The shops on either side of the street are hard to see because of the sheer volume of people walking around. I pause at a red light, watching pedestrians cross over to the other side of the street. A sullen-looking teenager slouches behind older people I assume are his parents, staring down at the phone he holds inches from his face.
As the light turns green, I ease off the brake.
Where am I going? Where can I go to get my mind off of Owen and my mom? It feels like I’m running from something, an emotion I know too well. Up ahead, I spot the pink Jeep parked on the sidewalk. Seeing it brings a smile to my face. If Sedona is known for its red rocks, then just as iconic are the Pink Jeep Tours.
Trudy's fudge shop sits opposite the pink Jeep, and just seeing it convinces me I need fudge at this moment or I just might die. Running from my ex and right into the arms of chocolate. That should be my life motto.
I put on my blinker and turn, finding a parking spot. The fudge shop also sells ice cream, and the place is packed. I order a pound of cookies and cream fudge, and a half pound of original chocolate. That should last me until dinner.
Stepping outside into the sunshine, I look right and left. Left will take me further into the crowd so I go right, away from the crowd, and cross the street. There's a shopping center there, one less populated with tourists. It has real stores, the kind of places residents would need. Main Street shops sell Sedona-themed knick-knacks, t-shirts, crystals and geodes. A psychic will reveal your future. All great for tourists, but not so much for the everyday needs of residents.
One of my favorite things about Sedona is that the people who built the place didn't carve up nature to make room for themselves. The hills weren't blasted apart to make everything flat, and so the whole place is full of curves. Winding streets, gently sloping hills. The shops and buildings were built on top of the land, and look as if they were simply set into the existing structure.
What this means for me now is that I have to climb two flights of stairs to access the stores. Not that I mind. My fingers keep dipping into the white paper bag I'm holding. It reminds me of the bags of roasted nuts I'd buy from the street vendor near my apartment in New York City. I'd bundle up and go for a walk in Central Park, one gloveless hand reaching into the bag of sweet mixed nuts. It was one of my favorite things to do in the winter.
And it is over. I’ve leased my apartment and my stuff is sitting in POD storage waiting for me to figure out my next step.
But … maybe I was ready for that part of my life to be over. I did what my Mom wanted me to do. Got a degree from a good university, moved somewhere and got outside my comfort zone—became a strong, independent woman. It was all her idea, and even though we didn't agree on much, she was so insistent about this one piece of advice that it felt too important not to listen to her. Even as a selfish seventeen-year-old, I felt the gravity of her suggestion. She wanted me to get out and explore, because she never did. And her dream became my dream.
There were far worse things my mom could ask me to do, so I‘d applied to Santa Clara University in California. I was in advanced classes at school and my SAT score was high enough that I got in without too much trouble. Financial aid paid for a small amount of my tuition, and I took out loans to pay the remainder. After my first year in the dorm, I moved into an apartment with three other girls. A part-time job in the campus bookstore allowed me to pay my share of the rent without much left over.
New York City was my idea. My mom loved it at first. I think she thought I might just get some work experience and then settle somewhere closer to home like Phoenix or San Diego. It was crazy how fast the years ticked by. I'd only been there a few months when she called and told me about her first cancer diagnosis. The words Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia sounded foreign and terrifying. I followed my mom's instruction not to look it up on the internet. "Just hear what I'm telling you. We caught it early and I'm going to be fine." I was too scared to look it up, too scared of what I might find. I willingly took her words as gospel. She told me to stay where I was, that I would help her most by following my dream. Our dream, I thought. I didn't correct her.
Almost seven years later, she's battling the same cancer for the third time, and I've finally come home.
I don't know where that leaves me. I only know where I am right now, climbing steps with sticky sweet fingertips, the red rock canyon walls at my back.
Just as I reach the main level of shops, my phone buzzes with a text. Fear spikes through me as I wonder if it’s mom saying something has gone wrong.
When I look down, a frown pulls at my lips when I see who it’s from.
Matt.
New York friend-with-benefits Matt.
Stopping in the opening of a restaurant, I open the text.
I miss you.
I chuckle. I was pretty sure Matt didn’t even know my last name. He lived in my building in New York and we met at the gym. We were both dedicated to our jobs and weren’t looking for something serious, so fuck buddies seemed like a good idea at the time. Once a week for the past year Matt and I got together and released our tension. It was nothing more than that.
You don’t miss me, you miss our arrangement, I quickly type back and toss my phone in my bag.
Gym rat Matt misses me. Hah, Anna would get a kick out of that. I’d have to call my old roommate later and tell her.
I duck into the restaurant and find the bathroom with the sign on the door that says For Customers Only. Once my hands are clean, I buy an iced tea to validate my usage of their soap and water, and keep going down the row of stores. There is an apothecary with handmade soaps and other items, a coffee bar, a wine shop that specializes in local wine and olive oil.
After buying some peppermint and lavender soap, I duck into the wine shop and buy four bottles of wine. Technically, I only buy three. The fourth is free with my purchase of three. The shop owner, a balding man with a kind smile and a generous middle, also convinces me that I need the garlic infused olive oil that came in yesterday. He tells me it's his biggest seller and the shipment probably won't last the weekend. His appeal to scarcity works on me, mostly because I think garlic olive oil would be amazing with just about every meal I plan to make my mom this week, and last night I read about the potent benefits of garlic.
This shopping therapy is doing wonders for my mood, but I won’t be able to spend money with abandon much sooner … I need to find a job. Sedona isn’t exactly the best place for an advertising sales executive and marketing guru.
I walk along, my fudge bag joined by my new purchases, and spot a bookstore.
Oh great. Just take all my money.
A bookstore is the worst place for me to be when I'm engaging in retail therapy.
Funny how that doesn't stop me from walking right in.
The familiar scent is the first thing to greet me. Woody paper and rich ink, musty carpet and stale coffee from a carafe in the corner. There is another scent, one I know cannot be real but still I recognize it: possibility. I smelled it my first night in New York City. I smell it every time I'm in a bookstore. The possibility to learn and grow, all with the opening of a book. Perhaps it's not a quantifiable scent, but for me it is.
"Hello there," a low, throaty voice says. I follow the sound and watch a young woman come from an opening near the back of the store.
I blink, surprised for the shortest second, then gather myself. The gravelly voice had me expecting an older woman, but this woman is probably about my age, maybe thirty but not a day over.