June, Reimagined (60)

Hortense keeps the porch light on for Veronica every night. She said she wants her daughter to know she can always come home for a visit. Isn’t that lovely? I started doing the same. For Josh and for you. Please know, June, that no matter what you do, you can always come home. I know I made mistakes with your brother. Regret is the hardest part about death. Some days I worry it might eat me alive, but it’s nice to have Hortense to talk to about it. I hope you’ve found someone in Scotland who listens.

Anyway, the job is part-time, the pay is so-so, and I’m pretty sure they hired me out of pity, but I love it. Who would have thought retail would be my thing?

The light is on when you want to come home.

Mom

June flipped through her pictures as she sat on the end of her bed. She had barely moved in twenty-four hours. She was paralyzed and manic at the same time, wanting out of her room but feeling unable to leave.

June Merriweather was at an impasse.

Matt was gone. She had let him leave. After she herself had left the States to preserve her friendship with Matt, his arrival in Scotland began to dissolve the very thing she had tried to save. Yesterday evening, when Matt walked out of June’s life, he had closed the door to her future, taking with him any reason for June to go home. She had left to protect him, but in the end, it didn’t matter. Everything had gone so utterly wrong.

And yet her life in Scotland was on loan. Her job, her room, even the camera wasn’t really hers. Hell, she was borrowing the whole damn country. It was all one giant distraction—an illusion. June had made a comfortable life in purgatory for the past six weeks to avoid facing reality. But reality had showed up. In the end, that avoidance had crushed the only life she really had.

Matt was right. June was a runner, and she had successfully extracted herself from her own life. She couldn’t move because there was nowhere to move to. Last night, after Matt had stormed out of her room, June had done what she had always done—packed up her bags and prepared to leave. And then it hit her. She had nowhere to go. Who cared if the whole wide world was available when she had no purpose in it?

June’s bags sat packed on the floor by her door, when it suddenly opened.

Eva barged in, laptop in hand. “I have something to show you. And don’t be pissed at me. Before you tell me you don’t want to, just know that it’s a truth, universally acknowledged, that every artist is scared shitless to put their work out in public. But you’re good, and people deserve to see it.”

June barely felt the pictures in her hands. What had Eva said? She wiped a tear from her face. “Now’s not the best time.”

“Bloody hell.” Eva examined the packed bags, the made bed. “Are you leaving?”

June shrugged.

Eva set her laptop on the dresser and sat beside June on the bed. “This is about the Yank. What happened?”

June’s face was swollen from crying, her stomach hollow. How could she possibly convey to Eva the depth of what had taken place in her bedroom the night before? The heat. The anger. The kiss. “I said no, and now he hates me.”

June’s empty stomach turned sour as the memory came back to her. Matt had gripped her as if she might disappear, his mouth and hands hungry for her. It had been a violation of their friendship. And yet . . . June had let it happen. She had leaned into the moment like a child touching fire, mesmerized by the flame. For as angry as June had been at Matt for making the first move, for breaking that unspoken barrier between them, in some way-back space of her heart, she had wanted it. She had always wanted Matt Tierney to kiss her like that—like she was breath and he was near drowning—because it was forbidden and dangerous for their friendship.

And now she could have none of him. Matt was no longer June’s.

“Turns out, saying no sucks,” she said to Eva.

“That’s why so many people won’t say it. They’d rather spare themselves the pain than walk through it to something better.”

Eva wrapped her arm around June, but June shrugged her off. She didn’t deserve sympathy or care. This was all June’s doing. She had broken everything.

“Problem is . . . I have no idea where to walk to,” June admitted and started sobbing again. She was beyond lost. She was floating in space, a speck in an infinite universe. She hadn’t considered what came after “no.”

Eva patted June’s leg. “I think I can help with that. Close your eyes.”

“Why?”

“Just trust me.”

“I can’t take any more plot twists, Eva.”

“Don’t worry,” Eva said. “I do this with characters all the time, when they’re not working right in a story.”

“But I’m not one of your characters.”

“Don’t be naive. We’re all characters, June. If something’s not working, it’s time to reimagine yourself. Now close your bloody eyes.” June did as instructed. “Pretend your brain is a room. Something is hiding in there, and you need to find it.”

June opened her eyes. “I don’t even know what to look for.”

“That’s the point,” Eva said. “If you knew what you were looking for, we wouldn’t be doing this. Sometimes, we get so stuck in who we think we are, we forget to take in our lives from another view. You aren’t a reflection, June, like a flat mirror. You are a three-dimensional person. You’ve just gotten used to seeing only one side of yourself.”