▪️Thursday, January 21st, 2018▪️

▪️Albquerque, NM▪️

Two months on the road. A number of hotel rooms I cannot name. All illusions of sightseeing in every city we visit are gone. My whole body and not just my hand is ground meat stuffed into dry skin. I'm awake when I don't want to be and asleep when I shouldn't be. Moving bus no longer lulls me to sleep, and what started with bringing my Christmas chachkas to the hotel and hanging my clothes in the closet turned into keeping a strand of fairy lights and my Santa pillow in my bunk, storing the rest of the items in a box under the bus, living out of a suitcase, and sticking to clothes that don't wrinkle quite as much. I spool the electronics' cables and place them into a soft-sided carrier, using the good Internet and a morning hour for a much overdue call with Amelie.

"Have you told him?" Amelie is in the kitchen of her cottage, making dinner while I'm up before dawn packing my bag before we are on the bus for two nights, heading from Albuquerque to Tucson and Phoenix. I only know the names of the cities, because the tour manager talks about them in our meetings, plus Mike has been texting me asking for updates I haven't been sending his way.

"I'm not going to text him to say, 'Don't get your hopes up,' when we are not technically together."

"You think he doesn't think you're together?"

I roll my eyes. "If he didn't, I wouldn't be trying to clear the air before we both get really hurt."

"From what you've told me, you aren't interested in anyone else. It's not like you're leaving the country for years like I did." Am rustles to the fridge and brings out a platter with cheeses, as she readies her kitchen for a small party with the fellow-student at the PH.D. course. "I don't understand why you're trying to push a perfectly good guy away."

"He's talking about meeting his family. Making plans." I unearth the cosmetics bag, pick the computer up with the other hand, and move us to the bathroom. "He sent me a photo of his brother's room, because he thinks I can turn that into a studio." Displeasure ripples across my chest. "That's in the house he shares with his mom. I'm not old enough to live with somebody else's mom. I just stopped living with my mom less than two years ago." I put my computer on the hotel sink. "If I tell him I need freedom not to settle down, he'll lose interest in me. He's the settling down kind. A marriage kind." I squirt foundation onto the sponge so forcefully, the amount that comes out could cover most of my torso. "Can you imagine me married?"

"With anyone you hooked up before?" She straightens the glasses on the counter. "No." She takes a bottle of red and works on uncorking it. "With Mike?" A corner of her mouth curls. "I sorta can. He grounds you. You challenge him. Kind of like you and me." She swishes the dark red liquid in her glass and takes a sip. "We've worked out, haven't we?" She looks straight at the camera.

"We have, but Mike and I are not friends." I'm not going to kid myself. I apply lip gloss and decide against any eyeshadow. Going for the classic girl-next-door-look. "We're not friends with benefits either. Whatever we are, we shouldn't be. We'd be better off as acquaintances who are hot for each other." Although I doubt he tells everyone the stuff he shared about his dad with me. The suspicion that I'm lying to myself about Mike and that Neil was right morphs into a certainty. Heat prickles behind my eyes. I hold the mascara wand steady in my fingers and apply another layer. I'm good at pretending. If I pretend long enough that what I feel for Mike is just lust, it will be so. "I can't tell him this via a text. He's planning to drive down to Minneapolis in three weeks. The least I can do is talk with him in person."

"Having him drive six hours to see you only for you to tell him you're better off as not even friends?"

"I'll see what happens. I'm not going to choreograph it. I'll explain that we are not on the same page." I step away from the mirror and start braiding my hair. One strand under another, to form a loose French plait. "Can we stop talking about him? I'm in a shitty enough mood. Tell me what you're eating instead."

"This is Emmenthal. I might've been eating a kilo of cheese a day since I arrived. I forgot how many great cheeses there are in France. I think as a child I didn't realize what I was missing." Am sets another slice of cheese on her tongue, hums, and closes her eyes. She quickly opens them and looks at her computer screen she's been using for our video chat. "I know exactly what you need when the tour is over."

"To regain the ability to sleep past seven a.m.?" I set my toothbrush and toothpaste into my toiletry bag.

"I'm afraid my offer will have the opposite effect." She rolls her lips and flips through the calendar on her wall I sent her for Christmas with pictures of us from the past three years to illustrate every month.

"Do I even what to know?" I move us to the bed and set the toiletries into my backpack.

Amelie flips through a couple of pages and circles a date that's too far away for me to see. "Will you be done with your tour by March 17th?"

"Our last performance is on the tenth."

"Excellent," she says it with the French pronunciation, stressing the last syllable and not pronouncing the 't' at the end. "Then you should book your tickets for the fifteenth. You'll be here on the sixteenth, and we'll get to celebrate Dad's first death anniversary on the seventeenth together. Mom and I have decided to throw a party."

Paolo's funeral last March was ghastly. Neither Am nor I were in a state to organize more than the bare minimum and keep our shit together when her mom refused to come. Mike's words about owing his mom for what she's done bellow in my brain. Paolo D'Amico isn't my parent, but maybe the sentiment Mike was trying to convey is not that preposterous.

Maybe owing a person who got you through the toughest parts of life doesn't mean you're forfeiting your independence. If given freely, it's no longer a debt but a gift. I owe Paolo a celebration of his life. That's the best gift I can give him. I can do a little planning for this. "Your dad saved me."

"You saved him too. You were the student who reminded him why he started teaching in the first place. You made his last year of teaching his best one."

"March seventeenth." I turn on my phone, ignore the million notifications on the top bar and add it to my calendar. "I can't miss that."

"No, you cannot. You also must stay at least a week. I've gotta take you to the Château de Chenonceau, and my favorite wine cave, and the cheese, you'll have to try all the cheese." She brandishes another slice of cheese in her hand.

"I'm not saying no to any of that, you can stop persuading me. I'll go book the tickets and the hotel right now."

"What hotel? Who do you think we are? Strangers? The fact that we haven't been sharing a bathroom for two months doesn't mean we can't share one again. The couch in the living room folds out. We'll talk all night long to catch up on everything."

"I should've guessed."

When we hang up, I have five minutes before leaving for the bus. I open the mints container to take my doze, only two pills are left in the box. I take the one I'm supposed to and roll the remaining one between my thumb and index finger. I shouldn't take it. I can manage without it, but I don't want to manage. I'll have to smile, and entertain the folks on the bus, and pretend, pretend, pretend. Pretending is so much easier with just one more. I swallow it, refill the container from the new bottle I picked up at the pharmacy last night, and cross the fingers that I can cross today that I'll be able to enjoy my day, not count minutes for it to be over.