Besides, we couldn’t afford puppy shots and neutering.
But I wheedled him into a trip to the shelter. Just to see. And there was Yeti, older, grumpy, camouflaged in the shadows at the back of his cage. My heart recognized him right away.This one,I begged Tobin.
After a week of hiding in the basement ductwork, Yeti blossomed into his himbo era, charming everyone on his way to ruling the neighborhood. For all of Tobin’s reluctance to get a pet, he spent an awful lot of time crafting fluffy toys and refrigerator-box amusement parks to coax pounces out of Yeti and uncontrollable giggles out of me.
But Tobin and I are as far from those days as Yeti is. I don’t remember the last time I laughed with him. Or the last time I wanted to tell him anything important—anything about my heart, instead of chores or schedules.
I let out an undignifiedmeep!of fright when our front door abruptly squeaks open, scaring the cat off the porch.
Tobin stands there, looking so good, and so not good. His favorite gray T-shirt, thin from washing, outlines everything down to the tiniest muscle. He’s barefoot despite the chill, too tall for the navy pajama pants that end above his finely turned ankles.
I haul my eyes up to his face. He looks exhausted, purple shadows underscoring those summer-blue eyes, his sexy smile lines transmogrified to wrinkles.
Our eyes meet for a long second. I’m hypnotized by his sadness the way I was once hypnotized by his joy, his passion, his implausible pleasure at being with plain old me.
He smiles. Tingles break over my body before I realize he’s looking over my shoulder. “Hi, Eleanor. Be gentle with Yeti, okay?”
Imeep!again, turning to catch Eleanor hauling an obliging Yeti off the stairs, his legs dangling to her knees. She must’ve tailed me the entire way here.
“Yeti lives with us now,” she informs Tobin. Like him, she’s wearing practically nothing: a too-short T-shirt, capri pants, no shoes. I want to wrap her in one of those silver thermal blankets, but she wouldn’t allow it. She’s the most weather-impervious kid I’ve ever met, wandering around in the dead of winter with her jacket unzipped, no hat, and maximum one mitten.
She marches homeward, sawn-off hair flipping unevenly away from her lifted chin, wearing Amber’s stubborn expression. The cat wraps both arms around her neck and settles in, knowing that at the end of this journey, there will be cheese.
Tobin steps back after ensuring Eleanor’s safely home. “You coming in?”
It wasn’t smart to do this alone. Stellar obviously couldn’t come; Amber’s busy baking chickpea cookies for tonight’s moms’ group discussion on nutrition. I should have accepted Tobin’s offer not to be at the house when I came by, but I couldn’t bear to say yes to his devastatingly brief message—you want me gone?—right after texting him that I needed to get some of my stuff because I wasn’t ready to come home yet. Even though I’m 99.99 percent convinced we’re over for good, that fraction of a percentage point sayingBut maybe we’re notmakes me question myself. I hate it, but I can’t make it stop.
I should have hired some lifties—chairlift attendants, strong from shoveling snow and swinging iron four-seaters under skiers’ butts—to pose as my friends. They could’ve carried my bags whileforming a protective barrier in front of my eyes so I wouldn’t have to see what I’m giving up while actually giving it up.
I can’t do this,I remind myself. I can’t be the brakes in our marriage while Tobin gets to be the gas. I can’t shine when I’m standing in his shadow.
