Lewis clumsily half closes the bathroom door. “Just one night. I just wanted one night,” I hear him mumble under his breath.
One night for what? I kick off my shoes, not caring where they fall. One night to forget his girlfriend? One night to force me to watch his total drunken thoughtlessness? One night to ignore the problems that weigh me down whenever I don’t have the wherewithal to distract myself? That’s every night for Lewis. He does whatever he wants, no matter who it hurts.
I lie on the bed and try to tune out the sound of Lewis retching over the toilet. Willing myself to fall asleep, I close my eyes and wish. If I had Juniper’s memory, it wouldn’t just be me in this unfamiliar hotel with my inebriated brother. I’d be recalling every word we exchanged on the rooftop over Providence.
But I do my best. Halcyon. Bucolic. Propinquity. I hold on to every syllable, hoping they turn into dreams.
Fitz
WHEN I WAKE up, I’m alone in the room. On the pillow next to me, I find a note written on the bed-and-breakfast’s stationery. In hasty handwriting Lewis has explained he’s gone to grab food. I’m stunned he’s awake, what with his penchant for sleeping in late and his extended stay in the bathroom last night.
I lie in bed, squinting in the uncomfortable sunlight. I don’t want to heave myself out from under the covers. Really, I don’t want to face the fact that last night is over.
It feels like a dream, close enough to impossible, like I really could have just conjured the entire evening with Juniper in my head. In the morning light, the wonder of the night feels nearly unreachable. Fugacious. Fleeting, with the tendency to disappear. I know with every passing minute and mile, it’ll be harder to imagine it was ever real.
I remember the dictionary—trading the book back and forth, underlining the words we read to each other. I reach over to the nightstand where I left the Dictionary of Unusual Usages before I went to bed, feeling a rush of gratitude I have the pages and the ink to tie me tangibly to the night with Juniper. Proof it was real.
I thumb open the book, reading the underlines. Lissome. Desuetude. Embrocate, which we only underlined because Juniper found it funny that the stately, flowery word means “rubbing on lotion.” I’m close to the end of the dictionary when my fingers catch on something. My breath catches with them.
There’s a dog-eared page. I never dog-ear pages. I kind of resent the practice, and in other circumstances, the defacement of my dictionary would piss me off. Not this time. With the heady tingle of nervous excitement, I open precisely to the folded page.
I immediately narrow in on the underlined word. It’s not one I remember either of us reading out loud, though. Serendipity. Fortunate coincidence. Finding what one did not know one needed. The word is underlined in one of Juniper’s unmistakably neat strokes.
Next to it, I find ten digits. It’s a phone number.
It’s her phone number.
I do not know how to process this realization. I feel myself blushing goofily, elated yet reminding myself to be cool, to not read into the gesture, to remember she’s probably only being friendly. She must have written the number down when I wasn’t paying attention, when I was looking the other way, or—I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. It deeply doesn’t matter.
I’m staring at the ten perfect little numbers when the door handle rattles and Lewis pushes his way in. He’s holding a Dunkin’ Donuts bag and a tray with two coffees. In no way does he look like he spent the night hunched over the toilet. He’s showered and freshly shaven, his eyes clear.
Oddly, it reminds me how wrecked I feel. Under the elation of finding Juniper’s phone number, I’m severely tired. It’s only been two full days of this trip, one in Boston and yesterday in Providence. But it feels like weeks since I took the bus—the buses—into South Station. Traveling is exhausting.
My stomach growls, like it’s hearing my thoughts. Lewis drops the paper bag in my lap. If he thinks this makes up for having to listen to him puke for hours, he’s . . . on the right track.
He stands over his open suitcase, sipping his coffee. For a second, he studies me, and I wonder if he’s going to say something about last night. About the girl he danced with or how I got his stumbling ass back to the room. About what I said to him.
He doesn’t. I don’t either. Serious conversations aren’t something I know how to have with my brother. Maybe it’s because we’re not close enough, or maybe it’s because Lewis isn’t capable of being serious about anything. Probably both.
“So,” he says, watching me with keen interest despite his utterly relaxed posture, “are we heading home?”
I glance at the dictionary. At Juniper’s phone number. Impossible to say.
She wasn’t just repeating my words. She knew she’d left her number and was hinting there’d be a way to ensure we saw each other again.
But I won’t see her if I go home now.
I return my gaze to Lewis. “No,” I say, a grin slipping across my face.
Juniper
I’M WAITING FOR an unknown number to light up my phone screen. I waited while we ate croissants out of paper bags in the campus Starbucks this morning. I waited while we drove out of Providence onto US-6, and while we headed in the direction of the University of Connecticut, passing exits for Hartford and Silver Lake, brick buildings and greenery going by in the window.
While we drove, Matt described every detail of the party. I chimed in now and then, listening to him recount his beer pong wins and how he and Carter found this old Nintendo in one downstairs room.
The conversation felt off, though, like we were only carpooling instead of dating. What Matt found hilarious, I found familiar. What I found confusing, Matt found normal. I felt the same unpleasant current I experienced when he wanted to hang with Carter and I wanted to leave the party, an undertow dragging against my feet and the course I’d chosen. One wrong step, and I could slip downstream. I couldn’t help continually checking my phone in the cup holder too, which I know Matt noticed. He said nothing, and if he wondered why, he hid his curiosity impeccably.
I think he felt the same weirdness in the conversation I did, because by the time we reach the Middle Turnpike heading toward UConn, we’re driving in silence. We pull off the turnpike and head toward campus, passing honest-to-goodness red barns and stone walls like we’re in a photo calendar of the idyllic Northeast. The hour we’re on the road feels like eternity. I focus on what’s coming up on our itinerary to pass the minutes. Rationally, I should feel exhausted from the party and today’s early start, but going over the five days of visits we have left invigorates me, from Connecticut to New York to D.C. to Virginia. I guess I like traveling.