I shove Meredith. I think about Jack yelling at me in the snow. I think about Jack in the Airstream, refusing to let go of my waist. “But I—I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know how to move forward.”

Meredith peers down at me. “You could start by showering.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Monday, December 26, 2022

“Here’s a bedroom for eight hundred a month plus utilities off something called Killingsworth, but it says water signs are not welcome to apply.” Meredith squints at the Craigslist ad on her laptop screen, then promptly chucks it onto the futon between us in outrage. “That is an unethical rental practice, and these harmony-seeking assholes are lucky I’m not feeling particularly litigious at the moment.”

“Mere,” I say, staring at the yellow legal pad where she’s created a very short list of suitable housing situations. It’s a list of two places. Two. “I need to ask Greg to take me back at Roastlandia.”

“You do not, and you will not, and we’re not having this argument again.”

I flick my hand toward the laptop screen. “Even if they would rent to a Pisces, I can’t afford eight hundred a month plus utilities. I can’t afford dinner. Let’s face it: without Andrew’s money, I need to get a job, and going back to Roastlandia is easiest.”

Meredith shakes her head so viciously that the pencil flies out of her bun and red curls spill everywhere. “We are trying to move forward. Roastlandia is one giant step backward.”

“I’m moving forward. I’ve showered. I’ve put on a real bra.” I gesture to my damp hair and fully supported breasts in turn. “Progress is being made.”

Meredith permitted me a single day to mope and cry and lounge around in my own filth over losing Jack. Then, this morning, she went into full problem-solving mode, kicking my shins until I agreed to wash myself and to research new living arrangements before I’m evicted from this nightmare apartment. And it does feel good—to focus on the path forward instead of dwelling on all the things I did wrong. Instead of wondering if the Kim-Prescotts are still at the cabin, if Andrew and Dylan are together, if Jack is okay, if I’ve caused her to retreat deeper into her aluminum shell…

“Look, would it be easiest to fall into your old patterns and return to Roastlandia?” Meredith asks in her lawyer-voice. “Yes, of course. But would it be healthiest? Especially when there is an email from a publisher just waiting to be answered…?”

I begin to curl into the fetal position on my end of the futon, then catch myself. I un-fetal. “I… that’s… it’s not relevant. I need money now.”

“But you are going to answer the email, right?”