“It’s like a fucking hospital. Who the fuck would want to live in a room like this?”
“You’re a fan of a more… lived in look,” I assumed.
“I’m a fan of a place where I can prop my feet up on the table. And where the goddamn sheets don’t crinkle when I move them.”
I smiled at that, silently agreeing.
While my place was on the modern side, it was still warm and homey. At least I liked to think so. And I always made sure to use softener in my wash.
“So… tomorrow,” I said after I had changed and settled into bed, when the show Gunner had been staring at – though, I thought, not actually watching – went to commercial.
“What about it?”
“Everything changes,” I said, half to myself.
“Guess you could say that.”
“What else could you say about it?”
“You get to start over,” he said, refusing to look my way, making my stomach feel tight and uncomfortable.
I didn’t say it. Not aloud. Not to him. I didn’t want him to think I was silly or ungrateful or even just bemoaning my fate.
But I thought it.
I thought it until the words stopped even making sense in my own head.
I thought it until it made a deep, sad sensation settle in my stomach.
I thought it until the TV turned itself off, leaving me with nothing but the sound of Gunner’s breathing, steady, but not asleep.
I thought it until I fell asleep and couldn’t think it anymore.
What if I don’t want to start over?
TEN
Sloane
Carson City was – and wasn’t – what I was expecting.
I couldn’t claim to have much point of reference when it came to Nevada. The only thing I knew about it – like many people – was Vegas. And that knowledge was only from TV shows and movies. I had never been there myself.
Gunner had told me it was a smaller city. And it was. I mean, of course it was. Most cities were smaller in comparison to New York. And while there were parts of it that looked very old-timey and stuck in a different era, other parts were surprisingly modern.
It was bigger than I imagined, a sprawling, very flat place nestled inside some steep green hills.
As we drove through downtown, we were greeted by a banner hanging across the roadway reminding us to be Water smart because Every drop counts!
“You’ll get used to it,” Gunner told me, seeming to interpret my silence as disappointment.
I couldn’t call it that myself.
I didn’t know what to call my mood right about then.
If anything, I would say detached.
I had told myself days ago that if this was going to be my fate, that I was going to try to make the most of it, that I was going to find the silver linings where they existed, that I was going to try to build a nice life for myself, even if it wasn’t the one I had always wanted.
So I should have been looking at the lines of mom-and-pop stores with curiosity and excitement to explore their shelves. I should have been breathless at the idea of the beauty I could find in those hills once I settled in. I should have been trying to commit some of the street names to memory.
Something.
Anything.
But all I could do was stare blankly out the window, feeling absolutely nothing inside.
“I know,” I agreed in a hollow tone, knowing I needed to say something to him.
“Do you want to stop for some food, or see if the super is around to show us the apartment building Jules has tentatively picked out for you?”
Might as well get it over with, I guess.
“I’m not hungry. Let’s check out the apartment.”
So that was what we did, driving just a couple minutes out of downtown where all the shopping was. If the weather was nice, and I was feeling up to it, it was even close enough to walk to.
Carson Valley Apartments was a modern building, clearly not more than ten or so years old, all warm sandy-colored stucco, and small in comparison to the apartment buildings I was used to seeing with six separate buildings of seemingly four units each, two up top, two down below.
Each ground level apartment had a deck area with wooden pergolas. Each upper level had a balcony. Small, they seemed, but big enough to put a small table and chairs and some plants.
Half of the buildings’ balconies and decks faced the hills. The other half faced a subdivision a street away.
I should have been hoping I got the view of what natural beauty the area had to offer, but all I thought as we finally exited the car to stretch our legs and wait for the super to greet us was In just a few days, I was going to be all alone.
It was an absurd thing for someone like me to think, someone who had always been alone. Comfortably. Mostly happily. I had certainly never bemoaned the fate.