Page 90 - In Five Years

she hasn’t painted all year, and the sight of her—hair wild in the wind, the
atmosphere of creation hanging around her like mist—is wonderful to witness.
“You made it!” She throws her arms around Morgan and gives me a big kiss
on the side of my head.

“I told Ariel we’d pick her up at the east station in like twenty minutes.
David, can you grab her? I can’t figure out how to put the top up.” She gestures

toward the perky convertible.
“I can do it,” Morgan says.
“It’s no problem.” This from David, even though traffic was horrific and we’d
been in the car for nearly five hours. “Let me just drop our stuff.”

Bella kisses me on both cheeks. “Come on in,” she says to Morgan. “I did
room assignments.”

David raises his eyebrows at me as we follow the two of them inside.
The house is decorated in part as an old farmhouse and in part like a college
girl’s first shabby chic apartment. Old wooden boxes and furniture intermix with

white oversize couches and Laura Ashley pillows.
“You two are downstairs again,” Bella says to David and me. The downstairs
bedroom is ours, and has been since we first rented the house, the summer

Francesco came and he and Bella fought loudly in the kitchen for thirty-six
hours before he pulled away in the middle of the night—with the one and only
car we’d rented for the weekend.

“Morgan and Ariel are upstairs with us.”
“You know we don’t swing straight,” Morgan says, already on the stairs.
“I’m not straight,” Bella says.

“Yeah, but your boyfriend is.”
David and I set our suitcases down in the bedroom. I sit on the bed, which is
wicker, as is the dresser and rocking chair, and I’m hit with a nostalgia I don’t

usually experience or entertain.
“They got new sheets this year,” David says.
I look down, and he’s right. They’re white when they’re usually some mix of

paisley.
David leans down and brushes his lips to my forehead. “I’m gonna jet. You
need anything?”

I shake my head. “I’ll unpack for us.”