The Ghost of a Chance (19 page)

"Darcy," Alis breathes, "I want
to…"

"Me, too."

And those blue, blue eyes, hooded with longing, grow
wide and bright now in a stunning instant.
 
Alis draws herself away from me, fully away, so that no part of our
bodies touch, so that something within me cries out from the pain, the tear of
sudden separation.
 
I sit alone,
hurting, split apart.

Alis stares blankly at the typewriter across the
room, her hands balled into fists on her lap.
 
"I’m so confused," she whispers, echoing herself.
 
A single tear slides over her cheek.

"Alis—"

"I’m sorry.
 
I’m…
 
It’s nothing to do with
you.
 
It’s just…
 
I’m a mess, you know, a disaster, and I
shouldn’t have ever—How did I ever think—I mean, Catherine was so lovely, so
good.
 
And how could I…
 
She’s still
here
, and I—"

"Alis, please, it’s okay."
 
I begin to reach for her, but she shies from
my hand, rises.
 

"I’m sorry."

"Can we talk about this?
 
Please?"
 

"Yes.
 
Later.
 
We have to
talk…later."

I stand up and take her hand.
 
"Why not now?"

When her eyes meet mine, they’re darkened by tears,
twin oceans dulled by storms, but she smiles faintly.
 
"I…I feel like an intruder, Darcy.
 
Don’t you see?
 
I don’t
belong here, not with you.
 
And…her.
 
I…It’s wrong.
 
You don’t know.
 
You don’t know what I think about, how I
feel
about…"
 
She squeezes her eyes shut
and shakes her head, applying gentle pressure to my fingers before letting them
go.
 
"I just need some time alone,
okay?"

"Okay."
 
I raise a shaky hand to my brow; my head is throbbing, in perfect rhythm
with my heart.
 
"I’m sorry,
Alis.
 
I never meant to upset you."

"You haven’t."
 
She turns toward the door, opens it in one fast motion, her back
facing me.
 
"You haven’t done
anything, Darcy, but be wonderful to me.
 
And so generous.
 
And so…"
 
Her final word is lost to the wind as she
moves outside and shuts the door behind her, but I almost hear it, can almost
make it out, despite the gusts, despite the click of the door, despite the
pounding of my heart.

"And so beautiful."

Chapter Seventeen

"Hand me that bodice-ripper over there, will
you?"

Annabelle grabs the paperback from the stack on the
floor and tosses it up the ladder to me.
 
I catch the book and grimace down at the title:
One Shining
Knight.
 
Another day toiling in the
book sale room.
 
We’ve finished
organizing the science fiction/fantasy section and have moved on to
romance.
 

My spirits are decidedly glum.

"I read that one," Annabelle says,
gesturing toward the novel in my hand.
 
"Kind of cheesy, but the sex scenes were hot.
 
And really creative.
 
Like, I never thought to do that with corset
strings before."

"Hmm.
 
I
never took you for the corset-wearing type, to be honest," I sigh, shoving
the well-read book onto the shelf, snug between
The Cowboy and the Debutante
and
First-Class Passion: A Titanic Love Story.
 

"Oh, I’m not.
 
I wore a corset for my first wedding and almost passed out at the altar,
it was so tight."
 
Annabelle holds
up a stack of romances and shoves them into my arms.
 
"Should’ve probably taken it as a sign that the marriage was
destined to suffocate me."

"Sorry it didn’t work out," I mutter,
placing the books on the shelf without making any attempt at
alphabetization.
 
Oddly enough, I don’t
feel that innate, familiar twinge of wrongness at the disordered sight.
 
"Hand me some more.
 
We’ve got four more shelves to
fill."
 

"Hold on."
 
Annabelle, her face puckered thoughtfully, stands at the bottom
of my ladder and rests her hand on the rung beneath my feet.
 
"Okay, you just threw those books on
there with complete disregard for alphabetization.
 
That’s a sure sign that a librarian is feeling low.
 
Like,
really
low.
 
Depressed, even.
 
What’s up, Darcy?"

I laugh a little, gazing down at her bemusedly.
 
Well, if nothing else, Annabelle and I have
the affliction of librarianism, and all of its foibles, in common.
 
I shake my head and step down the ladder
until I’m standing on the floor beside her, swimming in a sea of half-sorted
books.
 
"I’m fine.
 
I just need some coffee—"

"Oh, no, you don’t!"
 
Annabelle grabs my wrist and stops me
mid-stride on my way to the break room.
 
"Spill, Darcy.
 
If you can’t
be honest with your friends, you’ll never be honest with yourself."

I loose my wrist and shake my head, mystified.
 
Is Annabelle calling me her friend?
 
And spouting random,
After-School Special
bits of wisdom?
 
"I guess
that…sort of makes sense, but, really, there’s nothing wrong.
 
I just haven’t been sleeping well—"

"Stop right there."
 
Annabelle crosses her arms and levels me
with her trademark Stare of Doom, complete with tapping high-heeled foot.
 
"The truth, Darcy."

"What?
 
I told you.
 
I’m just—"

She points to the pair of chairs shoved up against
the wall and nods her head meaningfully.
 
"Go on.
 
Sit."

I sit.

With a longsuffering sigh, Annabelle seats herself
beside me, inclining her body to face me and assuming a listening air.
 
"Well?
 
Is it money problems?
 
Health
problems?
 
Girl problems?
 
And by
girl
problems, I don’t mean,
like, a bad haircut or cramps.
 
I mean,
you know…"
 
She tilts toward me and
whispers in my ear, "
Lesbian
stuff."

"Right."
          

"So what’s the deal?"

I avert my gaze, staring down at the Fabio-esque
cover of an over-read book called
The Caveman’s Bride.
 
"I don’t know, Annabelle.
 
Everything’s so complicated."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah.
 
Of course it is."
 
She gestures with her hand impatiently, bangle bracelets rattling on her
wrist, dark eyes flashing.
 
"But
what’s the
deal
?
 
What’s the crux
of it all?
 
Name your albatross,
Darcy."

"There’s more than one albatross, I’m
afraid."
 
I inhale deeply and raise
a brow, holding Annabelle’s intense gaze.
 
"A whole screeching flock of them."

She nods knowingly, a hand gripping her chin.
 
Her fingernails are pink and sparkly, and
every one of her fingers, including the thumb, boasts a shiny, gem-studded
ring.
 
She told me once that her
personal fashion philosophy is
more is more
, and I have to give her
credit: she sticks to her principles.

"All right, so you’ve got a major bird
problem.
 
I get it.
 
You’re still holding back, though.
 
You’re shutting me out.
 
Give me facts.
 
Give me specifics.
 
Give
me—"

"Her name’s Alis."
 
I nearly cover my mouth with my hand; I’m
astonished that I permitted myself to speak the words aloud—and, worse, that I
uttered them in Annabelle’s presence.
 
I
confided in
Annabelle
, of all people.
 
Annabelle, who entertains herself when she’s bored at work by dreaming
up superficial, accessory-linked nicknames for our regular patrons: Crooked
Bifocals, Giant Old Lady Purse, Wears Crocs with Socks, Dye Your Roots
Already.
   

But it can’t be unspoken.
 
And I feel an odd lightening in my shoulders, as if a weight has
been shifted, repositioned there, if not shrugged off altogether.

Still, when Annabelle’s face lights up, when that
half-gleeful, half-malicious expression turns toward me, my spirits sink, along
with my stomach, and I want nothing more than to stop time and rewind it.
 
Or simply disappear.

"The
nurse
?
 
You’re totally crushing on your live-in
nurse
?"

"She isn’t my nurse, and she’s only staying
with me temporarily—"

"Oh, my God, this is better than a Lifetime
movie."

"Annabelle, please."
 
I lean forward, folding myself over until my
head rests on my knees and my arms dangle loose at my sides.
 
My mental faculties must be dangerously
compromised if I was unable to divine the peril in telling Annabelle about my
feelings for Alis.
 
"Look, I’m
sapped.
 
I confessed to you in a moment
of weakness, okay?
 
Please don’t make me
regret it.
 
I just…
 
I’m so tired of holding it all in, and you
offered to listen, and I took you at your word.
 
But now—"

"Seriously?
 
Sit up and look at me."

I close my eyes, sighing, and rise to lean against
the back of the chair, regarding Annabelle warily.
 
"I’m looking.
 
What?"

"Look at my
face
."
 
She draws a circle in the air around her
head, as if to make certain I don’t mistake it for some other body part.
 
"Is this the face of a traitor?
 
Is this the face of somebody who’d go
spewing all of your deepest, darkest secrets to the whole, wide world?"

"Frankly, yes."

She frowns but, undeterred, continues her
speech.
 
"Well, I
wouldn’t.
 
I
won’t.
 
I mean, that would be so uncool, it would be hot.
 
Like,
burning
hot.
 
A skin-melting
inferno
.
 
You know what I mean?"

"No."

"
Any
way, is this thing with Alis a
lovers’ quarrel, a triangle thing, an ‘I only like you as a friend’
situation?
 
Or is it, like, all Romeo
and Juliet?
 
Or, I guess, Rome
a
and
Juliet.
 
Whatever.
 
Are you requited?"

I shift uncomfortably in the uncomfortable chair,
tugging on the sleeves of my sweater, pointing my gaze toward the seemingly
unmoving hands of the clock affixed to the wall.
 
"Not exactly requited, no.
 
I mean, I haven’t told her—"

"Awesome!
 
Ooh, this is
so
exciting."
 
She kicks her feet and claps her hands together, looking like a perfect
facsimile of a six-year-old girl.
 
Well,
a six-year-old playing dress-up in her mom’s spike heels, gaudy jewelry and
glossy red lipstick.
 
"Hey, what if
we did, like, a
Cyrano de Bergerac
reenactment?
 
Like, I’ll write you some killer love poems,
and you can read them beneath her window, and then she’ll come running down and
throw herself in your arms and kiss you, and I’ll kind of slink away, and we’ll
never tell her the truth, that really she fell in love with
my
words,
with
me—
"

"I’ll have to pass on that one, but thanks for
the offer.
 
I didn’t know you were a
poet, Annabelle."

"Yeah, I won a bunch of contests in college,
got some stuff published.
 
But, you
know, there’s no money in poetry.
 
And
my mom was a librarian, and her mother was, too, so…"
 
She shrugs slightly and offers me a rare,
watery smile.
 
"I couldn’t break
the librarian lady chain and disappoint them.
 
I mean, I always loved to read.
 
So it made sense."

"But it wasn’t your passion?"

"Passion?"
 
She laughs bitterly.
 
"God, no.
 
Who could have a
passion for dusty books and demanding patrons and awful fluorescent lighting
and those ugly-but-comfortable shoes that everyone but
me
insists on
wearing?"

I smile down at my flats and chuckle to myself.

"But it pays the bills, and I guess it’s better
than bagging groceries all day."