Up All Night by Laura Silverman

Author:Laura Silverman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2021-07-13T00:00:00+00:00

And now we are out of the car, standing in the driveway in the glow of the eaves.

It is a beautiful house.

Even tonight, I can be objective enough to admit this. A beautiful house, a special house, built in a neighborhood conceptualized by a developer named Joseph Eichler in the 1960s. Jamie and I walk through the front door, which is mostly glass set against more glass, and into the living room, where Jamie drops the keys into a small ceramic dish perfect for key-holding, under the exposed beams of the bright white ceiling. Across from us is another glass wall that opens into an atrium. We’ve only spent a few nights here but everything is in place, thanks to the movers and decorator Macey hired. “You know,” she’d said, waving a hand, stacked bracelets dangling. “With the wedding and everything, no one wants to be living out of boxes.” But I saw Jamie’s face when she said it, the skepticism, and I felt it, too. I don’t think Macey would ever live out of boxes. The excuse was for me.

“I’ll see what’s in the refrigerator,” Jamie says, and I follow.

They open it and I peer in and both of us sigh at the sight of barely anything.

“Sol Food delivery?” Jamie asks.

“Yes.”

We scroll through the menu and order way too much food—a whole chicken, two kinds of beans, rice and plantains, and then Jamie declares the fried shrimp as their favorite thing in the entire world and I haven’t ever tried it so we add that, too.

I realize how expensive it will be and a low-key panic sets in. As Jamie reads their credit card aloud, I grab my phone.

“Venmo?” I ask when they hang up.

“What are you doing?”

“Paying you back for my half.”

“It’s not my money, it’s my mom’s,” they say. “But it’s all the same now anyway. It’s yours, too.”

My cheeks get hot. I want to tell Jamie that I don’t need their money. We live across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco, in one of the most expensive counties in the country, but Mom and I have always gotten by just fine. We lived in an in-law unit in Mill Valley with a view of the ocean when I was a baby, and then a tiny guest house in Larkspur surrounded by redwoods all through elementary school. The summer after fifth grade, we moved into our cute two-bedroom cabin way up in the hills of Fairfax. We had to walk up sixty stairs to the front door but it looked over the whole town and the hills in the distance. It was a little rundown, a little musty, but it was the most perfect house I’d ever seen.

“The food will be here in half an hour,” Jamie says.

“Thank god,” I say. “I couldn’t eat any of the dinner.”

“Yeah, me neither.” Jamie runs a hand through their blond hair and looks down at the kitchen floor. Our mothers had the kitchen remodeled before moving in and the floor tile was their most difficult decision.

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