CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Skye spent the entire trip unsuccessfully trying to put Harvey out of her mind. She felt guilty for leaving him. Kept second-guessing herself, even though Flora and Patrick—yes, she’d told Patrick everything—both told her she’d done the right thing and was very brave to return home and clean the slate one more time. Harvey had texted her several times since she’d left the condo, making sure she was OK, asking her to reconsider, apologizing profusely. Remembering how she felt when Vance had left her hanging, Skye promised not to do that to Harvey. So she answered his texts and accepted his apologies, but was still wounded by what he’d said to Vance, what the words meant. She didn’t know how to get beyond feeling as if their relationship had been nothing but a rescue, a coup against Vance Sandler, and she didn’t want Vance Sandler to have that kind of power, didn’t want him to be the common denominator between Harvey and her. What was more, she was afraid that if she stayed with Harvey, he’d either keep trying to rescue her, or the relationship would no longer work because she didn’t want to be rescued. She’d learned a valuable lesson the last six months: people treated you the way you let them. They also tended to treat you the way you treat yourself.
Maybe she just needed time.
She texted him when the plane landed at TF Green because he’d asked her to; he wanted to know she was safe.
Welcome home, Harvey texted in reply. The words didn’t have the same meaning as they did six months ago.
She missed every wrinkle, every eyelash, every fingerprint of Harvey’s. She missed his cooking. She missed his laugh. She missed the smell of the condo. She missed Bucky Barnes.
Skye arrived in Rhode Island around five thirty—the two-hour time difference worked against her—and she would have burst into tears the moment she saw Julie had she not been so dog-tired. Julie squealed with delight upon seeing her friend and practically jumped into Skye’s arms. Thankfully, Skye’s luggage made the trip with her this time.
“Wow,” she said as she took in a view of Skye head to toe. “You look . . . different.”
“How so?” asked Skye.
“You’re so . . . fit. Like, the shape of your body has changed.”
Skye didn’t think the change had been enough for anyone to notice. Was anything else noticeable? That she’d become more confident and self-respecting, despite this most recent upset?
“Tell me everything,” Julie demanded the moment they got to the car. Skye had been holding off until they were physically together rather than tell her everything on the phone from her hotel room.
“Coffee milk first. Talk second,” said Skye.
“Happy to oblige.” She drove straight to the Dunkin’ Donuts, and was shocked when Skye told her Billings didn’t have a single Dunkin’ Donuts or Panera Bread in the entire city. “God, Skye,” said Julie. “How did you manage to live there this long?”
As they drove through Warwick, past all the side streets and neighborhoods and shopping outlets that she could get to with her eyes closed, Skye couldn’t help but notice: Rhode Island was wicked small.
Not small. Just . . . dense. Crowded. Even from the airplane window. She remembered thinking how claustrophobic it made her feel before she left. Like living in a shoebox. Granted, outside of Billings, she’d only seen Montana from the 250-mile stretch of I-90 between Billings and Bozeman—she’d driven herself the day after her final days of work—but the vastness of land and mountain and sky that surrounded the interstate was nothing short of heart-in-throat magnificent. It wasn’t even that Rhode Island wasn’t pretty or didn’t have its own sights. It was just . . . well, not Montana. She kept looking up at the sky—no, she was looking for the sky—and instead found small patches of blue obscured by trees and buildings and streetlamps.
But still. She was home. And for the first time in all the months she’d been away, she felt a part of herself that had been missing return to her. The sight of the trees, their height stunted by the coastal waters, their colors already peaking. The voices and conversations she’d not heard in six months. The place where her family was. Was that what home meant—feeling like you knew who you were and where you belonged? Had she ever felt belonging? Did she feel it now?
Skye drank her coffee milk (divine) and threw away a chocolate-glazed donut after two bites (because it tasted fake) as Julie drove them to her apartment. At Julie’s, they sat on the couch so that they were facing each other, ready to dish. (Skye figured she’d wait a few days before telling Julie her couch wanted to be on the other side of the room, catty-corner.) Even Chip wandered around the room, scoping it out, relieved to be off the plane. Skye was almost certain he was looking for Bucky, had been ever since she carried him out of the condo. His heart got broken too.
“OK, spill it,” said Julie.
“Well, for starters, I finally ran into Vance, that fuckface.”
“No sir,” said Julie.
“And Harvey was with me.”
“No sir!” said Julie.
“And . . . well, let’s just say he tried to measure whether an eggroll can fit into Vance’s nostril. Newsflash: it can’t. But Harvey made a valiant effort.”
“No suhhh!” exclaimed Julie. Skye had never noticed how thick Julie’s New England accent was, or how harsh it was on the ears.
“And then, well . . .” Skye took in a breath. “That’s when it all fell apart. Harvey got all macho and bragged that he was with me now, as if the only reason he’d slept with me was to somehow get revenge on Vance, with whom he has his own baggage.”
“Oh shit, Skye. That is so not what you want to hear from a guy. That’s almost as bad as one saying he just wants to be friends.”
“Well, yeah. So we got into a fight, and I finally decided that it was never really going to work in Billings. So here I am. I still don’t know if I’m going to stay in Rhode Island, but at least here I’ll be able to recover and make a plan.”
“Sweetie, when you first left to be with Vance, I thought you were behaving so rashly. It wasn’t like you. I mean, you were always a bit of a dreamer, but you never did anything about it. Oh my, that came out terrible! I’m so sorry.”
“It’s OK,” said Skye, despite the words stinging. “I freaked the fuck out. I admit it.”
“But here’s the weird thing: I think it was the best thing that ever happened to you.”
“I do too,” said Skye. “Had I not picked up and gone to Montana, I’d probably have taken the district manager job at Top Drawer and drudged through that for another fifteen years, hoping and waiting for yet another break but not doing a damn thing to make life any better.” Tears slipped down her face. “It’s just that . . .” She sobbed and let it out. “I miss Harvey. I shouldn’t have left him the way I did.”
“Fuck him!” said Julie. “After what he did to you? He used you, Skye. You were nothing but a weapon for him to use against Vance the Cancer. OK—not the best rhyme in the world, but still.”
“It was awful.”
“He’s a scumbag, and you should just forget him and stay here with your friends and family who love you.”
She cringed at the word, and Julie’s rage. “He’s not a scumbag, Jules. Vance was a scumbag. Harvey made a mistake.”
If that was all it was, then why couldn’t she forgive him?
“Fine. I’ll take your word for it. But I am so happy you’re home! And oh my God, you should see my closets since you left—they’re a disaster! I must be some kind of clutter magnet. It’s like I wake up and it’s all there.”
“Well, let’s get on it,” said Skye. “Consider it payment for letting me crash on your couch until I get everything settled at Summer’s house. After dinner—I’m starving.”
As sad as she was about what she’d left behind, she could hardly wait to get started. Not only on Julie’s closets, but the rest of her life. She was starting over yet again. But this time, she was ready. Willing. Able.
After Skye and Julie went out for dinner and a movie at Providence Place (she felt like she was being suffocated by wall-to-wall people, even more than the droves who showed up to the farmers’ market in downtown Billings every Saturday), they came home and dressed up the couch with linens, and Skye changed and washed up and crawled under the sheet. She was beyond exhausted, mentally, emotionally, and physically. But two hours later, she still couldn’t sleep.
It would be close to ten o’clock in Billings.
She was missing her friend. She was also missing her lover.
It had felt right to buy the ticket, board the flight, walk through the jetway, and breathe New England air. As right as being with Harvey had felt. How could those two things be polar opposites? She fervently wished she could have both.
She picked up her phone and began to type out a text to Harvey, but promptly deleted it, opting instead to call him directly, despite not knowing what she wanted to say, or if calling him was a good idea in the first place.
“Hello, Skye,” said Harvey. Her body completely froze, including her vocal cords. She couldn’t get a read on whether he was angry, sad, or indifferent.
“Hi, Harvey,” she said, her voice quavering. What am I doing?
“Happy to be home?” he asked. Again, she couldn’t get a read on his tone.
“I am,” she started. “But I miss . . . I am just so sorry.”
He was silent for what seemed like ten minutes but couldn’t have been more than a couple of seconds. “You have nothing to be sorry about. You were taking care of yourself. I’m the one who ruined everything.”
If only she could tell him he didn’t. If only she could open her heart one more time. If only Montana wasn’t so damn far away. If only they’d never gone to the farmers’ market that day. She probably would have stayed in Billings for as long as she and Harvey wanted to, together.
“It was bad circumstances from the beginning,” she said.
He paused yet again. “Would you come back to Billings because I asked you to?” he asked.
She wanted to emphatically say yes. But the word was stuck, lost, missing.
“There’s nothing in Billings for me,” she said through her tears. She didn’t believe it, but it didn’t change the fact that she didn’t think she wanted to be there anymore.
“I thought you had a home here. I thought we had a home.”
“I need to be here. I need to regroup. Get back in touch with my roots. It’s long overdue.”
Every pause seemed as if he were trying to see her through the phone. She was glad they weren’t using FaceTime. “You don’t sound at all like the Skye who sat next to me on the plane how many months ago,” he said.
“I’m not her. She wasn’t me.”
“That’s a good thing,” he said. And then, softer, he added, “I miss you, Skye. Not her. You.”
Her heart turned somersaults.
“Can I call you again?” he asked. “Maybe in a couple of days?”
“Maybe.” And then, without warning, she said, “Or we could write to each other.”
Her offer surprised her as much as it did him. Having grown up in the texting and chatting generation, she’d never been one to write letters or e-mail, but she remembered a chapter in one of Flora’s books that talked about the energy of letter writing, and how you could write them to your past, present, or future self, to someone who was no longer alive, even to the house you wanted to create for yourself. Writing letters could be cathartic, give people a chance to really think about what they wanted to say. Writing letters was a form of honesty one would never find on Facebook.
She could almost hear him smile. “That would be nice,” he said.
And for the first time since leaving him, she felt hope. For what, she wasn’t sure. But she decided not to question it.
They each said good night, and Skye put her phone on the floor next to the couch. She stared up at the ceiling. She missed the sounds Billings made at night. She missed the sound of paint rollers on walls. She missed the sound of Harvey’s breath.
But she was going to be OK. She’d never been so certain of that, and she clung to that certainty like a rope.