let’s not forget, in the spring, countless hours of inventory.
It’s more work than people think it is.
It’s more work than even I think it is.
Plus, this year, I’d bought—with my own money—a multicolored hanging sculpture made up of brightly painted recycled bicycle parts. It had looked so soothing on the website where I’d found it, and I’d gotten mesmerized by a video of it gently spinning … but when the box arrived, and I saw the random bags of at least a hundred pieces to assemble—I’d closed it again right away.
Nope. Never mind.
It was going to take me a million hours to put together, at minimum. As far as my to-do list went, assembling that sculpture would have to be dead last.
Workaholism worked and it didn’t work at the same time.
In the abstract, when I think of “de-stressing,” I think of bubble baths, and page-turning novels, and naps under fuzzy blankets—and the truth was, I didn’t have time for any of that. But chipping away at all my piled-up work did have a stress-reducing effect, and not only because I felt a little less panicked with each to-do item I scratched off: it kept me from looking at the big picture. It kept me from thinking about the past, and it kept me from trying to imagine the future, and it let me stay focused on whatever tiny next step was right in front of me.
There is something comforting about tunneling down your focus like that. It was kind of a can’t-see-the-forest-for-the-trees effect. And in certain moments of relief, I forgot about the forest entirely.
Which is how, the night before our first scheduled faculty meeting with Duncan, Alice was able to shock me like she did. I knew it was Sunday—but I’d just kind of lost track for a little bit of which Sunday it was.
I was walking over to the grocery store to stock up for the week, when I got this pretty standard text from Alice: “Great news!”
“What???” I texted back.
“I thought of the title for my autobiography.”
“Thank God!”
“I know, right?”
“What is it????”
“Do the math.”
“Please never tell me to do math.”
“No! That’s the title!”
“???”
“Do the Math: The Alice Brouillard Story.”
“Ah.”
“Perfect, right? I’m going to make it my catchphrase, too.”
“You have always needed a catchphrase.”
“Agreed. And thanks in advance.”
“For?”
“Being my ghostwriter.”
All fairly standard texting for Alice and me. We threw in a few GIFs, too, and then just when I thought we were done, I got one last ding, and Alice added, “Can’t wait to meet the Guy tomorrow!”
And that’s when I dropped the phone.
Tomorrow. It was suddenly about to be tomorrow. As in the tomorrow. The one I’d been dreading so hard I’d lost track of time. The one where I would see Duncan Carpenter again, for better or for worse, as I stepped—willingly or not—into the rest of my life.
I couldn’t believe it.
It just didn’t seem possible.
None of it seemed possible, in fact.
De-stress, I reminded myself. De-stress.
But it was good timing. I always found grocery stores pleasantly anesthetizing.
I grabbed a cart and took deep breaths as I curved my way around the magazines and mass-market paperbacks, then up and down the aisles. I considered buying a beach towel with unicorns all over it—on sale for $7.99. Did I need a blender? A coffee grinder? A new muffin tin?
I had only managed to put one thing in my cart—the most essential of all essentials: coffee—when, suddenly, I saw him.
Duncan Carpenter.
He was here. Just like that. In my grocery store.
I caught a glimpse—one glimpse—of him walking past the far end of the aisle, and it was enough to make me drop down into a squat, hiding behind my cart.
Slowly, every sense on high alert, I stood back up, and pushed my cart to the edge of the aisle where I’d just seen him, and peeked around the corner.
There he was, at the far end of the wide center aisle, in a white oxford shirt and gray suit pants, striding along with his cart like it was no big deal. Like it was totally normal. Like people named Duncan Carpenter just … wandered around grocery stores in Galveston all the time.
Yep. Definitely him.
I couldn’t see his face, but I’d know that walk anywhere: the way his legs swung forward and his feet struck the ground. I know you’re thinking, Yeah. That’s how walking works. But the point is, I knew his particular way of doing it. The angles, the rhythm, the sway. I recognized it. Some things had changed, but