Tomorrow, then?” Morgan asks hopefully.
“I think I’ll be busy tomorrow.”
“What about the next day?”
“Uhh, I think I have something going on then, too.”
Poor Morgan is fighting a losing battle and doesn’t even know it, because Zelda’s evasive responses are keeping his hope alive. She wasn’t back in town for three seconds before he cornered her, firing off twenty questions a minute, urging her to go on his podcast and talk about the magic system in her series. Zelda is antisocial and hates talking about herself; she’s been very tight-lipped about her books these days. But she doesn’t want to seem ungrateful, so she’s decided that avoiding him is the best course of action. Morgan has been increasingly persistent.
“Step-lover,” Trevor trills, heading my way with a small package. “You’ve got mail.”
“Thanks, and stop calling me that.”
“We also got more packages meant for other people. Why does everybody’s mail end up here? I accidentally opened an envelope with a HitClip of Shaggy’s “Angel” in it. Old-school! Not gonna lie, I’m keeping that one.” He shows off the HitClip attached to his belt loop.
After Luna lectures Trevor on why he can’t keep other people’s mail, her nose is instantly in my business. I try to open the package with my hands, but she gets impatient, procuring a box cutter. Inside are two men’s shirts: one a jade cotton, the other charcoal, with white lettering: MITCHELL HABNEY ROOFING LLC.
“Sweetie, where’d you order these from?” She pokes the peeling letters. “They’re used.”
“Alex’s?” Zelda guesses, popping up at my left. “Why is that gorgeous glass of excellently aged wine sending you used T-shirts instead of making dirty, dirty love to you right now?”
“I have no clue.” I hold one of them against me. Shaking it out releases the smell of his fabric softener, tropical and delicious. I am abruptly devoured by homesickness for Alex. He left Moonville on Monday, and now it’s Friday. All week, I have mostly been doing fine. Mostly. I’ve only thought about him every other minute, wondering what he’s doing, if he’s thinking of me. Being in a relationship with him scares me down to my bones, but not being with him is an equally scary prospect. It’s an emotional cocktail that’s hard to swallow.
I bury my nose in his clothes and breathe. “Mmm.”
Trevor backs away slowly.
“A wise move,” Luna muses. “Plant the seed of love on the Flower Moon with a gift, and your heart’s desire will blossom with the Strawberry Moon.” I freeze. May’s full moon, which will rise tonight, is called the Flower Moon. It holds personal significance for me. For obvious reasons.
“There’s no way he did this purposefully to coincide with one of Moonville’s bizarro sayings.” Zelda laughs. “That boy’s sensible. He doesn’t pay any attention to love magic.”
Despite Alex’s “I’m coming for you” declaration, Saturday passes without a word from him, and then Sunday, and Monday. The rest of the following week crawls by. I am beginning to miss him to a degree that is both surprising to me and also embarrassing: I have, for the first time since the summer after our breakup, googled him, and Sharon from Ingham had a LOT to say about (1) what a great job he did putting on her new shingles, and (2) how she hopes a storm will destroy her roof again so that she can have him, and his blue jeans, back in her life.
Me, too, Sharon. Me, too.
I’ve now degenerated to the point where I’m watching YouTube videos of birdcalls, familiarizing myself with the sounds that interest him. It’s patently unfair that I can’t whistle. But did you know that sunflowers attract northern cardinals and black-capped chickadees? I spend half of my waking hours cursing the existence of bugs, but this research presents them in a fresh light: insectivorous birds love to eat the bugs that prey on flowers like goldenrod and purple coneflower. I may hate the bugs, but they bring the birds that Alex loves.
In the middle of the month, he finally texts me. He sends a picture from up on a rooftop, a landscape of blurry houses and blob trees. Look at this view. Not as pretty as you, though.
And that, I kid you not, is literally all he says. I ask him how he is, what he’s been up to, but I get nada. Maybe he isn’t a big texter. Or caller.
On the twenty-fifth, I’m out for a jog (I am expelling my frustrations through exercise). When I pass a random man wearing a Buckeyes hat, I get so agitated that I whip out my phone and text Alex again.
Romina: You are being mysterious and infuriating and I have had it!
Alex: Not yet, you haven’t.
Romina: I thought you pursuing me would involve a lot more pursuit.
Alex: I am pursuing you very hotly behind the scenes. Ducks in a row, et cetera.
Romina: ?????
Alex:
This man has nerve.
I feel like an imbecile, wafting around yearning for him, but the longer I go without hearing from Alex, the more obsessed with him I become, to the point that I am completely useless at work. I know because my sisters have told me: “You are completely useless.”
“Look at this pencil,” I sigh. “Alex likes to keep a pencil in the pocket of his shirt.” I pick up a pineapple cupcake and take a bite. “This would give Alex mouth sores.” I look at the sky. “Alex’s eyes are blue, too.” Zelda locks me out of the store when I ride my bicycle back after lunch (at Half Moon Mill, because it reminds me of him).
“I’m sorry,” she shouts through the door. “It’s just that I really can’t stand you right now. Love you, though!”
It’s hardly fair, since Trevor and Teyonna have been just as bad. Teyonna hangs out at the store all the time now. They like to make animal crackers pretend to talk to each other and take turns finding “the worst picture of fruit.” Doodle on each other’s sneakers. Not to mention, lots of making out in the storeroom. Teyonna is warm and kindhearted, softening Trevor’s energy without pouring water over it. An explosion transformed to a containable, brilliant ball of light.
On Monday, the twenty-ninth of May, I begin to hear whisperings.
The gossips of Vallis gather in the shop, because that’s where Morgan’s stationed, and he has the sort of charm that oozes your secrets right out of you, as well as a knack for overhearing conversations he wasn’t invited to. He absorbs all the juicy details about anything that goes on around here.
The whisperings go like this:
“Alex King is back.”
“From the dead?”
“Not that one. His boy.”
“Ohhh. Romina’s Alex.” A few faces swivel to stare at me, then flit away, pretending to act natural.
“I heard he’s renting the yellow two-bedroom on Hewett Fork that’s been sitting empty since the Pickards left.”
“I heard he has kids.”
“Two, I think. Heard him mention two boys. But no wife?”
“Mm-mm. No wife.” More long, persistent looks in my direction, hoping I’ll volunteer my knowledge. Hell if I know. I text Alex: You didn’t move to Moonville, did you? and he replies with a picture of a beagle sleeping on its back, paws in the air. I don’t know whose beagle this is. I ask if he has two sons, and he responds: Only one, unless a miracle happened on the night of the rehearsal dinner that you haven’t told me about. Why’re you asking me that?
I respond that word on the street is that he moved to Moonville with his two sons. He sends me a laughing emoji with no follow-up.
Gilda claims she saw him and another man lift a couch out of a moving truck into the little yellow house. I’m beginning to suspect folks are driving by that house on purpose now.
“I heard he’s gunning for the mayor’s job,” someone mumbles. “Ran into her this morning at the general store, she was all nervous about it. Who does he think he is, running for mayor? Lives here for two damn minutes—”
“If you lovely folks are going to hang out on top of my desk,” Morgan drawls, closing the lid of his donut box, “you’ll need to chip in for snacks. Somebody ate my last cruller when I explicitly told you they were off-limits.”
Ron, the manager of Moonville Market, is peeved. “He hasn’t lived here long enough to be qualified, in my opinion. And being born and raised here don’t get you ahead, neither. Where was he when we fundraised for the new playground? In Oreton. What about when all the pumps at the gas station stopped working? Where was he then? Did he have to deal with it like the rest of us when that cow wouldn’t get out of the road? He most certainly did not.”
Titters and grumbling scatter through the room.
“Graduates from college, then moves to Oreton. Way to turn your back on the people who helped you win that What I Love About My Ohio Hometown essay scholarship.”
I know these rumors are absurd and also that Alex is the one who got Alex that scholarship, but I’m losing my marbles here. I’m chasing them all over town. I break down and text him: Are you running for mayor?
Alex: Where are you getting your news? Do they deliver? Where do I sign up?
Alex: You look glorious in that purple dress, by the way.
I gasp. Plaster myself to the window. Smush it right and left to peer down the street both ways. I don’t see him anywhere.
Romina: How did you know my dress is purple? Where are you???
Alex: In your dreams, I’m betting.
Romina:
Alex:
I walk to Pit Stop Soda Shop that night after closing up. He sends me a picture of myself, arms distorted in motion, sipping my milkshake in the twilight. I jump out of my skin, then scour the neighborhood, but there’s no sign of him. No truck, no Alex, nothing. He’s in the wind. He is invisible!
I am unnerved.
I am so unnerved that I eat a whole bowl of spaghetti and meatballs for dinner without realizing they’re the vegetarian meatballs I hate.
Luna points her fork at my face. “Ha! You see! Can’t tell a difference.”
“I can tell now.”
“Only because I told you. You enjoyed them.” She’s so smug about this.
“I can’t taste anything. My tongue isn’t working right.”
Zelda snickers into her food. “What have you been doing with it?”
“I’m right here,” Aisling whines, waving a breadstick. “I’m eleven. Save your weird stuff for when I’m not in the room, please.”
“Sorry.”
I bang my head on a table until Ash complains that I’m causing her distress and Luna drags me away. I flop onto my belly on Luna’s couch, distracted by Alex’s spate of bizarre text messages.
Nobody even knows about this horse
Do you think there’s such thing as sharks
How come a Pluto?
One small corn muffin
What?? I reply. When he doesn’t immediately reply, I draw the conclusion that these texts were sent by his Alexa, which is probably listening to the noise in his background and garbling it at me. But then, half an hour later:
Alex: I bet you’re still thinking about How come a Pluto.
Romina: wtf
Romina: that was just to get attention?
Alex: Yes.
Romina: -____-
Alex: I have developed a plan and am holding fast to it. But please know that I miss your beautiful face! In addition to one small corn muffin.
Romina: Come see my beautiful face. You know where to find it.
Alex: Soon.
Romina: Are you playing hard to get, or what?
Alex: Honey, you know I’m easy. You’re getting used to the idea of being with me, a little bit at a time. And look at you now, pining over me. SO sweet.
Romina: I never said I was PINING
Alex: You didn’t have to. (I am pining too, naturally. That’s my secret, Captain. I’m always pining.)
Alex is absurd. I am certainly not pining.
My phone buzzes with a surge of pictures he’s sending one right after the other: the night sky, a blurry shot of the moon. A grinning selfie. He’s a terrible photographer—the only fragment of the picture that’s properly in focus is his broad smile. I think he’s waving, arm a smear. He’s wearing an ACTION LEAGUE NOW! shirt and looks so light and happy.
I decide it’s a nice night for a bike ride.
“I’m going for a ride,” I announce, very casually, as I slip on my shoes. “Nowhere in particular. The weather’s nice.”
Zelda sprints toward the stairs. “I want to see his house, too.”
Luna shovels popcorn into her mouth, not turning away from the television. She and Ash are bingeing Over the Garden Wall. “Already saw it.”
I gasp. The betrayal! “When?”
“Forever ago.”
“Yesterday,” Ash inserts. Luna pokes her arm. “We drove by on the way back from getting ice cream.”
Zelda and I scowl. “Where’s our ice cream?” We turn to leave when Luna hops up.
“Hang on, I wanna come, too. Let’s take the minivan.”
“You’ve already seen his place.”
“So? If you’re having a snoop party, I’m not missing out.”
“I wanna come, too!” Ash pipes up. “I love snoop parties.”
