I was driving north on I-5 on Saturday morning with my right hand shoved into the empty McDonald’s bag in my passenger seat, digging around for any remaining fries. It’d been a while since I’d gone on a long drive, or left Portland at all, for that matter. I felt peaceful in my old Honda with Dolly Parton yodeling stories about a simpler time – just her and I and the empty Saturday morning road.
I always forget how hokey the Pacific Northwest is, outside the liberal bubbles of Portland and Seattle – I’d already passed three vaguely threatening billboards urging me to accept Christ as my personal savior. Just tiny town after tiny town for 200 miles.
After talking to Alice a few days before, I’d expected the high from our conversation to wear off by the next day. I’d planned on texting Heidi and telling her, “no deal.” But when I woke up in the quiet of my dingy apartment, surrounded by all of my old posters and polaroids of friends who’d left town years before, I felt silly that I’d even stayed for so long. It was time for a new chapter.
So, I impulsively called Keely and I told her that I wanted to come. She was thrilled to hear that I’d be moving into her place, and we planned that I would do so the following week. The date was crazily soon, but it lined up with the end of the month, so it would make things easier in breaking the lease with my landlord.
The next few days I spent in a whirlwind breaking down my apartment – deconstructing my old furniture, boxing up my favorite possessions, and donating the rest to Good Will. On my final night in town, I had a quiet dinner at my dad’s house. It was Halloween night and trick-or-treaters kept coming to the door, which kept us chuckling throughout our hurried meal.
As the signs announcing Seattle began flying by overhead, I pulled up Keely’s address in Google Maps to guide me the rest of the way. It told me I was just fifteen minutes from her place, but in the corridor of the dark pine trees engulfing the highway on either side, I still felt like I was out in the boonies. I managed to punch in a quick text to her as the traffic slowed: Be there soon!
All of the old pick-up trucks had vanished from the freeway at some point, and I was now squeezed in a herd of Audis and Subarus as we crept toward the city. Finally, the dense forestation was beginning to thin out and the Seattle city skyline appeared on the gray horizon. “We’re not in Kansas anymore,” I said to Dolly, and turned off her twangy ballad.
The city grew closer and closer, and eventually, the freeway sucked us right through the middle of downtown. I craned my neck to gaze up at the skyscrapers looming above, wondering which one of these monoliths housed Jeff Bezos’ lair.
A call from Keely rang on the speakers.
“Hello?” I answered, clicking her over to Bluetooth.
“Cam! Where are you?” she shrieked excitedly. I cranked the stereo volume down.
“Close – it says five minutes…!” I yelled, so the speaker would pick up my voice. “Where should I park when I get there?”
“Oh, you have your own spot in the parking lot. I’ll show you when you get here! By the way, Martin and Craig are here to help move your stuff – and by help, I mean do it for us while we sit on our asses,” she said, followed by muffled laughter in the background.
“Oh, really? Okay… great!” I said, too distracted by the sudden panic that I was in the wrong traffic lane to ask who Martin and Craig were. “I’ll see you soon. ‘Don’t want to miss my exit.
“Okay! See you soon. Bye, babe.” Click.
I nosed my way over into the right lane and waved apologetically at the Lexus behind me. The driver threw her hands up in bewilderment. Already making a great name for Oregonians here. Oh well, I thought.
I made the exit and peeled off the highway. The ramp led me into what was a rather vacant looking area – not quite residential, but not urban, either. From what I’d looked up online, the neighborhood Eastlake was a quiet zone between downtown and the lively university district.
I came to a stop at the red light and examined a dilapidated little bar on the corner facing me from across the intersection. I wondered if Keely would step foot in a dive like that. It did, however, look like my kind of place. On the other corner across the street, I noticed a cute, deco-looking café and made a note to myself to scope it out as a new work spot.
I followed the GPS straight through the light and passed the café and bar. The street began to dip down a hill, which exposed a view of the lake. The huge blue basin, perimetered by houseboats and buildings peeking out from between pine trees, was breathtaking even under the overcast sky. Maybe Seattle isn’t so bad, I thought, feeling a twinge of excitement.
I took a left turn and was relieved to see it felt much cozier than the naked-looking main drive of the neighborhood. It was narrow and crammed with parked cars, but covered by a canopy of old trees, the roots of which were overtaking the wide sidewalks and arms stretching up and coloring the neighborhood orange and red.
The address was ahead another four hundred feet. As I slowed down to a crawl, I wondered which of these buildings was my new home. I passed a charming old brick building on my right that reminded me of my old place in Goose Hollow. That can’t be it, I thought, glancing ahead. Up on the right, I noticed a blond ponytailed girl bundled in a black Canada Goose coat looking down at her phone. That gotta be her, I thought.
Hearing my car crinkle over the leaves from a few yards away, she looked up raised her hand hesitantly. I began to wave enthusiastically and started to roll down my window as I approached, and she jumped up and down like a schoolgirl and began jogging toward me.
“Keely!” I said, leaning toward the open passenger window as she met me. She ran up to my car and popped her head inside.
“Camille!” she squealed. Her dimpled smile and pink cheeks squeezed.
“How are you?” I breathed.
“Great,” she said, darting her eyes into the back of my car at my boxes. “I’ll hop in – the parking lot is in the back. Is this everything?”
“Yeah, just that stuff and the stuff in the trunk. I’m storing the rest at my dad’s,” I said.
“You’re a minimalist, I love it,” she said, and winked in that over-the-top I get you way that reminded me of her mom.
I grabbed the empty McDonald’s bag and shoved it behind my seat so she could sit in the passenger’s seat. It probably smells like stale fries in here, I thought anxiously, wondering the last time Keely had been to a drive-through, if ever.
“Great car,” she said, smiling as she slid her hands over my dusty dashboard.
“Oh, don’t touch that – it’s filthy,” I said.
“It’s fine,” she snapped. “Look, this is the place here, just pull into the driveway and I’ll show you your spot in the back. The boys are waiting upstairs.”
The gray concrete building was by far the most modern one on the street. It was visually striking, but had an intimidating air about it. Its shape was sort of oblong – inordinately skinny and tall – and had a thick white-painted panel running down the middle, softening the harshness of the concrete. The small patch of land directly in front of the building had been turned into what looked like a small Japanese garden, with perfectly round solitary shrubs geometrically placed in a bed of river stones instead of dirt.
“Wow, it’s—”
“Modern?” Keely said. “I know, right? We call it the Soviet Headquarters.”
I laughed and argued, “It’s beautiful.”
We pulled into the driveway that wrapped around the left side of the building and lead into a surprisingly sizeable parking lot in the back, where she pointed out an empty space. “This will be yours,” she said. To the right of the spot sat her white Mercedes coup. I eased in and threw my car into park.
When I got out, Keely was already rounding the back of the Honda with her arms up in the Jesus posturing with the come-hither hands. She pulled me into a tight squeeze.
“So good to see you, babe,” she said.
“You too,” I said, my voice muffled in her shoulder, and we pulled apart and clasped hands to smile at each other.
“Come on, I’m so excited to show you,” she said, and gestured toward the back entrance of the building.
We approached the black iron door and Keely pulled her wallet out of her coat pocket and held it up to a sensor that beeped us in. She swung the door open, which seemed to take her some might, and did a little bow to beckon me to enter first.
It was like stepping into a Japanese house’s foyer – open and elegantly minimalistic. The walls were the same gray concrete as the outside, but the floors were a cheerful yellow wood that looked like bamboo. As we walked toward the front of the building, we passed by the tall bamboo doors of the downstairs units, which were perfectly flush against the concrete walls.
“There are just nine units,” Keely said, adding in a whisper, “But I don’t really know my neighbors.”
We turned the corner to the left and there was white light pouring down from an unseen skylight into an open stairwell. “No elevators,” she said, throwing her head back in exasperation as we began to climb the stairs. “My mom liked this place the most. She chipped in on the down payment, so she had some say.”
I laughed. “It’s very zen. It feels like Heidi.”
“All I really cared about was whether or not I’d have a parking space… and the closet size,” she said as we climbed past the second floor’s opening. “I can’t live out of a freakin’ coat closet.”
“Right,” I said. “You have not changed.”
“If anything, I’ve gotten worse,” she said, sneaking a smile at me as we rounded the bend.
My heart was beginning to race from the climb when we finally reached the top floor, which looked different than the other levels. It just had a small entry area leading up to another bamboo front door, illuminated by the huge skylight directly above our heads.
“This is my unit,” Keely said, putting her hand on her hip. “I guess you could say it’s the penthouse. All the other units are one or two bedrooms, I think.”
“Damn, Keely,” I said, giving her a little standing ovation.
“Thank you, Speedo,” she said coyly, and curtsied, before turning around to rap her knuckles on her door.
“Boys, boys, boys,” Keely trilled as we let ourselves in.
Two guys sitting at her kitchen bar stools, facing the front door, stood up. One was a tall Indian guy in a crisp button-up shirt that looked to be in his early thirties. The other guy, I immediately recognized but took me a couple of seconds to remember – Holy shit, that’s her brother, Craig, I thought, scolding myself for not recognizing the name when she’d mentioned it on the phone.
Craig was maybe five years older than Keely. He had already gone off to college on the east coast before Heidi and my dad got married, so I’d only met him the few times when he’d come home for a few days for Christmas. I’d all but forgotten he’d existed.
“Oh my God, Craig,” I blurted bluntly, triggering a tittering laugh from Keely.
“The lovely Camille,” Craig said genially, approaching me from around the kitchen counter. I was surprised to see he still had the boyish bangs that swept across his forehead, which I always thought were odd, but now with a trim beard, he looked like a man.
We clasped into a hug like old friends that hadn’t met in a long time. “It’s been forever,” I said. “How are you?”
“Great, great,” Craig said, crossing his arms and shaking his head as he looked at me with an affable grin. There was that Vogel family fawning. “We’re so glad you’re here.”
“And this is my best friend, Martin,” Keely interrupted, pretending to drag him toward me by his arm.
Martin laughed and shrugged her off as he approached me. “Hi, I’m Martin. I’ve heard so much about you,” he said, leaning in to give me an attentive handshake. His easy smile and big brown eyes immediately made me relax.
“Nice to meet you. I’m Camille.”
“We’re going to get you all set up,” Craig said in a big-brotherly way as he clapped his hand on the kitchen counter.
“Wow, thank you,” I said in an awkward monotone. “Keely didn’t tell me you were coming.”
“They’re more than happy to do it,” Keely joked, peeking out from behind Martin to look up at him as she hugged him from behind. “Right Marty?”
“It’s our pleasure,” he answered, looking down to return her smile. The effect that Keely has on men should be studied, I thought to myself, suppressing an eyeroll.
“Camille’s car is the black Honda next to the Benz,” she said.
“I’ll show you,” I added, turning back toward the door.
“No, no,” Craig cut me off. “Is it unlocked? Let us take care of it.”
“No – are you sure?” I asked, feeling a prickle of embarrassment. Keely stomped toward me and pulled me into a seat at one of her kitchen bar stools.
“What are men for?” she asked, flashing a teasing smile at each of them.
“Your job is to be Keely’s Guinea pig,” Martin said, ignoring her. “She’s been messing with that espresso machine all morning. So, enjoy.” He patted my shoulder as he passed me to head to the front door, making me chuckle.
“Okay…! Thanks guys,” I called at them, and they each waved me off without looking back as they left to go downstairs.
Keely scurried into the kitchen to retrieve a Tiffany-blue mug sitting next to the espresso machine. She reached across the sparkling granite to place in front of me – a white foamy latte with a shaky heart made from chocolate sauce.
“Aw, Keely,” I said. “You’re amazing.”
“It’s a double shot, just how you like it, if I remember correctly,” she said.
“God bless you,” I replied in a whisper, and took a long sip, humming politely and giving her a thumbs up. “It’s great.”
The light from the deck’s window behind us was illuminating her blue-green irises and cream complexion as she cradled her chin in her hands and smiled at me. She was so naturally good-looking, with her perfect feminine features – she’d always reminded me of Kate Bosworth – but she had a bit of a heavy hand with make-up. I could see the heavy foundation sitting on her skin that didn’t show up in her Instagram photos.
“So, when did Craig move back to Seattle?” I asked.
She pressed her lips together and squinted. “Oh, let’s see. Not too long ago, actually. Last summer? Maybe the fall?”
I wondered if him moving back had anything to do with the rehab stint.
“Yeah, he was living in Manhattan doing the whole Wall Street finance thing,” she continued. “Now he’s working at this start-up here – ‘PayUp’ I think it’s called,” she said, shooing her hand. “I don’t really get it. It’s an app.”
“Martin seems nice,” I said, raising my eyebrows. “…Anything going on there?”
Her eyes widened. “With Martin? No, God no – not that there’s anything wrong with him. He’s just not my type.”
“But you’re his type?” I asked, giving her a knowing smile.
She laughed. “No, no, we’re just friends. I’ve known him forever,” she said, stealing a sip of my latte and shrugging. “Actually, we went to the same elementary school, but I ran into him again when I first bought this condo, down at the tavern.”
“Oh, the tavern – the one a few blocks that way?” I asked, pointing back in the direction of the freeway.
She nodded. “That crappy-looking little dive, yeah. It’s cute – quaint. You’ll like it,” she said. “The whole neighborhood goes there. Martin lives just up the street, too.”
The boys burst back in through the front door, Craig carrying two boxes stacked on top of each other and Martin carrying my little desk, which looked tiny compared to his stature.
“She’s staying in the last bedroom,” Keely called at them, as they huffed down the hall, and turned her attention back to me. “Craig lives in Queen Anne – the same neighborhood as my mom, but he’s around here sometimes,” she said.
The boys remerged from the hallway and disappeared again out the front door.
“Your place is great, Keely,” I started. “I just want to say thank you for –”
“For what?” Keely cut me off, shaking her head and smiling. “Thank you for being here.”
I paused and gulped down another luke warm sip of latte, wondering if now was the time to bring up the whole situation – what Heidi had danced around over tea. Over the last week, I’d been building myself up to talk to her about it, but figured it was better to wait until we were together, not wanting to startle or embarrass her on the phone.
“So, what’s been … going on with you?” I choked out in a hushed tone.
She caught my look and rolled her eyes. “Oh, what did Heidi tell you?” she asked, feigning annoyance, but I saw her begin to blush.
“Nothing, really,” I said, trying to soften the blow. “All she said was that you had some kind of incident last summer and you took some time off?”
Keely sighed and fixated her gaze out the window as she began to talk. “Yeah, I did. I guess it did get pretty bad,” she said.
I reached out to stroke her arm. “What got pretty bad, babe?” I asked softly.
“You know, just too much of … everything. Partying, drinking.”
I could see she wanted to get more specific, but that unspoken sister-barricade was making her hesitate. “I had a couple of nights where I just took it too far. And one of them, I ended up in the hospital,” she said flatly.
“Oh my God,” I murmured.
“Well, Marty overreacted,” she replied defensively, shaking her head. “I probably would have been fine. I mean, yeah, I shouldn’t have been drinking like that and taking pills.”
“Yeah,” I said, bypassing the mention of pills for the moment. “And what happened?”
“He freaked out because I passed out and started, well, puking… in my sleep,” she said.
“Keely,” I whispered shrilly.
“I know, I know,” she said.
“Thank God Martin was here,” I said.
She bobbed her head, looking down. “I mean, I thought I was safe here at home, so I overdid it. I basically passed out and he couldn’t wake me up. So, he drove me to the hospital and called Craig and everybody found out.”
“Jesus, Keely. That must have been so scary,” I said, shaking my head slowly.
She shrugged. “Yeah, well, it was more embarrassing than anything. And then my parents decided that I should go to this rehab in Utah. They were calling it an ‘overdose,’ which I guess, technically, it was,” she said.
“Well, yeah,” I said. “I think it sounds like it was.
“They had to tell my agent I was going to need to take time off and I lost of bunch of jobs,” she said, glowering down at the kitchen counter. “It was so unprofessional.”
“I’m sure they understand,” I said.
“Yeah, I mean, they were nice about it. But my agent ‘wasn’t able to find me as much work’ when I came back,” she said, putting up air quotes.
I frowned. “Really? I find that hard to believe.”
She laughed dryly, still staring down. “Well, I think I had kind of passed my peak anyway, you know? I’m not nineteen anymore.”
My heart stung for her. “Is it still really like that in the industry?” I asked.
She chuckled. “Yeah, well, apparently it is,” she said, shaking her head. “I haven’t had a job in about a year now. I haven’t been working at all.”
I sucked in some air and sighed deeply. “Well, has being out of the industry helped … focus on your health?
She opened her mouth to answer, but just then, the boys busted in the door with more boxes and quickly shuffled down the hallway.
“Let’s talk about it later,” she whispered, and switched into her normal, bubbly voice. “So, your new home – what do you think?”
“I think it’s amazing,” I said, standing up from my stool to wander into the living room. It was even more impressive in person, with its high ceilings, shiny bamboo floors and tasteful simplicity. But looking around for a minute longer, I wondered if the minimalism was a purposeful statement on Keely’s part.
“Boys!” Keely called, clapping her hands. Martin and Craig reemerged the hall, breathing heavily.
“One of you, please, take a boomerang of me and Cam,” she said, waving her phone in the air.
Martin volunteered. “I have become quite good at this,” he said.
“From this way, so the light hits us,” Keely said, ushering Martin in front of us and positioning me in front of the table.
“One, two, three, go,” Martin said. Keely clutched me around the waist and planted a kiss on my cheek. I stood frozen and grinned widely with my eyes closed.
Martin handed her back her phone, and Keely threw her head back, cackling with pleasure at the little animation loop of me cheesing awkwardly while she kicked her leg and leaned in for a kiss.
She typed, Finally, bae is here, tagged my username and hit send.