CLOSED STARTER
With: Sam Loftgren Where: Any coffee shop
A part of Del wanted to throw her hands up and complain that it wasn’t fair that her most honest relationship – her most trusted relationship – was predicated on a lie. But that part of her fell silent, because she was the one who had built an entire foundation from nothing at all. Little truths ensconced in big lies, big truths only finding their way forward because it felt like someone else was saying them. In the last eight years, Del had found so many ways to justify herself – so many things that rang hollow, even to her.
Two weeks in Pennsylania, two weeks pretending she was still in Boulder – a place she’d never been. One month since she’d fired off the text that she was going to be in the area for work, would it be okay if she stayed in Philadelphia? Now, her name was on a lease, and she was pretending this whole situation was fair more temporary than it was. One month of learning that a moment of courage doesn’t negate a lifetime of a cowardice, and it certainly shouldn’t have been enough to send her across the country and setting her life on entirely new trajectory. It was the final thought that propelled her to send the text that she’d meant to fire off before her obscene dose of melatonin could pull her under.
Finally in the same area code – got time for that coffee tomorrow?
The message was too casual – overcompensated to hide the quiet desperation in hoping for both a yes, and praying for a no. Throwing her phone into airplane mode hadn’t stopped the text from going through – she watched in tired horror as the bubble flashed blue. Even in her first run at real honesty, she dug her heels in on another lie. She wanted to take it back – wanted to unsend the message, wanted to pack her bags and leave the state. Lena Rivers could have it, because Del Rhodes maybe was only a girl who was never going to be meant for anywhere but Hilltop, Ohio. But she didn’t. Instead, she found herself with tired eyes (the melatonin, as it turned out, had no power against the weight of her own conscience and terrible decision making) and as many shots of espresso as the barista thought she could legally give her. She was just going to scope it out, she justified. Maybe Sam wasn’t Sam, either – that notion felt both cruel, and like a relief. She’d left her phone in her car, making good on the airplane mode she should’ve utilized the night before. For someone who had spent the better part of a decade lying, she wasn’t particularly good at it – not when she had nothing to hide behind. Her eyes flickered to the door with every chime of the bell, as though she wasn’t half an hour early. Somewhere between the first and fifth patron, her mantra shifted from ‘you can do this. just be honest,’ to ‘it’s not too late to get up and walk away, no one ever has to know.’
