had ever seen. I picked his button-down shirt off the floor and put it on to sleep in. It smelled like him. I promised myself I would always remember the moment of putting on his shirt.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t be embarrassed to go out with me?” he asked, his arm around me as we spooned.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m sure.” This time, I meant it.
He kissed my hair and I heard his breath deepen as he fell asleep.
I thought I was awake all night, because I remember the sky whitening and the birdsong and smiling at the ceiling. But I must’ve drifted off, because when I heard the knock at the door, I was dreaming I was back in Providence, sitting in front of a roaring fire on the big sofa in the living room. In my dream it was winter. Outside, a snowstorm howled. The sky was purple-gray, snow was flying sideways, and the wind was knocking against the windows, but I was under the cream-colored blanket. I was warm, warm, warm.
But the knocking was too persistent for a dream. It was real.
“Cricket?” a voice said. I knew that voice. I missed that voice. I loved that voice. The sound of it lured me out of the warm bath of sleep. My eyes fluttered open. There was Jules with Lulu the pig in one hand and a waffle topped with whipped cream in the other. For a second, I smiled. She’d brought Lulu to Nantucket! She’d found my room! She’d remembered my birthday! She’d made a waffle and carried it all the way from Darling Street! And oh, there was something I needed to tell her. As I held my breath trying to remember what it was that was so important, so wonderfully important, I watched her face register disgust.
“Zack?” she asked.
Thirty-eight
I SAT ON THE PATIO, wearing the construction paper birthday crown Liz had made me, taking deep breaths, trying to focus on the bouquet of yellow and white flowers in a vase in front of me, which had arrived just an hour ago. I’d read somewhere that flowers absorb negative energy, making the space around them more positive; this was why flowers made sick or angry people feel better. I was hoping it worked for worried people, too. It was almost four o’clock and I hadn’t heard from Jules or Zack since they’d left this morning at seven, even though I’d been calling both of them obsessively. As soon as Jules saw Zack sleeping shirtless beside me, she’d put Lulu and the waffle on the floor and left without another word. She slammed the door on her way out, which woke up Zack. When I told him what had just happened, he kissed me once and left to find her.
When the delivery boy dropped the flowers at the front desk and Gavin called out, “Flowers for the birthday girl!” I thought they were from Zack, and my heart pushed against my ribs as I stripped off my pink latex gloves and dove for the card. For a second I thought that maybe he hadn’t been able to return my four phone calls and six texts because Jules had been nearby, but somehow he’d found time to send me flowers. Or maybe, I thought, he felt that because we’d had sex for the first time last night, some higher form of communication was necessary—communication by flowers. But I opened the little white envelope and my eyes landed on the word Mom with a thud.
“They’re from my mom,” I said to Gavin.
“That was lovely of her!” Gavin admonished me gently. “Don’t sound so disappointed.”
It had been Liz’s day off. (I was surprised when she didn’t switch with me for my birthday, but she and Shane had both orchestrated Tuesdays as their day off and they were sacred to her. They refused to spend a single Tuesday apart. She was bringing him to my little birthday party.) She’d spent the night at Shane’s, so I hadn’t even been able to tell her what happened. I wondered if Bernadette had been able to sense my anxiety, because she’d been nicer to me than usual, meaning that she left me alone and didn’t make me crawl under beds to hunt the dust bunnies.
The first time I’d seen Liz today was fifteen minutes ago when she placed the crown on my head and disappeared into the kitchen, leaving Shane and me to make awkward conversation on the patio. Thankfully, he’d gone inside after a