When We Collided(59)

So she sees us together for a long time. It sounds like a nice life. Like a real possibility. She served it out just like that, something that could be my two-or three-year plan. A busy city to distract me, a job that keeps me interested, and a Viv to come home to.

She’s not done. “But you have to understand, darling, I imagine everything. I’ve imagined us moving to India, and I fall in love with the country, but you think it’s too hot and crowded, so you come back to the States. I stay and marry, and I spend my days wearing beautiful saris and perusing open-air markets for the most colorful fruits and lushest fabrics. I’ve imagined you go off to a really scenic college on the East Coast, with lots of oak trees and green lawns, and I visit you on campus but wind up having an affair with one of your professors, primarily on the desk in his office. I’ve imagined that you trash your life here and move to Jackson Hole to a remote cabin and, like, live off the land, and I pine for you my whole life but I know you’re a mountain man, and that’s not the life for me. Still, when it’s a snowy winter and there’s a fire roaring, I imagine you in a flannel shirt making forest delicacies in your rustic kitchen, and I wish I could transport myself to you just for the night.”

I mean, what do I say to that? I can barely keep up. I leave India or I go to a traditional college where Vivi cheats on me with an older man or I retreat to life in a log cabin?

“Not Japan for us, then?”

“Oh, darling, when I dream of Japan, I am always on my own. But don’t fret—maybe I can visit you in Jackson Hole! Over Christmas, that would be the best! That’s the one thing about Verona Cove that I can’t quite imagine, Christmas without a little dusting of snow. OH! We should have Christmas in July! Wouldn’t that be a gas, let’s do that right now! There’s got to be a holiday shop year-round, right?”

She turns to me, the painting all but forgotten. The costume, the darling, the be a gas lingo. It’s like watching old movies has caused her to develop a new facet of her personality.

“It’s August first,” I say.

“Is it?” She turns to me. “Well, I’ll be damned. Summer slipping through our fingertips, quelle tragique . . . alas. Next thing you know it’ll be back to school, and . . .”

Vivi takes a deep inhale. I take my moment to get a few words in. “I yelled at Bekah and Isaac.”

“I’m still thinking I might convince my mom to let me finish senior year here, which would be so fabulous, really . . .” She’s prattling on. I slide my palm around one of her arms. The touch makes her meet my eyes.

“Viv. Did you hear me? I screamed at my little brother and sister.”

I can barely see her blue eyes, blinking beneath the overpowering eye makeup. “Welllll . . . did they deserve it? Because sometimes you have to scream to be heard and sometimes you have to open your lungs and let the words fly because they’re inside you and have to get out, know what I mean? And—”

“No,” I say, defeated. I release her arm from my grasp. “No, they didn’t deserve it. They’re little kids! But I’m so tired of them fighting. I called them *s.”

“Hey!” Vivi says. “Do you think the hardware store is still open?”

“What?”

“The hardware store. I have some stuff I need for projects, and I just want it now so I can keep working, and . . .”

She’s had a bad week. I get that. I’m relieved to see her up and about, but why the hell isn’t she hearing me? Maybe she needs it spelled out for her.

“Viv. I screwed up. Bad. I don’t know what to do.”

She tilts her head back, staring up at the ceiling. “My ceiling is driving me mad, being half-painted, so I should do that tonight, but I hate, hate, I mightily loathe doing the edges.”

All right, that’s it. I’m pissed. The one time I need to unleash, and she can’t even pretend to pay attention. “You know what, Viv? Fuck it. I don’t even know why I came here.”

“Such language, Jonah Daniels,” she says, though she seems unfazed. “You ain’t the only sucker with problems, honey child.”

“You’re acting crazy, all right? Are you drunk?”

“HEY.” She whirls on me, eyes blazing. Her fingers are snapping at her sides, over and over. Is she stoned? No. Too hyper. “I’m in the midst of a stroke of creative genius, and you cannot go flinging despicable words at me. I’m not drunk except on art and music and life.”

She’s lost me. I’m spooked, to be honest. I thought I was coming loose at the seams, but apparently Vivi is too. If she can’t turn off her Vivi-ness for a few minutes to help me when I really need it, then I’m done. “Forget it, Viv. I’m glad you’re having a great night. I am having a shitty night, but who cares about me, right?”

“UGH, Jonah, stop treating me like I am the antagonist in the play of self-pity that you are writing. I am not your bad guy, and I am not your princess. I am me, and I am my own. You cannot REDUCE me! So just STOP. KILLING. MY. CREATIVE. ENERGY.” The snap of her fingers, frantic now. “You can’t kill it! I’m having a breakthrough!”

Here’s what I learned from the past five minutes: you can’t out-crazy Vivi Alexander. On the grouchy to blissful spectrum, she spends zero time in the middle. She wallops me with the change in her moods like a one-two punch. Thrilled! Pissed! And right now, with her glare burning into my skin, she hates me. The feeling is mutual, and I slam the door behind me.