Chapter 48: Oh, the places you’ll go!
“So. A morning date?” Amy says when she steps outside and accepts her cup of coffee. “Bold.”
I grin. “You’re going to like this.”
She raises an eyebrow. “Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t.”
“You will.”
I open the door to the dark grey Mercedes parked at the curb for her; she glances between it and me in surprise.
“Have you always owned a Mercedes? Women’s basketball salaries must be higher than I thought.”
“They’re not,” I say. “Trust me. But I already sold my car; I just rented this one for the day.” I shrug. “A Mercedes is really more Dutch’s thing than mine, but… You told me to impress you.”
She smiles a little. “So I did.”
I climb in behind the wheel, put the car into gear.
“Why did you sell your car?” she asks curiously.
“Oh — I didn’t tell you? I’m moving back to Ohio.”
Her shock is evident on her face. “Really? Why? I thought you said you’d rather move to Antartica than Ohio?”
“Yeah, it’s true. I did say that. But… you know, with my mom being sick… Plus all my family’s there. I mean, PJ’s in Philadelphia, but that’s close enough. I figured it was time to get back to my roots. Or grow some roots. I realized when I was home that I’ve been running from Ohio for way too long.”
She thinks about this a moment. “So what are you going to do in Ohio? It’s not exactly known for its booming economy, you know.”
“Well… I kinda bought my parents’ restaurant.”
Now she’s looking really fucking shocked.
“When I really sat down and asked myself, ‘What do I care about, other than basketball?’ the answer was — and look, I know this sounds like a fucking Hallmark card, but seriously — I decided that what matters most is my family. I love Alex and Graham and their kids, and they’re like family to me, but they’re far from everyone else I love. And… I haven’t really done a good job at being a good daughter or a good sister or a good auntie over the years. So I wanted to make up for that.”
“I can understand that,” Amy says, “but I’m still a little surprised you decided to buy the restaurant.”
“I know. I’m still a little surprised, too. But you know what? When I stopped thinking about it as just ‘restaurant’ and started thinking about it in other ways, I realized that it really isn’t all bad.”
“So what does that mean, exactly? How are you thinking about it now?”
“As a piece of my family, for one. It’s almost like Soul Mountain has been my parents’ fifth child. And it was in rough shape, financially, due to — eh, well, it’s a long story, but it was a fifth child that was on life support. And it was going to break my parents’ heart if they ended up having to take it off life support and close it. So that’s one part of it.”
“Is there another part?”
I glance over at Amy while I wait for the light to change. “There is. You know what I figured out from working there during the last couple months? Soul Mountain doesn’t just belong to my family; it belongs to the whole goddamned town. It’s an institution there. If it disappeared… it would be like the statue of Custer disappearing.”
Amy shakes her head, lets out a small laugh.
“What?” I ask. “Is that too sappy?”
“It is sappy,” she agrees. “But it’s also… I don’t know, it’s sweet. That you would care about your family enough and Marcine enough to sink your future into a restaurant.”
“Hey,” I admonish. “Let’s not use the words ‘sink’ and ‘restaurant’ in the same sentence, okay?” I see an open parking space, pull into it before it has a chance to disappear. “We’re here, by the way.”
“Where’s here?”
“You told me to show you one thing here that I truly love. Well, I love this place. As a matter of fact, I think it’s fair to say that it’s my favorite place in all of Basel.”
She glances around, looking for something remarkable. But we’re parked on a side street, next to a nondescript hotel.
“It’s actually behind us,” I say. “We’re going to have to walk a block.”
“It’s not the Spalentor, is it?” she asks, referring to the old, castle-like city gate.
“Nah. Too touristy.”
“Then what is it?”
I chuckle. “Follow me.”
#
Switzerland is a mountainous nation, cloudy, rainy, snowy for large chunks of the year. Summer is pleasant in Basel, but the daytime high doesn’t usually climb much above seventy. We’ve had eighty-degree days, for sure, but for the most part, I’d call the weather on the cool side of “temperate.”
That’s why, for the past several years that I’ve lived here, I’ve made the botanical gardens at the University of Basel my second home. Inside the big glass greenhouse, I can pretend I’m in a tropical climate. I can lose myself amongst the rows of orchids and water lilies and Seussian-like flowers, drinking coffee and thinking about life.
I brought Cici here once, the girl I dated for a couple years. She was bored and antsy here, had a “So?” attitude that led to us leaving almost as soon as we arrived. I never brought anyone to the botanical gardens after that. It’s become like my own private retreat space, the place no one knows about but me.
I mean, of course it’s not actually fucking true that no one else knows about this place; people are in here all the time. But somehow, whenever I’m there, I feel like I’m in an insulated world all my own, and for a while, I can forget about my fucked-up problems.
I tell all this to Amy as she follows me into the main, domed greenhouse, where we are met by humid air. I let her get a few steps ahead, take in the green while I linger behind.
She stops in front of the pond that sits beneath the dome’s center, gazing out at otherworldly lily pads.
“How did you find this place?” she asks.
“By accident. Just wandering around the city one day.”
“And you come here a lot?”
“Probably at least once per week. Twice if it’s a shitty week.”
She turns around, and there’s a smile on her face. A genuine smile, an Amy smile. The kind I grew to love in the days leading up to Grace Adler’s wedding. “Anika Singh, you never cease to surprise me. You know that?”
“Is that a good thing? Or a bad thing?”
“In this case, it’s a good thing.”
We end up spending the rest of the day together, eating lunch outside at a cafe because it’s shaping up into a warm, near-summer’s day, then taking a leisurely walk back to where I parked the Mercedes.
“Well,” I say to Amy, leaning against the passenger’s side of the car. “Did I do okay? Am I still relegated to the doghouse, or is there a chance I can be forgiven?”
Amy reaches up, puts her hands lightly on my shoulders. Her touch sends an unexpected jolt of energy into me as if I’d gotten a miniature electrocution. She runs her hands down my arms, over my wrists, squeezes my fingers.
“Do you understand how badly you hurt me?” she asks, voice soft.
“I do. And I’m sorry.”
She shakes her head. “No. I don’t think you do understand. Ever since I met you…” She trails off, staring at a far away place beyond me. She tries again. When she speaks again, she sounds more like she’s talking to herself than to me. “You can’t understand how it felt because I don’t completely understand it myself. You’re not supposed to be anyone to me, Anika. Just a stranger. Just a few days of fun in Ohio while I waited for Grace’s wedding. But somehow, I fell for you so fast, so hard, that I…” Her eyes regain focus, and she looks up at my face. “You’re not the only one who looked at us and saw the future. I saw it, too. I saw it from the time you told me the story of how your parents met. But I assumed… I’m not a rash person, Anika. I don’t just fall for people like that. But with you… and then at that reception… I think you might’ve broken my heart. And I’m long past the age where I thought anyone would break my heart ever again.”
I lean forward, plant a gentle kiss on her forehead experimentally. When she doesn’t flinch, doesn’t pull away from me, I lean in a little further, open her mouth with mine. She doesn’t fight me; she sinks into it, kisses me back.
I don’t push my luck and try to stretch the kiss out; I figure Amy and I are back into baby steps mode. I run my thumb along her cheek.
“I can try to put your heart back together again,” I say. “If you let me.”
She smiles; there’s a hint of sadness in it this time. “Maybe,” she says. “Take me home?”
“Alright,” I say. I turn to unlock and open her door for her.
“Will you have dinner with me tonight? At my place. I’ll cook.”
I try not to show how completely fucking awesome that invitation makes me feel, try not to do the happy dance right there on the sidewalk like a flamboyant NFL player in the end zone.
All I do is grin and say, “Okay. What time?”