Page 34 of High Season

TWENTY-FOUR

Josie has left an entire afternoon free to pack.

She opens up the suitcase that she arrived here with, not even put away yet, and begins to fold T-shirts and ball up socks.

Quickly the stretch of time starts to feel ridiculous.

An entire afternoon to pack up the few scraps of her life she brought with her.

She has only been here for a week. She has almost nothing to show for it.

Gabby knocks on her door just as Josie is searching for a bracelet that she kept, back from that brief period of living in Devon.

Her boyfriend back then, the first man she had loved, had given it to her for her birthday just six days before he had found out the truth.

It surprises Josie now, how little she remembers about that period, one of the few lengths of time that she recalls being truly happy.

Only a few small, snatched memories. Cups of tea on the sofa on rainy days.

The small, unexpected joy of eating dinner together in front of the television every night.

“Need any help?” Gabby asks.

Josie shakes her head.

“There’s not much left for me to do.”

Gabby hovers in the doorframe.

“Need some company?”

Josie’s hand catches against the bracelet, its thin gold threads entangled around a pair of tights.

How long until this week becomes a vague and faded memory?

How quickly will it melt into the patchwork of Josie’s life, a tangle of places and people that she can’t quite remember?

Cheap costume jewelry that she can’t bring herself to get rid of, even when the gold fades to a gray tarnish.

Phone numbers that she never has any need to call anymore.

The specific smell of someone whose face she can no longer remember.

“Yeah,” she says. “I could use some company.”

Gabby shuts the door behind her and slides over to the suitcase. She ignores Josie’s refusal of her help and picks up a T-shirt, beginning to fold it into a neat, compact square.

“Where are you going to go?” she asks.

Josie frees the bracelet and drops it on top of the pile of clothes.

“Kent, at first,” she says. “I can stay with my mum’s sister for a couple of weeks. Just while I’m figuring things out.”

“And then where?” asks Gabby.

“I don’t know.”

The words fall heavily between them, a rock sinking toward an ocean floor.

Josie can’t bear to think about what she’ll do after her aunt’s hospitality runs out.

She only knows that she can’t stay here.

Not with reporters showing up at Calvin’s door.

Not with the worry that they’ll be at Nic’s flat next, or at Gabby’s café.

“You could just stay, you know,” Gabby says. “Calvin’s devastated that you’re leaving. We both are.”

Josie is already shaking her head.

“Everyone knows where I am now,” she says. “Nobody wants me here.”

“ We want you here,” Gabby says.

Josie zips up her toiletries bag with one hard, decisive motion.

“Look, I get that you’re trying to be nice, but you don’t know what it’s like,” she says. “It almost killed us last time. I can’t do that again. I can’t do that to you, or to Calvin, or to—” Her voice catches. “To… to anyone else,” she says.

“People talk in places like this. So what? You’ve got the job at the café, if you want it. You’ve got us. Let them talk.”

There’s something solid in Josie’s throat. Something that she has to swallow down so that Gabby can’t see how badly she wishes that were true.

“I can’t,” she says. “I’m not strong enough to go through all that again. Sorry.”

The suitcase is almost full. Gabby presses down on the small pile of clothes inside as if to make space for something more. Josie isn’t sure what.

“Nic messaged me earlier,” Gabby says. “He said he’s been trying to get hold of you?”

“Oh, yeah?” Josie says, as if it’s news to her. As if she hasn’t seen the messages lighting up her screen.

Hey. Is everything OK?

Are you ignoring me?

I’m sorry if I upset you. If you want to be left alone that’s cool. I just want to make sure you’re alright.

“Look, I know that me and Nic used to date, so maybe this is weird for me to say, but he likes you. I can tell,” Gabby says. “And he’s a good guy. It wouldn’t hurt, would it? Just to let him know you’re OK?”

Josie slides past her to pull the suitcase shut.

“He wouldn’t like me,” she says. “If he knew what being associated with me would do to him. If he knew half the things other people think of me.”

She sets the case upright on the floor, ready to leave.

“In fact,” she says. “I don’t think that he’d want anything to do with me at all.”