GABE
After a fantastic make-out session in the grass—her, me, the Ozarks, hell yeah!—we arrived downtown just in time for the VIP private ghost tour. It began at the edge of Colonial Park Cemetery, on the corner of Oglethorpe and Habersham. The tour guide was a big brute of a guy who could’ve been a stunt double for Mr. Clean, right down to the thick ridges of skin on the back of his bald head. I watched him dig around in his shirt pocket. From there he produced a pair of horn-rimmed Harry Potter bifocals and studiously checked some handwritten notes in a leather-bound journal. If there was one thing I’d learned in this business, it was to expect the unexpected.
I’d also learned to be careful with experts—they tended to get proprietary about being filmed. Of course, Markowitz always left the explaining to me. He said I had the showbiz face; I said he was the king of the semi-wuss move. But before I’d even begun to explain the situation to her, Lily walked right up to the guide, shook his hand, and explained who we were. If it had been me, I would have expected there to be a whole bunch of discussion about rights, credits, and even compensation. Might’ve even been a total nonstarter. But for her, he couldn’t get the microphone on his shirt fast enough. She thanked him, shaking his hand with both of hers, and came back to me beaming.
“I like a woman who takes charge.”
She gave me a wink. “Oh, I know you do.”
Fuck. I pulled the two high-res GoPros from my bag, one for each of us, and we were off. As she watched through the viewfinder, smiling, laughing at the tour guide’s legitimately awful punny jokes, she wrinkled up her nose and pinned her tongue between her teeth.
I could watch her do that forever.
Right as the walking tour advanced down another block toward Chippewa Square, my phone buzzed in my pocket. I checked to verify what I knew already. Markowitz. Just as I was about to power it off, Lily glanced at my phone and whispered, “Go ahead! I’ve got this!”
I nodded at her and fell back a ways. I watched her hips sway as she rounded a corner with the rest of the tour, and I answered the call. “Hey, man. Make it quick. I’m in the middle of something.”
The elliptical whooshed in the background. “Just calling to see if I should change the Brazil ticket. Tell me you’re both going, Powers. Throw me a bone!”
Aww, shit. Markowitz wasn’t going to like this fear-of-flying thing one bit. “Change of plans. Brazil is out. We’re doing the Ozark Howler next.”
I heard his pace on the elliptical slow by at least half, which only ever happened when some serious shit was going down. “Hang on. You’re going to pass up drinking caipirinhas in Rio and using machetes in the Amazon for . . . the Ozarks?”
The guy knew all my weak spots—I did love a decent drink and a chance to play Eagle Scout in the rain forest. It wasn’t going to happen, though. It was a bummer, but I wasn’t going to push her. We’d make the best of it. “You heard me. She’s got a problem with flying.”
Markowitz made a sort of strangled croak. “Well, that’s going to seriously jam up the jimmer, Powers. A cohost . . . that can’t fly? What are we gonna do? Skype her into the Congo? FaceTime her into the tundra? I don’t want to be an asshole about this,” he said, which was, as I knew full well, his announcement that he was about to be an asshole, “but are you thinking with . . . your head or your head?”
How about I come cut the bungee cords on your elliptical desk? “After we’re done here, it’s the Ozarks. Period.”
“So that means the taniwha in New Zealand . . .”
Goddamn. I’d never get to see our footprints in the sand around the Moeraki Boulders. “Out.”
“Thunderbirds in Alaska?”
Nor would I ever get to see our snowshoe tracks under the northern lights. “Out.”
“Powers. Think about this. The next few months were going to be huge for you. Ha-uge!”
He was right; this filming season was when we’d expected to really put my career over the top. But that was the thing about expectations; they weren’t always what you’d planned. I’d assumed my life was headed one way, but as my dad always told me, “assume makes an ass out of u and me.” I certainly hadn’t expected to meet Lily here, but I had. And there was no changing that. It wasn’t like me to pull the star of the show card, but Markowitz needed to understand that this was non-negotiable. No matter how much I wished I could take her far away or scoop her up into my life without changing a thing, some shit was gonna have to change. Starting now. “Ozarks next. Got it?”
“All right,” Markowitz said, blowing out a long breath with his lips flapping, like an exhausted horse. “You’re the star.”
We said our goodbyes, and I ended the call. I had to admit, there was part of me that was pretty bummed about not being able to go to all those spots with her. I loved my job, and I loved the places that it took me. But I also loved her.
Holy fuck.
There it was. The word. Love. When I was with her, nothing else mattered. When I wasn’t, there was only one place I wanted to be. Since the minute I’d met her, she’d been the only thing on my mind. I wanted her, I adored her . . . and I loved her. And I needed her to know it.
The universe had done me a solid. I realized that right in front of me was the storefront of an antique jewelry shop. Rows of old-fashioned rings lined red velvet displays. Hatpins stuck out from a crystal glass filled with rice. At the bottom of the display was a row of lockets. Right in the middle, on its own velvet platform, was a gold locket with an enameled lily in the middle.
I knew the tour was moving on without me, but there was no way I was going to let anybody scoop me on that locket that I could already imagine hanging from her neck. So I pocketed my phone and stepped inside the jewelry shop. “I’d like to see that locket.” I glanced at the window. “The one with the lily on it.”
“Oh, very good choice, sir,” said the shopkeeper. She slipped out from behind the register with her silver bracelets jangling. “I have it on good authority that this belonged to one of our most famous residents.” She leaned over the velvet display and gently picked up the locket by its delicate chain. “Her name was Lucinda Abrahams. They say she still haunts these parts, embroidering hearts on handkerchiefs and searching for her lover, George.”
The locket was delicate and beautifully made. I pressed on the mechanism, and it popped open in my hand. Inside below the jeweler’s marks, there was a small engraving, clearly visible. I blinked at it as I ran my thumb over the old letters.
To L from G
Me falling in love with a hometown girl who was terrified of flying hadn’t been in my five-year plan. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to jump in headfirst and backward, like a scuba diver in full gear.