Welcome to Envy Park (17 page)

He smiled sheepishly. "I don’t
know. It’s a strong door."

"I was saying," I continued, "I’ve
decided to stay here. I won’t take the Thailand job."

"What are you talking
about?"

I was hoping to have more time to think about this,
or practice the speech, or at least deliver it without other Tower
3 refugees on the other side of the garden, but well.

"I’m going to stay. I don’t need
to be somewhere else just for the sake of being away," I
said.

"But your plan."

"I was thinking about that. What
exactly was that about? What was it for? Because when I think about
other people and what they have, I don’t wish I
were where they were
. I usually wish
I could’ve done what they’ve done, or already have what they’ve
built. And that takes time. That requires a commitment to
something. I think it means I have to choose a place, or choose a
career, and stick with it. I think it has to be this place, for
now."

"What are you going to
do?"

"I have some options. I just spoke
to someone who might actually be able to help."

"Where do I fit into this?" Ethan
asked.

"You," I said, poking the sleeve
of his ratty shirt, "are technically not part of it. This is going
to happen with or without you."

It was a bit difficult to talk to him right then, to
be honest. He was somewhere else, kept looking out toward the
business park, to the shiny cluster of tall buildings that he would
eventually be leaving behind, and wasn’t in the best state of mind
to be accepting of my Big Decision.

"So what happens to us in this
plan of yours?" he said, his brow furrowed. At best it seemed like
he was distracted, at worst skeptical. His mood was probably
somewhere in the middle.

"I’ll keep seeing you while you’re
here," I said. "And then we’ll have a nice going-away dinner before
you leave. And then you leave."

That didn’t sound like me at all, but I knew that it
was something he’d understand. This wasn’t for me to change or
control. His deadline was real, and I didn’t intend to mess with
it.

I was just going to let it happen.

Good luck to me.

Chapter 23

LUCILLE

I. CAREER AND FINANCES

+ Upwardly mobile and stable career

+ Frequent work-related travel

+ Can afford NV Park

II. FAMILY AND FRIENDSHIPS

- Would like more time with family and friends

III. LOVE AND RELATIONSHIPS

+ "Exclusively dating" someone, happily, but
ambivalent about the "future"

IV. PERSONAL FULFILLMENT

+ Makes time for her indie film mini obsession

+ Actually likes her life

So Lucille, she was awesome.

I caught up with her when she got
back, and we met at a tea place across the street. I discovered
that she was a little older than I was, and also did the "work
abroad" thing for a while until deciding to be closer to her
family.

"It’s different for everyone,"
Lucille said. "I really don’t like telling someone not to go for
it, because I did. But I had to change my priorities a
bit."

"I’m kind of at that point," I
admitted. "I just feel that I should realign the priorities a bit
too. I had this plan, but I forgot why I was doing it."

"You got stuck on the steps, and
lost sight of the purpose." Lucille brightened up at this. "Classic
case of strategy realignment. So this is actually what I do for a
living."

"I thought I knew all of this. I
have matrices. I’m a bit of a planner myself."

Lucille tilted her head and her
long and lush ponytail bounced lightly off one shoulder. "I’m sure
you’re great at it, and this hiccup has nothing to do with a lack
of planning. But you know, things happen. People change. You
shouldn’t force yourself to stick to something if your
circumstances change, and maybe you need someone else to remind you
of it."

My green tea felt like it was
still too hot, but I sipped anyway, and the heat spread across my
tongue in a weirdly invigorating way. "Maybe," I managed to
say.

"So do you want me to say it?
Moira, you can change your plan. It’s okay."

"I wanted to ask you about what
you do," I said. "Related to the change of plans."

Her smile turned sly, and the idea
I had been nurturing in my mind leaped into hers. "I get it. You
want to try working for us? There could be a lot of travel, but
once you get used to it I can at least scale down on
mine."

"You think I can do it?" I asked,
not expecting this to be a job interview. But I did want to try it.
It involved travel, and people, and everything I was good
at.

"I’ll have you work with someone
else in the team, because I already know too much about you,"
Lucille said. "But yes, go through the process and see if you want
it. I’ve told you how much work it can be, travel and all, and you
know now how much you can make if you stick with it. Do you want
it, though?"

I exhaled my relief, and actually
laughed. "It’s
planning.
You plan things all day. For other people. I’m
perfect for this, trust me."

And I felt good about that promise.

-/\/\/\-

At least I could afford to rent an apartment on that
salary at Lucille’s firm. Maybe not NV Park because it would take a
few years for me to catch up with Lucille’s rate, unless I find a
smaller place within the budget. Or I could just find a cheaper one
somewhere else entirely. If my apartment was to be sold, I’d want
to keep the windfall from that as savings.

Not that I was going to thank my mother for
that.

I was still avoiding her calls.
She kept sending text messages, sometimes using my dad’s phone,
about "finally having that housewarming party" at the condo but I
never replied. Now that was a joke, her kind of joke, organizing a
long-delayed "housewarming" right before she sold the place to
someone else.

What it was really was an excuse to come over and
see me, because I sure wasn’t going to her anytime soon.

I replied to the text from my
dad’s phone, knowing that she would see it.
She can come over once she apologizes and tells me that I can
do whatever the hell I want with my own property.

A few messages were sent after
that, but once I quickly scanned and saw no "sorry," I ignored each
one.

This wasn’t enough for me though, so I looked up my
cousin Megan’s number and actually called her too.

"I don’t know what your mom and my
mom talked about," she told me, and I tried my hardest not to freak
her out. She was, after all, only a daughter trapped in the web
that our respective mothers were spinning.

"Megan," I said with as much cheer
as I could muster. "I’m so looking forward to seeing you when
you’re here. But tell your mom that she doesn’t need to buy the
condo from me right now. How about you stay here a semester or so
first, and then we can talk about selling? You might actually see
something else that you like."

"That makes sense," Megan said. "I
mean, I’m sure your place is great and all, but yeah, we should
shop around first."

"Exactly," I agreed. "Just in case
your mom needs to know. I’m in no rush to sell this. Relax, and
enjoy the rest of your break and I’ll see you in June."

And yes that did make sense. My
mom had stepped over the line with that move, and I wasn’t going to
let her just take this, my only "plus," from me.

-/\/\/\-

So Lucille’s firm asked me to provide a transcript of
my college grades, and I asked Ethan if he wanted to come along
with me to get them from my school. I almost didn’t, because it was
a Friday morning and he had work, but I figured that I could be a
little greedy with his time and asked anyway. And he said he’d skip
work to go with me.

I also had the guts to ask because he was so okay
with it. We saw each other every day since the fire incident,
without fail, even if it was just to sit on his couch or mine and
watch the news. It didn’t take long for me to get used to the dent
his body left on one side of my couch, the specific setting he
preferred on my shower heater, the lonely sock of his that I would
have to fish out from underneath something because when he slipped
them off he didn’t care for where they ended up. We stopped working
out at the gym entirely, which we both found hilarious. It felt
like we had skipped several relationship stages and went straight
to a domesticated middle, because we knew we didn’t have the time
for what usually happened at the beginning.

At least that was how I thought of it.

I talked nonstop about the
upcoming job as a corporate planning trainer and how excited I was
about it.
He
hadn’t said anything for almost a week now about when he
would be leaving. I had learned more about him, from the stories he
had shared and the things we had done, because he would rather do
that than talk about leaving. It wasn’t my lack of trying, though.
I asked him more than once when the flight would be, and he just
said he didn’t know yet. It then became a truth or dare of sorts—I
would ask in another way when, and it was as if he would choose
"dare" instead and change the topic, like admit too many details
about a previous sexual experience (an ex before Rin, condom
mishap, cramping), throw Ashley under the bus (her weight in pounds
as a kid), anything rather than talk about that thing he wasn’t
sure about. Because God forbid he reveal anything and have it not
happen.

Personally I didn’t want to know the date either,
but if I was going to plan a wicked last night for him and with
him, then I needed to know when it would be.

We shared a cab to my college campus together. It
was on the other side of the city as far as NV Park was concerned,
in a busier and crazier part of town. It occurred to me that I had
been spending my time with him in a sanitized bubble version of my
hometown, and it was another reason why we had skipped parts of the
relationship process.

"Fantasy," I said, out of the
blue, right after he paid the cab driver and shut the car
door.

"What?"

"This. You and me. We’re doing
this because we’re probably getting off on a fantasy we have. You
want to know what mine is?"

"Of course."

We went through the security checks (stricter than
before) and wound up under a covered walkway that I went through
every day for four years. He and I were dressed in jeans and
shirts, and were actually more casual than the students that
streamed past us in their teen versions of business wear.

"I wanted to meet someone new. I
didn’t want to end up with anyone from college, or my past, nobody
who knew me back then. I knew I’d probably have to move somewhere
to find him. He’d be mature, and driven, and would appreciate that
I get things done. I’d tell him about the places I’ve lived in, and
he’d be curious and interested, and impressed to know that I’ve
built my career and wealth from the ground up without any handout
or parental intervention. And he’d fall for me just from knowing
all of that."

Ethan ducked to avoid a
particularly low streamer congratulating a student council election
winner. "What does this guy look like?" he asked.

"I don’t know. He could be like,
this tall. Dark brown eyes. Bike scar on the right knee. Possibly.
Not that choosy yet." My hand grazed exactly the knee I was
referring to, playfully. "That’s the fantasy. What’s
yours?"

He hesitated at a turn, and I
steered him toward the right. "Me? I thought I didn’t have
one."

I pouted. "That’s not how this
conversation is supposed to go."

"Wait. I said I
thought
. I told you
about the times that I tried to make it work with someone, only to
have things not fall into place."

"Yes, you had some vivid
stories."

"Right. It makes a guy want to
give up, just not to be disappointed. Aim low. But I do have a
fantasy." He lowered his voice because a group of young girls had
passed. "Stranger roleplay."

"What?" Not what I was expecting
to hear.

Ethan smiled, and inched closer,
so he could keep his voice that level. "Hey you asked. I like the
idea of meeting someone at a random place or time, and being so
attracted to her that I can’t bear to be without her, and then
giving her the best night or weekend of her life."

"That’s a noble fantasy right
there."

"It’s not over. So we have this
mind-blowing weekend, and yet I don’t leave immediately after.
Because she and I, we’re actually together. She’s not a stranger.
Hence the roleplay. "

It was a little shocking and yet
it made sense to me, and explained exactly what he got out of this.
"What does she look like?" I squeaked out.

He turned his head forward, away
from me. "You know what she looks like."

The document I needed was waiting for me at the
registrar’s office. He took my hand as we walked down the rest of
the hallway, and held it throughout my mundane transaction at a
grilled window, and still as I dropped the envelope with my
official transcript in my bag.