I need to be weightless in this life.
***
“You’re bright-eyed and bushy-tailed this morning.” Presley pops up when I breeze through the store later that morning. “I’m kidding. You look like shit. And I say that with love.”
“I slept in a recliner last night.”
Presley laughs. “Wait, what? You don’t even own a recliner.”
“Crew does.” I trek toward my office, pulling my keys from my bag.
She bounces on the balls of her feet, slapping her palm against the counter repeatedly. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Get back here. You cannot just say something like that and walk away.”
I grin. It’s always fun torturing Presley like that.
“Nothing happened,” I say. “His baby was crying, and I went over to help. Ended up falling asleep in the recliner with her, that’s all.”
Her lower lip juts out as her lips pull down at the ends. “That sucks.”
“Actually, it wasn’t so bad. I hadn’t held a baby in years,” I say. “I kind of missed it.”
“Yuck.” She pretends to stick a finger down her throat.
I’m pretty sure Presley’s going to be one of those people who claim they hate babies, and the second they accidentally have one, they’re the most doting mother who ever lived. It happens. I haven’t seen it, but I’ve read about it. It comes from a place of fear. She’s projecting. I swear there’s a book about it somewhere around here.
“Where was his girlfriend?” She grabs a bottle of window cleaner and wipes down the register area, and I watch as she inhales the crystal clean scent of industrial chemicals. Presley’s weird like that. “Why wasn’t she there last night?”
“Oh.” I scrunch my brows. “I’m not sure. I didn’t ask.”
Come to think of it, I didn’t see a single item in his place that so much as suggested a woman lived there.
“I kinda think he might be single,” I say. “That’s the impression I got.”
Presley’s lips widen, stretching across her face like the Cheshire cat.
“You want him? Go for him.” I raise my hands in the air and take a step backward. It’s a grand gesture, slightly over the top. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want her to swoop in and take him all for herself. The sooner he’s off-limits, the sooner I’ll stop wondering what it’d be like to feel his lips on mine . . . which I’ve done in secret maybe seven separate times in the last twenty-four hours. “I know he’s your type.”
“No, no, no.” When Presley shakes her head, her dark hair cascades around her face in slow motion. She belongs in a Pantene commercial. “For you.”
“I don’t want him.” I scrunch my nose. I’m a terrible liar. I blame it on all those years at Shiloh Springs. We were only allowed to speak the truth, even if it hurt. Lying, there, was unnatural and considered evil, even when done to protect feelings. Out here, everyone does it constantly, though they mostly do it to protect their own feelings.#p#分页标题#e#
I get it.
“He’s not my cuppa, Pres. You know that.”
“No one’s your cuppa. I’m beginning to wonder if something’s broken in there. Maybe you should see a doctor for that?” She studies my face, and I know now we’re basking in a rare moment of Presley sincerity. “You don’t want to date anyone; you don’t want to get laid. You’re twenty-four and beautiful and smart and kind. It doesn’t add up.”
“It doesn’t need to add up.”
I pray for the phone to ring or a customer to walk in the door, something to distract her and get me out of this godforsaken conversation.
“I know a girl who’s been hurt when I see one,” she says. “Some asshole back at that Shiloh cult screwed you over, didn’t he?”
My head tilts to the left. “It wasn’t a cult, Pres. You know that. And yeah, I had my heart broken. So what?”
I’ve told her nearly everything there is to know about life back then—except the details surrounding Mathias and our failed attempts at procreating.
There’s a tight squeeze in my chest when I think of him. Come to think of it, that tightness never fully goes away. Some days it’s just stronger than others.
Presley laughs, combing her fingers through her hair and doing a little jig behind the cash register.
“I can’t believe I’ve figured it out,” she says. “All this time, you were just being guarded because you were afraid to get hurt. Duh. It’s so simple.”
Yeah, but it’s not.