Chapter 24

The problem with bursts of confidence, Nora discovered, was that they were like a bungee jumping cord. There is a brief but powerful swell of certainty that the bungee cord will hold you when you step off the bridge or the crane. But in the next breath, as you hurtle toward a spectacular splat, you sincerely hope your confidence wasn't misplaced.

By the time Nora walked into her apartment, she was anticipating a full splat or, at the very least, a monstrous panic attack. She was terrified of what she'd just done. She couldn't just change overnight. But neither could she stay in that toxic job. She dropped down onto the used IKEA couch she'd gotten off the building bulletin board and covered her face with her hands. She was going to either vomit or laugh hysterically—her mind hadn't settled on which way to go.

"Okay. All right," she breathed. "No crying. Grandpa said to believe in yourself." She thought back to the eighth grade, when she'd tried out for the lead part in the school play. She'd practiced for it every day—Grandpa would swing by the house to help her, playing the other parts in the script. On the day she found out she didn't get the part, she'd called Grandpa in tears. He'd come straightaway, making the forty-five-minute drive from the ranch to pick her up and take her for ice cream. On the way, she tearfully told him she'd sucked at the audition.

"That's a disappointment, to be sure,"he'd said after he'd gotten her some ice cream. He stroked her head as she toyed with her cup. "Sometimes other people don't believe in you. That's why it's so important for you to believe in yourself, Nora. You did the absolute best you could, but you didn't persuade them this time. That's okay—you'll persuade them the next time. I have every faith in you—you can be whatever you want to be if you believe you can. And you don't suck at anything. You're pretty damn near perfect."

She smiled at the memory. Okay. She'd believe in herself. And grow her garden. She dug her reverse bucket list out of her garden tote. She smoothed the paper and ran her fingers over the eight items on her list to remind herself that quitting her job wasn't the end of the world—it was the beginning.

Reverse Bucket List (in no particular order):

Her breathing calmed. She was making progress. She'd started her cooking class, an important first step. And while she hadn't shown much talent, she was trying. She'd never promised herself she'd be an excellent cook (even if that certainly had been the hope).

She'd cleaned out Grandpa's garden and started planting new, and sure, the tomato plants weren't shooting up like she thought they would, but she'd found Nick, and she had to believe something would grow.

She was supporting Gus, at least as much as he would let her, and she'd taken a step toward making art by signing them up for their first paint class, which, okay, was not a perfect plan, but she had to start somewhere.

Lacey. She was working on being a better sister, but she had a long way to go. She'd called Lacey yesterday, and it had rolled to voice mail. Still, Nora had a plan. She was going to make dinner for her and prepare the garlic sauce she'd learned to make in cooking class. Baby steps.

New job?Well, she'd quit the horrible one and she had a job interview this week. She had yet to play basketball, but she had ordered sneakers and a ball online and they'd shown up yesterday.

And no one could say she hadn't tried to find the corner store guy.

Speaking of which... she picked up her laptop and navigated to her main post about him to check for new activity. The views and shares were still growing, but there were only a couple of new comments. One said her post sounded like a scam and everyone should be careful. Another one suggested that she post a place and time for a meet-up.

She'd thought about that idea before but had dismissed it, afraid of the trolls who might show up. But she was running out of options, and besides, she'd allowed fear to rule her for thirty-one years. If she could quit her job, she could try a meet-up. What did she really have to lose?

Maybe don't think about that right now. Nothing could instill fear quite like making a list of all the things she stood to lose.

She leaned back and closed her eyes, and when she did, she was transported again to that night at the corner store.

They'd been waiting for hours for the police to take their statements, watching the rain come down and talking. Nora could still picture him so clearly, how his eyes shimmered in the fluorescent light of the store. How warmly he'd smiled when he said he'd never met anyone quite like her. How secure she'd felt with him, unapologetically herself. She'd felt interesting. She'd felt wanted. She'd felt like a different person.

When the detectives finally arrived at the tail end of the storm, they'd taken Juanita's statement first, sitting her down in the single red plastic booth near the desiccated weenies, which had continued their slow turns on the warming rack all night.

When they finished with Juanita, a burly policeman came for Nora. "Okay, young lady, you're next."

She followed the policeman back to the red plastic booth. A man in shirtsleeves with a badge and a gun at his waist was gripping a Styrofoam cup of coffee. He invited Nora to sit, then asked her a few questions. No, she didn't see Darth come in. No, he didn't threaten her. No, he didn't point the gun at her, exactly, more like in the vicinity of her. What was she doing in the store? She glanced to her right and her gaze fell on a damp, wilted Cobb salad. "What does anyone do at a corner store?" she'd asked. She was there to pick up a few things.

When she was done, the plainclothes policeman said she was free to go. He said someone would be in touch if they needed more information. She waited at the front of the store near the lottery tickets case until the corner store guy finished his interview.

He smiled like he'd hoped she'd be there. It was the strangest thing—she'd just been through such a harrowing experience that would have undone her on any other day. But she felt great. Fizzy with exhaustion but buoyant. This man, this handsome, charming man, likedher. She was convinced she was feeling true kismet.

It was four o'clock in the morning—Nora had entered this store shortly after six the previous evening.

"Aren't you going to offer us something?" the guy asked the clerk.

"Like what?"

"Like, I don't know... a sandwich?"

"What... for free?" the clerk asked, his tone relaying his clear opposition to the idea.

Nora and the corner store guy looked at each other and laughed. Then they linked arms and walked outside. They stood on the sidewalk in the freezing temps, exhausted and hungry, mist dampening their hair and clothes, giddy with mutual attraction.

He pulled his scarf up around his nose. Then he pulled Nora's collar tighter around her neck. "I don't think we discussed our jobs."

"Or hobbies."

"Or favorite travel destinations."

"Or our favorite colors. How did we miss that? We literally started by listing our favorite Starbursts—seems color would naturally roll right out of that."

"Not knowing your favorite color may be my biggest regret," he said, his smile charmingly lopsided. "Maybe we should get together for a drink to cover all the bases."

"I don't think we have any other choice," Nora said.

They stood a moment more. He touched her cheek and said, "So... I guess this is hello?"

She'd laughed with happy relief. She grabbed a handful of his scarf and pulled his head down. He slid his hands into her hair, which had long since come out of its proper bun, and kissed her. Or she kissed him. They kissed like two people who had been looking for each other for a very long time. They kissed until they were soaked through, and then he said it was the most outstanding first date he'd ever had, and she said that was the first time she'd ever kissed a guy on the first date.

They traded phone numbers. He wrote his on her hand. She wrote hers on the back of a receipt. They said good night, and he went south and she went north.

She looked back once, and he was looking back at her. "My favorite color is red!" he shouted.

"Green!" she shouted back.

Christmas colors, which seemed fitting, because she felt sparkly and excited and full of breathless anticipation.

But then she'd gone home and fallen into a deep sleep, and when she awoke, the darkness had already started to creep in. Her depression was like a flu—she'd go for days thinking maybe she was coming down with something, but maybe not, and then one day she'd wake up feeling so bad that she didn't care if she lived or died. She convinced herself in that darkness that she'd imagined everything with him. That it hadn't been as strong of a connection as she had felt in the moment. That she wasn't worthy and didn't deserve a guy like him. Her internal dialogue turned nasty, hurling self-loathing insults. She washed her hands.

And let him slip through her fingers.

It wasn't until she died that she truly understood what she'd let go. She'd lost a pivotal piece to the puzzle that was her life, and now the picture could not be completed without him.

Nora opened her eyes. "His name was Jack." Jack. Not John, not Jake. Jack. She sat up, picked up her laptop, and posted a note to Jack on the "Lost and Found in the ATX"page.

Your name was Jack. You didn't believe I would eat Takis. I accused you of hoarding the pink Starbursts. We both like basketball and think Sixth Street is overhyped and our favorite place to swim is Deep Eddy, but only in the winter because it's less crowded. I miss you. Meet me in front of the corner store on Duval and 45th Friday at 6?

It was a shot in the dark, but it was all she had.

***

Chef Bernice was setting out blenders and butternut squashes when Nora arrived at the Saucepot Kitchen Classroom. "We're making pasta and a butternut Parmesan sauce tonight," she announced as Nora settled in next to Willow and her mother.

"This looks fun," Nora said, determined that tonight would be better than the last class.

Willow, with her chin propped in her hand and her basketball in her lap, shrugged.

"Are you okay?" Nora asked.

Willow didn't answer.

"Apparently spending time with her mother and learning to cook is not her idea of a good time," Tanya said over her head.

"I didn't say that, Mom."

Nora pulled her notebook out of her garden tote bag. "Basketball is obviously better than cooking, right? I think so."

Willow rolled her eyes.

"Wanna play sometime?" The question gushed without conscious thought, surprising her. It seemed her inner athlete was eager to get going.

Willow's head came up out of her palm. "Are you for real right now?"

"I feel more real right now than I have in years."

"I need everyone's attention," Chef Bernice announced.

"I'm serious," Nora whispered.

Willow ignored her.

Chef Bernice took them through the motions of making pasta, which was easy enough until Nora managed to screw up the settings on the pasta-cutting machine. The result was some fat, worm-like noodles. Bernice said it was a good first effort.

Bernice showed them how to cut butternut squash. Nora made a mental note not to grow any of these puppies, as they were not an easy gourd to work with. The chef then produced the butternuts she'd already baked, and they proceeded to the sauce portion of the evening, which entailed sautéing garlic and shallots in olive oil and butter, all of it to be pureed with the squash and spices.

The spices were on a revolving rack, one rack to three cooks. As Nora dumped in her spices and added her mixture to the blender, Derek—one of the guys from the cute guy couple—brought a spoonful of his puree to Bernice to sample. Bernice was putting the spoon to her lips when Nora switched on the blender—but she had forgotten to attach the lid, and butternut puree flew out and onto Derek and Bernice.

Nora shrieked and frantically reached to stop the blender, but her foot slipped in the sauce splattered on the floor, and when she tried to regain her balance, her arm knocked into the stack of plates next to her station. The whole stack crashed loudly onto the concrete floor.

Blenders switched off. There was a momentary silence as everyone stared at the carnage.

"Bro, look what you did!" Willow crowed.

"I'm so sorry," Nora said. "I don't... I'm not sure what happened."

"You didn't put the lid on the blender. And you knocked all the plates off the counter," Willow unhelpfully pointed out.

"I'll clean it up." Nora anxiously looked around for a broom and a dustpan. How much more of a disaster could she be? All the time she'd spent wishing she could cook, she'd never once dreamed she'd be so inept at every single aspect of it.

Bernice seemed to be in a bit of shock as she stared at the mess. "Are anyof the plates salvageable? I have another class after this."

Unfortunately, the answer was no.

Nora tried to quietly clean up the mess while the rest of the class performed the taste test... but picking up pieces of broken plates and dumping them into the trash was loud work, and every time Nora did it, the rest of the class jumped.

She was the class pariah. An idiot who didn't think to put a lid on a blender. It was hard not to feel defeated.

By the time she'd finished cleaning up—and googling how much it would cost to replace twenty plates—Tanya and Willow's pasta dish had been voted the best.

"We didn't taste hers," Willow said, pointing at Nora. "Look how fat her noodles are."

Chef Bernice smiled sympathetically. "You'll get the hang of it," she said to Nora as she handed out containers for everyone to take their dishes home. "Next week we move to France and tackle a béchamel lasagna. Nora, why don't you plan on assisting me?"

Great. She'd been demoted to teacher's aide. She stared into the abyss of the trash can and the mess she'd left there.

"Do we haveto come next week?" Willow whined to her mother as everyone began to filter out of the room with their containers, Nora bringing up the rear.

"Yes, we do," Tanya said. "I paid a lot of money for this class."

Nora's inner athlete kicked her pathetic inner chef out of the way. "Hey, Willow," she said. "I was serious—would you be up for playing basketball with me?"

Tanya instantly stopped walking and turned around to Nora. "I'm sorry, but why do you want to hang out with a girl you hardly know? It's a little creepy."

"Creepy?" Nora was horrified.

Tanya shook her head and wrapped her arm around Willow's shoulder, intending to walk on, but Nora couldn't let her go thinking she was some sort of pervert. "You want to know why?" she blurted. "Because when I was her age, I wanted to play ball more than anything and I wasn't allowed."

Willow, with that ball tucked under her arm, glanced back.

"That's right," Nora said. "My dad wouldn't let me. He... he thought it wasn't ladylike."

Willow snorted.

"I had a dream of playing in the WNBA—"

"Me too." Willow looked up at her mother. "And I would, too, if Mom would ever let me play."

"We've been over this," her mother said. "I don't have time. You know that. I've got three kids and two jobs. This was our compromise, Willow. Something we could do together, once a week."

"Just a pickup game," Nora pleaded. "For me, it's a way to get back on the court, and for Willow, it's a chance to play. Is that creepy?"

"I'm supposed to hand my daughter over to you?"

"No. I'll come to her, meet her, wherever you say."

"I'm sorry, but this is weird." Tanya tried to move Willow along again, but Nora's inner athlete was in beast mode after her cooking defeat. No pain, no gain. "At least hear me out," Nora pleaded, and surprisingly, Tanya paused. "I'm at this place in my life where I'm trying to do things I let go because... because life got in the way. Like this class. I always wanted to know how to cook, and now I'm learning. I really do love basketball and being active. I just want to play, I swear it."

Tanya looked dubious.

"Please, Mom?" Willow asked. "I have to have an adult."

Tanya looked at Nora. It was hard to say if she was annoyed or resigned. "She can't use the court without an adult present."

Nora perked up. Her inner athlete was cheering. "See? Win-win. I could be the adult."

"Mom," Willow pleaded.

Tanya sighed loudly, then took her daughter's hand. "Tomorrow after school. Five o'clock at the Delores Duffie Recreation Center. And don't be weird about it."

"Um... how about I promise to do my best?" Nora said with a nervous laugh. "Seriously, thank you, Tanya. And you, Willow."

"Okay," Tanya said and led Willow away.

Nora glanced skyward and silently thanked Grandpa. She was pretty sure he'd had a hand in getting Tanya to say yes. Nothing else would explain it.