The Invisible Husband of Frick Island by Colleen Oakley (autobiographies to read .TXT) 📗

general store/market, and one restaurant. Notably, there are few cars (most people walk or ride bikes for transportation), no street signs, and there is no police force. There is a schoolhouse, although there are no longer enough children to fill it, and therefore children ferry over to the mainland to attend school every day.

Anders’s cell vibrated in his back pocket, interrupting his reading. He dug it out, half hoping it would be Celeste.

“Kelsey,” Anders said when he answered, swallowing his disappointment.

“I’ve been texting you all day. Why haven’t you responded?”

“Because I don’t know what Zoosk is, and I’m not joining it.”

“Mom says you’re heartbroken.”

“I’m not heartbroken.” He was. Even though it had been two months since he and Celeste broke up. Theirs was a college romance, a first love, and when Celeste got accepted to Emory’s medical school upon graduation and Anders got the job in Maryland, they did what most young lovers do—ignored the facts and held steadfast to the belief that their love could endure anything, including a distance of six hundred and ninety-six miles between them. Turned out, it could not. Celeste met a fellow doctoral student at her orientation in June, and the swoony way she spoke about him that evening to Anders—“he’s really smart; an infectious disease major”—should have been his first clue that it was over. The next night it was more facts: “He has this adorable German shepherd, Lola. He showed me a picture.” When she finally ended things for good two weeks later, Anders felt a literal pain in his chest. He had loved her. Or admired her, at least. Or just really appreciated the way she laughed at his quips, as though he was the funniest person she’d ever met.

But he knew defending himself further would only cement Kelsey’s claim, so he chose to deflect. “Mom says you’re sleeping in until twelve and have only been on one audition all summer.” His sister had somehow convinced their parents to let her defer college for a year and live at home to pursue her dream of acting in Atlanta, which had suddenly become a mecca for filmmaking.

“Well, I already signed you up,” she said, ignoring his jab.

“For what?”

“Zoosk.”

“I still don’t know what that is.”

“A dating app. I’m sending you the sign-in now.”

His email dinged. He didn’t bother looking at it and stuck the straw from his Coke in his mouth.

Anders sighed. “I don’t need a dating app.”

“Yes, you do. Celeste has moved on and you need to get out of your comfort zone.”

“I like my comfort zone.” Anders started to wish he hadn’t answered the phone.

“Will you just look at it, please?”

“Sure,” Anders said, though he had no intention of doing so.

He heard muffled speaking and then: “Mom wants to know if you’re coming home for Labor Day. She’s ordering the pork butts or something and is trying to get a head count.” The Caldwells’ Labor Day barbecue had somehow become the social event of the year in their suburban neighborhood.

“I’ve already told her, I’ll probably be working,” Anders said, though he hadn’t even asked Greta yet.

More muffled voices. “You worked on Fourth of July, she says. Surely you get some holidays off.”

Anders was about to explain the way a daily newspaper worked for the hundredth time, when his sister said: “You what? Mom.”

“What?” Anders said, growing impatient with the mediation.

“She says she invited Celeste.”

He nearly choked on another sip of soda, the froth sputtering out of his mouth. “What? Why?”

“She’s not practically family, Mom. They broke up.”

Anders cringed. His mind flashed to Celeste in her white sundress last year, her hair swept up in a messy knot. He preferred it that way, her perfect neck on display. There was something vulnerable about it, sexy. He sighed again.

“Look, Kels, I’m working. I’ve got to go.”

“OK—well, just look at the website. Maybe you’ll meet someone and can bring her to—”

Anders hung up and slunk down in his chair. He glanced at the Wikipedia page and then clicked off of it, not caring anymore about Frick Island. He navigated to his email and wavered the pointer over Kelsey’s newest message before hitting delete. Then, in an effort to forget about his exhausting conversation with his sister and Celeste’s perfect neck, he opened Jess’s email and clicked on the Humane Society link, which took him to a series of pictures of homeless dogs with names like Chip and Pepe and Stella staring at him with sad, hopeful eyes. Maybe he would get a dog. He could be a dog person like Celeste’s new boyfriend, couldn’t he? He had no idea what the guy looked like, but he pictured him as one of those Ken doll Bachelorette contestants from Kelsey’s favorite show—a guy with coiffed hair and skinny jeans and K-Swiss sneakers tossing tennis balls at the park for Lola, showing off a row of perfect toothpaste-commercial teeth when he threw back his head in masculine, effortless laughter.

Movement on the wall drew his attention, and Anders jumped up, letting out a squeak and grabbing the can of Raid he kept out for this purpose. With lightning-quick speed, he popped the top off and directed the nozzle at the offensive target scurrying across the beige wall, leaving a trail of God knows what disgusting diseases in its wake. The cockroach dropped to the ground on its back, its fibrous legs still twitching, as if looking for purchase. Heart thudding, Anders sprayed it again in disgust, waiting for the poison to take effect. He glanced back at the screen of virile dogs and noticed it had gone black, so all he was looking at was the vague reflection of his own freckle-painted pale skin and unmanageable cowlick that refused to be tamed no matter how much he smoothed it. He thought of the coiffed hair, the tennis balls, the teeth.

And he sighed for the third time that evening.

—

Once, in a fit of paternal (and scotch-induced) bonding at his high school graduation party, Anders’s father gave him three