Anything More Than Now (Sutton College #2)

by Rebecca Paula

  Reagan

  I tap my heel against the vintage tile of the hipster deli while I wait for the office lunch order. I was fired from my last gig. Apparently I don’t have the personality to hand out flyers for some dance club in Times Square. It’s probably for the best because as August rolls around, it’s hot as hell and the city reeks. London helped me find a temp job instead in an office and since the building is like the Arctic, I’m just glad to be out. It’s been twenty minutes since I left and I’m only now getting feeling back in my hands.

  “In a rush there, sweetheart?”

  I look up from my phone, another round of emails scheduling interviews for jobs and even a few internships. More saying I’m not qualified or the position has been filled. It stings, but at this point it doesn’t matter. I’m in New York and I’m not giving up. It’s not like I have anything else to do with my time except to chase after the one thing I want. I tilt my head, narrowing my eyes at the line of guys young and old folding up sandwich orders. “Just want my order. It’s been over an hour.”

  “You’re in New York,” a man with gray hair says. “The whole city is full of millions of people who think they deserve everything now.”

  “I don’t care about being special, only want to keep my job. So anytime you want to give me my order, that’d be great.”

  It’s probably a dumb thing to say. I wait for someone to spit in the sandwiches or mess up the orders on purpose, but they just laugh. The line behind me, full of corporate yuppies on business lunches and city moms in designer spandex, huff and keep their attention fixed to their phones.

  “They’re always like this,” a woman says behind me. “But I swear the sandwiches are worth the annoying mansplaining.”

  I turn around, observing a woman in her thirties hiding behind a copy of The Nightingale. “That’s a good book,” I say without thinking.

  The woman lowers it and smiles, brushing back her blond hair to tuck a piece behind her ear. She has the most beautiful blush pearl earrings. “It is, isn’t? I don’t have a lot of free time to read for fun. I try to sneak it in when I can.”

  “Well…enjoy.” I turn around, silently scolding myself for not mastering small talk. New York has let me become more of a hermit than I was in Portland and it’s scaring the hell out of me. I don’t want to get lost in myself. I don’t want to fade away and get eaten up by this big city. I can do better. I try my best to turn back around without appearing like I’m ready to crawl out of my skin. “What is it you do?”

  “I’m in publishing. I’m an acquisitions editor.” She slips a bookmark into the book, then slides it into her purse. “What about you?”

  “Oh, I’m just a temp.”

  “I remember those days,” she says, laughing. “I promise, it’ll get better. Did you just graduate?”

  “I did. I graduated from Sutton.” When she doesn’t show any sign of recognizing it, I rush to add, “it’s in Portland.”

  “So you’re new to the city too then, I’m guessing?”

  I fight from fidgeting. I haven’t mastered this level of adulting. It’s different than getting through the day and surviving. It’s a different set of skills and well, mine are rusty as hell. If I have them at all. I should have gone to more parties or career services lectures or something. Anything that would force me to be able to talk about myself without wanting to duck beneath the first thing that resembles cover. “I am.”

  I swear I can talk more than a few words, I want to say.

  “Well, I’m Anna.” She leans in as if she’s about to share a secret. “And between you and me, remember that you’re more than ‘just’ anything.” She leans back and hassles the guys behind the counter.

  I think that’s it. I think we’re done and I’m still digesting her advice when she asks what I came here to do.

  “I’m here to get an editorial assistant job. Hopefully.”

  “Your number’s up, snowflake,” the man at the register says, flagging me over.

  “Well, it was nice meeting you, Anna—”

  “Wait, do you have a card or something?” She takes out a pen and scribbles something against the back of a business card. I hand her a résumé that I keep in my bag. “Even better,” she says with a smile. She trades me the card, then scans down my résumé. “Well, Reagan, it was nice meeting you. And chin up. I’ll give this to HR if I ever get my sandwich.”

  I elbow my way over to pay, the other patrons not bothering to move. That’s the thing about New York—even the simplest thing is a fight. Darwin would have had a field day studying this city.

  I pay and grab hold of the brown paper bag, the smell of pastrami and fresh rye bread filling up my nose.

  “Have a good afternoon,” he says, handing back my card with a receipt. I glance down and see his number scrolled over the back.

  “Yeah, you too.” I ignore his wink and am about to leave before the older man shouts.

  “And how about you put a smile on that pretty face?”

  I hold my order tight in one hand, then flip him off with the other as I exit. Besides, I don’t think I could remember how to smile. My resting bitch face is back and I’ve embraced it. It makes pushing past Noah a little easier. Especially after the missed call from him popped up on my phone.

  I never called him back.

  I hear some applauding before the door closes behind me and I’m back in the middle of everything, in the middle of a race that won’t end. The sun beats off the asphalt, baking the back of my legs. The warmth radiates up my calves, up to my thighs beneath my navy pencil skirt. The humid air clings to my skin, drawing my shirt to my body like the moon draws the waves to the shore. The fine fabric of my linen shirt sticks between my shoulder blades as I wait at the crosswalk, prepared to mow down the herd of people around me.

  The walk sign flicks on and I quickly weave in and out of everyone, just barely missing the safety cone to my right where a large manhole is steaming. New York City smells of trash, of the acidic stench of decay. I haven’t gotten used to it, I guess, because it still turns my stomach.

  A cab pulls out in front of me. I jerk back, losing my balance on my heels and nearly drop the bag of lunch. I straighten just as a bike strikes my hip and levels me.

  “What the hell?” I rub the back of my head after colliding with the asphalt. I’m going to have a massive lump. “Didn’t you see me?

  The man sits up, his helmet slipped off to one side and tight around his neck. “Didn’t you? This is the fucking bike lane for a reason.”

  I keep cursing under my breath, trying to gather the spilled sandwiches while I’m on my knees. I have French dressing smeared across the front of my skirt. Someone’s salad is scattered around us.

  “Let me help you up. Are you hurt?”

  I draw back from the guy’s offered hand. “I will be when my boss fires me.” Almost a month in New York and already a giant job fail. What the fuck, life? Can’t you cut a girl a break?

  “Come on, stand up. You’re bleeding.”

  I glance up, the summer sun burning in white-hot heat around a tall silhouette. “Are you? How’s your bike?”

  His laugh is smooth as he takes off his helmet and shakes out his tawny hair. He rights his bike and readjusts the messenger bag on his back. “I’ve had my fair share of run-ins. You didn’t decimate my bike, don’t worry. Just watch where you’re going. Everyone will run you over in New York if you give them half a chance.”

  I take his hand and stand, quickly withdrawing it, quickly withdrawing myself at the way I feel my lips curl into a smile. “I’m learning that.”

  This stranger looks like Noah. He has that same smile, that same deep, dry laugh. I might have skinned my knee, but the scab on my heart peels back and begins to bleed too.

  “I’m Eli.” He leans down and grabs what he can of the spilled lunches and tosses them into the trash, then checks his watch. “My boss is going to kill me too if I don’t get this package delivered. And traffic’s been a bit
ch today.”

  I pick up my purse and double-check I haven’t lost anything. The road is soft under me, my knees buckling slightly. My throat is dry and I just want to lie down, or hear his voice, or remember why I didn’t stay for Isla’s funeral. If I had any money, I’d have changed my ticket the second time. Why the hell didn’t I stay when he needed me most?

  “I don’t know your name,” Eli says. He waves his hand in front of me. “You sure you’re okay?”

  Sweat glistens over his biceps. Flashes of Noah wash over me again, unrelenting. The smell of him, the feel of his arms wrapped around my body, the hum of his voice as he kissed his way down my body.

  I nod, maybe a little too enthusiastically because my stomach bobs along with my head. “Yeah, fine. Bye, Noah.” I turn to leave, to face my boss and the rest of the hungry office.

  “It’s Eli.”

  Shit. “Right. Eli. Well, bye. Don’t hit anyone else.”

  He laughs again, drawing my attention back to him as he straddles his bike. “Here,” he holds out a slip of paper. “Write down the order and I’ll deliver it to the office myself after I drop this package off. It’s right around the corner.”

  “Oh, no.” My protest gets tangled up.

  “Yeah, sure. If my boss hears that I’ve gotten into another accident, I’ll lose my job. So we’re even.”

  I take the slip of paper from his hand, about to write it out again when I say something really stupid. “I can just text it. It’s in my phone.”

  “You’re not going to use my number to send a lawyer after me, are you? Worker’s comp?”

  I dig through my purse for a napkin and wipe off the dressing from the front of my shirt the best I can. It’s no use though. I still smell like I slept in the deli.

  Flirting right now is the same as someone sneezing during flu season. I want to douse myself in sanitizer and forget it’s ever happened. “No,” I say flatly.

  Eli makes good on his promise an hour later and shows up with lunch for the office. I slink back in my cubicle, pulling my cardigan over my dress shirt to hide the fact it’s soaked. I tried to wash it in the bathroom sink with some of that cheap pink soap. The French dressing still left an orange stain.

  And when Eli texts me two nights later and asks if I want to meet him for drinks, I wish I had just handed him that slip of paper instead. Let everyone in New York run me over right now. There isn’t much more to me right now than sheer determination and a girl who’s lost in a hungry city with her heart across the country.

  *

  Imogen and London are out, and I don’t want to move from my apartment, from my room, from my bed. I don’t want to move forward even if life has, because I’m still missing a part of me I thought I could find. I thought that by coming to New York, I’d be this strong independent woman and put a summer fling aside. I thought I wouldn’t be that girl who lives for a boy.

  And maybe I don’t exactly live for him, but I can’t exactly move forward without him either. Not fully. He’s there in the back of my mind, there when I close my eyes at night. I dream of him and wake up with the worst ache in my chest. I think of our goodbye and how unfinished it all was. I think back on leaving him behind in Montana to bury his wife while I hide away in my apartment. I think about how my heart has a hollowed-out spot that, for a few months, he called home. I think about how the vacancy there will flicker and shine like the neon signs on the Thai place across the street.

  There are chapters in life that end abruptly and others that blindside us and make us question them. It’s an inescapable chorus that constantly drums in my chest: why, why, why….

  A cockroach scuttles across the floor. I scream and leap for my heel beside my mattress on the ground. I lean over and smash it, striking my heel over and again until I’m sure nothing could survive that attack.

  I can’t stay here. I can’t stay in my room with cockroaches, with the lights of the city outside my window, as life moves on outside. I can’t stay because a part of me has disappeared.

  It’s my fault. I knew his love for me was Florida showers. I knew, and I fell anyway. I push away the memory of Montana nights, of rainy Portland days in the library, in whisper-soft kisses, and his reverent touch.

  I text Eli, and get dressed.

  It takes me twenty minutes to get ready in the tiny closet that’s our bathroom. I’m going to have to take up yoga just to be able to shave in this shower stall. But after dropping almost a grand each month just on rent alone, it looks more like I’ll need to get a second job just to be able to afford working toward getting an internship in between temping since I’m not having much luck landing a job interview.

  I don’t know why I bother blowing out my hair, or why I put on lipstick, why I rub perfume over my pulse points. My heart is aching, fighting me each step of the way while my head tells me to get it together. My red flats are fine with the dress I have on but as I’m about to leave, I switch to heels and a small clutch instead of my big purse. Everything about this feels wrong. I feel wrong. My phone rings as I’m heading down the stairs of the apartment building. I answer, my hand tight over the chipped railing.

  “Reagan,” Greg says. “I have news.”

  I let go and drop to the stairs, hugging my knees. I curl up into myself, my voice small. “Is she…is Kelsey okay?”

  “I found her. She’s staying at a motel outside of Orlando. Do you have a pen?”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Reagan

  I type a text to Noah, and erase it, type another, erase that. I erase the words until I have nothing left to say. Each revision strips away the layers, and soon what said I love you and miss you is a blank message with a blinking cursor as the plane taxis to the gate in Orlando.

  I hate the sticky heat of Florida. I always did. I hate that I remember being stuck outside because my mother locked me and Kelsey out of the house. I used to climb into an old rusted-out truck not far from swamp until I was bitten by a snake hiding in the rotting leather bench seat.

  There isn’t much I remember from that night other than Kelsey screaming and me being sick and my mother’s hand striking me over and over because she said we didn’t have money to go to the emergency room. Maybe that was true, but the rest of the house was crowded that night and I knew they were doing something bad and I think she was just mad that I needed attention. Kelsey locked us in our room, barricading it with our dresser, and sat with me until I finally fell asleep.

  That’s what Florida holds for me—some horrible memories.

  I wipe my hands against my denim cutoffs, wishing for nothing else but to take a bath in hand sanitizer as I wait for a taxi outside the airport. I only packed a few things, hoping I could be reunited with Kelsey and return to New York. But when the cabbie pulls up to the dilapidated motel, its vacancy sign flickering on and off, its hourly rate glowing bright against my sunglasses, I know this won’t be a short visit. I’ve felt sick the entire trip, this uncontrollable knot of dread in my stomach unyielding. Somehow I knew I would find her like this if she were alive. Somehow I knew that you can’t escape your past.

  I pay the cabbie, ignoring the heated argument from the balcony of the motel between two half-dressed men and a woman. I can’t tell what they’re fighting about because it doesn’t follow any logic. All I hear are angry words and flashbacks to my mother and her friends. The arguments followed wherever we went, whatever shithole she dragged us to next. Money came up a lot, and cheating, and sex, but mostly it was about drugs. Before my mother disappeared entirely, she was convinced everyone was stealing her stash, including me and Kelsey. It was bad enough being forced to help her shoot up, but to be on the end of her paranoia was another hell altogether.

  I keep my head down and make my way up the wobbly staircase to the second floor, sidestepping a woman with dreads sucking a man off in the darkened hallway with the vending machines, then stepping over a man passed out two rooms down from where my sister is supposedly staying. A woman at the far end of th
e balcony comes out from her room to usher in two small children who balance on the old iron railings, watching the fight as it spills down by the pool down below.

  The lights of a cop car flash in the window as I stand in front of Kelsey’s door. It’s open a few inches and the stench turns my stomach. You can’t escape your past, you can’t escape what has dug its claws in you and dragged you down. I thought I had and apparently I’m the world’s biggest idiot. This is what you get for hoping for a happy ending.

  “Hello?” I knock on the doorjamb. It’s pointless now that the arguing now involves the cop and he calls for backup. I push up my sunglasses and toe the door open a little wider. “I’m looking for Kelsey Landry.”

  I hear a stifled noise in response. “Go away” follows, the voice slurred.

  I know it’s a terrible idea, but I reason that the cops are already here. I should at least see if she’s inside. I push open the door to a room that’s pulled apart and two people passed out in stained sheets.

  The man’s ribs press against his chest with each breath, his jeans slung low on his hips. He still has a needle in his arm. His cheeks are hollows with bruised bags under his eyes. His brown hair is thin and sticks up this way and that. I can’t peel my eyes off the dark track lines in his arm.

  Beside him is the ghost of my sister.

  She stirs again, mumbling something, maybe about me leaving. My throat burns in response, my body suddenly growing cold in the Florida humidity. Her tank is ripped and stained, her boyshorts faded. She’s bones, the skin pulled so tightly over her body it looks as if she’ll start snapping to pieces if she moves.

  “Kelsey,” I say gently. I take another step forward and instantly regret it when she tries to climb out of bed, mumbling “bitch” over and over. Her skin is pale, her face covered with pock marks and there’s a cluster of scabs by her mouth. Her once beautiful blond hair is now dull and stringy, unwashed for days by the look of it.

  I should be sad, but instead anger begins to brew and soon I have to bite back screaming at her.