Well Played, стр. 19

Six

As it turned out, I was only human, and the lure of my online life was too great to be ignored. There was an email waiting for me before I went to sleep that night, and every time I answered, Dex wrote back again. Despite my initial reluctance, my heart thrilled every time there was a new message. It was my own personal shot of dopamine, I looked forward to it every day, and he never let me down.

After a couple weeks I started to notice his patterns. He usually wrote to me late at night, after shows were done for the day. I thought about his “wench at every faire” reputation, and it was all I could do to not ask about them. Was he still picking up new conquests at every stop? Was he having flings and then writing to me every night after they left? Or worse, after they’d gone to sleep? I imagined beautiful women, sated and happy, sleeping soundly in his bed while his face was bathed with the blue light from his laptop or phone as he wrote yet another email to me.

But I didn’t ask. I probably could have at first, but as days became weeks, Chris left for Florida with her mother, and Pumpkin Spice Latte season gave way to peppermint mochas, it became harder and harder to bring it up. How could I? In the middle of deep conversations about fears we’d had as kids, was I supposed to slip in, “Hey, forgot to ask, but are you still banging your way across the country?”

So I buried that one important question I feared the answer to, and concentrated on more pertinent things instead.

To: Dex MacLean

From: Stacey Lindholm

Date: November 15, 10:47 p.m.

Subject: PSL Final Tally!

Fourteen. I had fourteen Pumpkin Spice Lattes this year. My sorority sister Monica guessed thirteen, so I sent her a Starbucks gift card as a prize. In my head she’s still nineteen—well, we both are, dyeing our hair pink for breast cancer awareness. She’s a psychiatrist now, officially much smarter than me. How did that happen?

Sometimes I think about time, and what we do with it. I turned twenty-seven last month, so I’m inching closer to thirty, and what am I even doing with my life? I look at my friends on Facebook. Friends from high school who grew up and moved away. Friends from college who went on to brilliant careers. At one point we were all in the same place; we theoretically got the same basic start in life. I look at what they’ve accomplished. And then I look at me. Part of me thinks that I really screwed up by staying here. But when my mom got sick all my priorities shifted.

Here’s what I won’t tell Mom, though. It was like that first heart attack jump-started her into getting old. What an awful thing to think, right? I mean, my parents have always been old. Older, at least. Mom was thirty-eight when I was born. She was in her forties when I started school, while all my friends’ moms were much younger. So it’s something that I’m used to. But then she had that heart attack. I can’t tell you how . . . old she looked in that hospital bed. That was the thing that got me. My mom, who’d always been the strongest person I knew, the person I went to with every single problem of my life, was suddenly this frail little thing that I wanted to swaddle in bubble wrap.

Now that she’s better I could get on with my life, of course. Start that fashion merchandising career that I’d intended. But an internship in New York at twenty-seven is a lot different than an internship at twenty-two. Those connections dried up long ago, and I have no idea how to find new ones. Not to mention, every time I think of leaving I think of my mom in the hospital and how helpless she looked. What if it happens again? What if it’s worse, and I’m not here? I mean, yeah, Dad’s here, and he took great care of her before. But he’s not getting any younger either. I feel like I should be close by. I love them so much, and they love me.

You know, love songs say crap like “love will set you free,” but lately I’ve been thinking that love is more like a cage. The most beautiful cage, with gold filigree and diamonds on the bars. But a cage nonetheless.

To: Stacey Lindholm

From: Dex MacLean

Date: November 16, 01:30 a.m.

Subject: Re: PSL Final Tally!

Checking my email isn’t something I usually do on faire weekends. There’s so much going on here at the grounds that email is usually a “during the week” thing. But I have to say that I like this new habit of writing to you before I go to sleep. It’s the perfect way to end my day.

Fourteen is a lot of pumpkin spice lattes. Is there maybe a support group you can join?

I had to think about that for a minute: love is a cage. I think you’re