“Have something to drink. You’ll feel better.” I look up, and an older lady with silver hair is standing over me. Her hair reminds me of Greer. She shushes me and presses six quarters into my palm, then nods toward the vending machine. “The sugar. It will help.”
I don’t want to offend her, so I scoop up my tears and stand. “Thank you,” I say. “That’s really nice.” She watches until I’m at the machine pretending to consider my options. I smile gaily and wave.
When she’s gone I press my forehead against the glass and close my eyes. I’m not even allowed to cry in peace. Blindly, I drop the quarters into the slot, one by one. Dink, dink, dink.
And then two hands appear on either side of my head. My eyes shoot open as a body pins me to the glass. I get chills. I know his smell.
Kit runs his nose along the back of my ear as his arm wraps around my waist. My mouth is open, and my eyes are closed as he circles my wrist with his free hand. It’s all warmth and the smell of woods and pine. He kisses the back of my neck and I drop the rest of the quarters. I hear them hit the floor before he flips me around to face him.
He’s right there. In my face. Forehead to forehead without warning. I’m out of breath as he runs his hands up my arms and cups my face, then pulls me tighter to him. Our lips are touching, but neither of us is moving to a kiss. It feels a little shocking to be pressed right there, against the person you’ve been wanting for so long.
“Don’t ever forget,” he says. “That it was my book, and Coke that brought us back together.”
“Your book?” I ask. He lifts his hand to reveal one crumpled page of his manuscript. “Page forty- nine.” He says. “It floated down from the Heavens and I was lucky enough to catch it before it sank into the Sound.”
“Imagine that,” I say.
“I thought I was hallucinating until I turned on my phone and saw your text.”
“Did you run up here?” I ask.
“Fast as I could.”
Our lips are touching a little as we speak.
“Why aren’t you out of breath?”
He grins. “It’s called working out, Helena.”
I touch his scruffy face, and run my hand along the back of his neck. He kisses me with soft lips and hard passion. And it’s definitely the best kiss of my life. Of my life.
Don’t be upset that you can’t attain constant happiness. It’s the quickest way to feel like a failure in life. If each of our lives represented a page in a book, happiness would be the punctuation. It breaks up the parts that are too long. It closes off some things, divides others. But it’s brief—showing up when it’s needed and filling tired paragraphs with breaks. Being content is a more attainable constant state. To love your fate without being drunk on euphoria. Brave, determined acceptance removed of bitterness. Be gentle with yourself. Embrace the lows so that you can more effectively enjoy the highs. Love the fight. Love it so much, and let it save you when your emotional muscles have become soft. Kit and I have that. Sometimes, so much joy our hearts ache from it. Sometimes, we have sadness when we’re away from Annie or Port Townsend. We feel torn between all the things we love. We fight; we make love. I don’t see Muslim again. And after one phone call, I never speak to him again. I hear plenty about him, and I remember our time. And I wonder if you have space in your heart for more than one person. I think you do.
After that day on the ferry, we move back to Florida. We do it so we can be close to Annie until we figure everything out. We keep the condo in Port Townsend and fly back to visit as often as we can. I buy a navy blue Pottery Barn couch for the condo, and hang one of Greer’s ripple paintings over it. My heart is there, in Port Townsend. We take Annie back with us sometimes, and walk her around town so everyone can fuss. She’s beautiful like her mother, and perceptive like her father. She thinks Greer is a real fairy, and Greer plays the part. Della doesn’t ever forgive me, but that was expected. We were for a season. I don’t ever become good at art. I dabble here and there. I feel good about that. I’m a dabbler. When Kit’s mother becomes ill, I move back to Port Townsend to help her. Kit flies up on weekends, but the time with him never seems like enough. I am stretched, pulled tight. I want to be with Kit and Annie, but I want to be here, too. I am glad for the excuse to be in the place I love.
Eventually, we grow out of the condo and buy a small house in PT. A place where no one can find us. It’s a hidden plot. A side street, down a side street, down a side street. It’s not that we don’t want to be found; we just want to make it difficult.
The house has a wraparound porch. Kit has two chili pepper rocking chairs shipped to us from the goat farm. We set them up on the west side of the house, so we can hear the water from the stream, running over the rocks. Most nights I bring a warm mug of wassail outside, and sip slowly, listening to the creatures of Washington and watching the sun set over the Sound. They are loud, and they make me laugh. It feels like I’m waiting for something, though I’m not sure what. Everything makes me jumpy—noises, shadows, the sound of car tires on gravel.
In early August one year later, my wait comes to an end. Summer licks the sky clean of rain clouds, and the coast blows a hot breath across the Northwest. The weather drives me outside more than usual. I sip wine from an old, chipped mug one afternoon, as a truck bounces down the dirt road at an alarming speed. It hits a ditch, and I think it’s going to careen into my catalpa, when it suddenly veers right and comes to a halt in front of my house. My forehead dents as I lean forward in my rocker. I am not cool in that moment. Instead, I am like an elderly woman in her rocker, pissed that someone almost hit her favorite tree. The door of the truck swings open and black boots drop into my mud. I stand up, my heart racing, knocking over the mug of wine at my feet. The sun shines in my eyes. Goddamn sun! It doesn’t even belong here. I place a hand across my eyes to shield them and step through the wine, leaving footprints of red on the white paint. I see a face, striking blue eyes, and a lion’s walk. My whole world rocks. It’s been two years, but still, this reaction. I settle back into my chair, lest my knees give. I am too afraid to look, because what the fuck? I can’t survive another dream. Palms sweating, heart at a gallop, he lowers himself into the chair next to mine.