Nowhere but Home A Novel - By Liza Palmer Page 0,78

tone is easy and loving. This is how he spends his mornings? Everett stops altogether as Arrow, in his ornery way to the last, has decided to lie down right where he is. Everett just shakes his head, laughing, and bends down to him, caressing his muzzle and petting him. In time, he helps Arrow back up by lifting the dog’s haunches, steadying him as he struggles to get his footing. The unlikely pair walk on, out of sight.

“You ready?” I ask, wiping away tears that I’ll blame on the glaring sun.

“Yeah. You okay?” Cal says, fiddling with his stopwatch again.

“Sure . . . sure,” I say, tearing myself away from the point on the horizon where Everett and Arrow are.

I gather myself, take a deep breath, and run and run and run. I need to flush the grief I feel for what Everett and I had. That sweetness I just saw with Arrow was what I always loved about him. It’s not as if I understood in the beginning what it meant to fall in love with someone. I knew love didn’t mean that things were going to work out or that it made people nice. Love, to me, even at a young age, was complicated. I knew it didn’t stop people from leaving or from hurting you. Love seemed to give people a free pass to treat you poorly. How many times had I heard the words “I love you” right before someone did something terrible?

When that feeling bubbled up inside me about Everett, I didn’t automatically default to love. It was different, purer. In the beginning, we didn’t put any barriers or rules on it, we just knew that there was something there. An understanding that we were the same in ways we couldn’t comprehend. There was a safety in knowing that.

It wasn’t until I grew up a bit that I realized real love is more about the beauty of the everyday. It’s not an accident that every love story seems to end with the couple walking off into the sunset together. I think about Everett and Arrow walking the Paragon land every morning and how I had no idea he did that. I know things about Everett only the most intimate connections yield and yet I have no idea how he spends his mornings.

I catch up to Cal as we finally begin to go down the hill. Our footfalls are syncopated as we begin our descent.

“So you’re going to stay then? In North Star?” Cal asks, not looking at me. I stumble a bit, my feet tangling as I absorb what he’s asked and what it took to ask it. I right myself quickly.

“I’ve definitely thought about it, but I don’t know, sweetheart. I don’t know,” I say, seeing Everett still heavy on my mind. Cal picks up the pace down the hill.

“I want you to,” Cal says, looking back at me now with those ice blue eyes. He gives a curt nod and looks away quickly.

Emotion chokes my throat. My breathing grows more and more shallow as he turns to see my reaction once more. I offer an ineffective smile and a nod, knowing if I stay it means that snow globe might as well be shattered. We run on in silence.

Cal and I get to the bottom of the hill and begin running through town. He smiles back at me, but then looks away. I smile, trying to breathe deep, deep, deeper.

We arrive home and the heat seems to have followed us down that hill. We eat and shower. There may have been a quick tantrum in there (by me) about having to go to church. When I get out of the shower, I find a bright orange short-sleeved sundress and some wedge-heeled sandals waiting for me on my bed.

“I assume you have undergarments,” Merry Carole says, leaning in my doorway.

“It’d suit you for me to go commando under this thing, right?” I say, toweling off my hair.

“Please don’t embarrass me, Queen Elizabeth,” Merry Carole says. She’s dressed in a demure outfit. Somber colors, high neckline, and hem past the knee. Her hair is high, yet reverent. Her makeup is respectful, with its more natural shades and pinkish-hued lip gloss.

“I’ll try.”

Merry Carole closes the door after herself and I put on the orange sundress as if it’s a costume laid out for me by the wardrobe department. Today, Queen Elizabeth Wake, you’ll be playing the part of a respectable townsperson who is not an