Maybe she’d break up with Lisa. If I came to California at the holidays with my dad, maybe we’d meet up at In-N-Out again, drive to that stretch of marshland together, and in the quiet of the truck cab she’d tell me she wanted to be with me. Long distance. I imagined phone calls then: me lying on my dorm-room bed, hearing her voice in my ear late at night. She’d send me new tracks that she recorded with Madchen. Maybe she’d write a song about me.

I felt as if we were cocooned in maybe. Maybe when we talked about Adrienne Rich’s Twenty-One Love Poems, we were talking about something else. Maybe when I climbed into the cab of her truck, I wanted to do more than talk. Maybe when she lingered at Joan’s on Friday mornings, she wanted something more, too.

Chapter 22

The day that Steph came over for lunch, I put on the summer dress I’d brought with me, but I was worried it made me look like I was trying too hard. I cycled through jeans and shorts and my limited collection of tops, discarding the ones that Steph had already seen, which was most of them. I knew I was obsessing too much over this, but it was hard to stop. The lunch felt official in some way, as if Steph and I were coming out as a couple, even though I knew that was a fantasy. The longer I changed my outfits, the longer the fantasy lasted.

And then Analemma started barking, and she was here.

—

Steph had brought a loaf of crusty bread. She handed it to me like an offering when she came through the door, then bent down to greet Analemma. When she straightened up we shared an awkward hug, hampered by the bread in my hands.

“You look nice,” she said.

I had put the summer dress back on moments before she arrived. “Thanks,” I said. I was happy she noticed, but a little embarrassed to be so much more dressed up than her. She was in jeans and a Greenbrae Garden Center T-shirt. “Are you working later?”

“Yeah, I picked up a closing shift.”

We were looking at each other, and I felt as if she had something on her mind she wanted to say, but then the moment passed and nothing was said. Maybe she was nervous about the lunch, too.

We went upstairs. I took the bread into the kitchen to slice while Steph went to greet Joan on the deck, where she was grilling salmon. They came back inside together, and Joan started issuing instructions on how to finish putting together the salad. The tension I’d felt about what might or might not happen began to dissipate in the wake of carrot peeling, avocado scooping, and table setting.