I slumped down onto the arm of her recliner. “I know. I’m just….” I didn’t know how to finish that.
She patted my knee. “You’re the thing that we talked about at the spa that you don’t like to hear.”
“I’m not lonely—”
“And even if you were the thing,” Nana said as if I hadn’t spoken at all, “it’s okay to feel that way, so long as you remember that no one is going anywhere. Just because some people are caught up in their happiness doesn’t mean they’ll forget you exist. No one gets left behind. Not here. And not ever.”
“Things are changing,” I whispered as I looked down at my hands.
“They are,” she agreed. “But that’s how life works. If we don’t grow with our surroundings and new situations, we get stuck and become stagnant.”
She had a point. I didn’t know if that was exactly what I was feeling, but it felt close. No matter what I tried, I couldn’t find a way to refute it. I didn’t feel stuck, not with everything I had going on, but there were times when I felt like everyone was moving quickly around me and that I was in slow motion. Every now and then time would snap back in place and I’d be struggling to catch up with all that had happened. “I don’t know what to do,” I admitted. “I don’t know if there is anything I can do.”
“I don’t know if there is either,” she said. “But as long as you see it for what it is, you’re doing okay. You’ve got a lot going on, Kori. Your future is almost here. Everything you’ve worked so hard for. It’s not uncommon for people in your position to feel overwhelmed. It’s the whole about-to-face-the-rest-of-your-life thing. It can be intimidating for anyone.”
I looked down at her. “How do I know if I’m doing the right thing?”
She shrugged. “You’ll know. Or you won’t, and you’ll have to course-correct at some point. But there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s not a mistake necessarily. It’s just… a road you don’t know you’re going to travel.”
I leaned over gracelessly and kissed the top of her head. “You’re pretty smart.”
She snorted. “It was the drugs I took as part of a government testing program in the sixties. They said it was LSD, but that was a lie.”
Before I could follow up on that, the front door opened and Sandy walked in, his lips swollen, his eyes bright. Darren followed, looking smug.
“Gross,” Nana and I muttered at the same time.
Sandy’s eyes narrowed. “What was that?”
“Nothing,” Nana said. “Kori was telling me about this dress you got for her. It’s beautiful.” Jesus, did she know how to play Sandy well.
“Isn’t it?” Sandy said. “I have impeccable taste. I even got Darren to throw away his seventeen pairs of cargo shorts.”
“It was four pairs,” Darren said dryly. “And you didn’t get me to do anything. I came home to find you’d broken in and replaced them.”
“Look at your thighs,” Sandy demanded. “They deserve to be seen. And no one needs clothing that has more than four pockets on a single garment.”
Sandy had a point. Darren was wearing pink chino shorts cut high up on his strong legs. If Darren was anyone else, I might have drooled over him. But since he was the Homo Jock King… ah, hell. I still drooled a little. He looked good.
Darren rolled his eyes. “Whatever. I’m going to go get a beer.”
“Men,” Sandy said as he ogled his boyfriend’s ass as he walked away. “Useless until I actually need to use them.” He turned back to Nana and me, and I didn’t like the glint in his eyes. “Charlie’s here. And he brought Jeremy and Robert! Isn’t that fun?”
“Ow!” Nana hissed, jerking away from me. “Kori, you are a hell of a lot stronger than you look.”
I glanced down to see I was gripping her arm. “Shit,” I said as I stood. “Sorry. Are you all right?”
She rubbed her arm. “Fine. I’m very delicate, in case you didn’t know.”
“Paul’s a candy ass!” Johnny Depp shrieked.
“I am not!” Paul yelled from the kitchen. “Nana, I swear to god, I will fucking destroy that goddamn bird if you keep teaching it stupid shit!”
“I don’t!” Nana bellowed back. “And everyone knows that harming animals is the first sign of a serial killer. Along with head injuries as a child and a propensity for wetting the bed, which describes the entire summer you were seven! We had to buy rubber sheets because you kept flooding your—oh, Charlie! Come in. Come in. I need to ooh and ahh over your gentleman.” She grunted as she pushed herself up from the recliner, smoothing down her muumuu.
I turned slowly to look at the doorway. Charlie stood just
inside the entryway, Robert at his side, looking as dapper as always. He took off his tan Havana hat and handed it to Charlie, who hung it on the coatrack.