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Chapter 2: Sanctuary no more

„Hey Marin, it's Jack. I read it. And… I'm sorry. I've been trying to stop thinking about you but I can't. And I think I might be a little bit drunk. And I think I might be falling in love with you. Anyway… Thanksgiving Coach!"

This was the message that was currently on Marin's voicemail, but which she hadn't heard yet because her phone was still put on vibrate. She didn't even realize yet that her cell phone was blinking. She had just run out of the diner and said she needed to go home. Home as in Elmo not as in New York.

But let's start at the beginning.

When Marin had arrived in New York three days ago she had felt great. The city had smelled great and had been more beautiful than she remembered. In fact New York had never been especially beautiful to her. She had grown up there and as a kid she had wished for more playgrounds and parks and less cars and buildings.

As she had become older she had come to appreciate the malls and endless opportunities that was New York City. It was a paradise if you appreciate a big city. You can go shopping in the middle of the night, you get food from all over the world at every day or nighttime and everything seems possible- is possible really if you just work hard enough or have a talent that the other millions of inhabitants don't have.

Marin had that and when she had published her first book and it had sold so well she had felt like the queen of the world and Manhattan had been exactly the right place for her to be.

Now when she had come back from Elmo she had had that exact feeling again. Everything was new and exciting, everything seemed possible and nothing out of reach.

She didn't remember her apartment being that spacious and pretty. Nothing looked rustic or worn. She had enough space for all of her clothes, actually she had all of her clothes here and they weren't even unsuited.

Neither was there a raccoon in her closet eating her clothes or waking her up the middle of the night. Instead she had a dove as a new pet, how romantic was that?

The thing she appreciated most tough was her own bathroom in which she could even use a hairdryer without the electricity going out in the whole town. She chuckled when she pictured whole New York without electricity because of her hair-drier while she was using said item after her shower.

It had been an adventurous shower, she had to admit, because the shower-head was far from being fixed and at first the water had splashed everywhere but not on her body and then, when she had ribbed off the shower-head the stream had been so hard it had hurt at first. Regulating the water-

flow had been successful, but the water had gotten colder and so she had to use more hot water… causing her to burn her toes when suddenly only hot water had come out of the tap.

She had survived it and was now blow-drying her hair and humming along with the sound of it. In Elmo she had never been able to make her hair the way she used to and her curls had always been wilder and only tame-able with a lot of products and spray.

Yet in Elmo nobody had noticed her bad – hair month and she had come to like her Elmo-hairstyle. Especially after Jack had washed and cut her hair.

Jack, there he was again in her head. She just couldn't get him out. No matter how often she had told all the others these last few days that they were just friends and that she didn't miss him she knew it wasn't true.

At first she had been shocked when the first two possible publishers had asked her what she was doing in New York when Jack was a real human being and she knew him. They had really thought she had made him up, the perfect man, but she hadn't. What hadn't been in her article though was the fact that Jack was a proud and stubborn man and refused to read said article. Because of that he wasn't talking to her anymore. She could still see the disappointment on his face when she remembered their talk when he had thrown the New Yorker into the flames.

She sighed and switched off the hair-drier. It didn't matter anyway how her hair looked because she would celebrate Thanks Giving only with Jane and Liza and without anyone she needed to look good for.

She placed the hair-drier back on the shelf and took her make-up bag. Before she started to apply it she closed the shower-curtain so it could dry. She really had to call a plumber to fix the shower-head. In Elmo Jack had fixed it…

She sighed and took the powder from the bag and started her primping. She ended with a spritz of perfume on her top and gave the mirror a satisfied nod. This was the perfume she had thought she would get the skunk-smell off, but Jack had told her that it wouldn't work and had ordered her into a tub filled with tomato-soup. And all that after she had first bought him, used him as a handy-man and then accidentally run him over with her car.

He had thrown her out in the end because her help was unwelcome. But not that long time later they had slept together… twice. God, it had been so hot- both the sex and the weather.

They had both agreed on being just friends afterwards, but had they ever been just friends? The possibility of more had always floated around them and not just because of the sex.

She didn't feel that good anymore when she thought about Jack. The homey feeling that the apartment had given her before seemed gone and she couldn't let that happen. This was her home and had been for a whole while longer than Elmo.

Elmo was… Elmo was just…. Elmo was a temporary home. A place she had needed at the time she had found it. And now that she was better and over Graham she didn't need Elmo anymore and could go back to needing New York.

The doorbell rand and she knew that Jane had arrived.

"I'm going", Liza yelled through the apartment and opened Jane the door while Marin took another minute to compose herself in the bathroom. This was her life now and it was a good life. Even in New York, without Jack.

She had never thought that she would find herself in a run-down diner in New York for

Again she felt that the diner was too loud, even the cars on their way to the diner had seemed to loud, too shrill and she couldn't hear her own thoughts. Yesterday evening she had had to leave the party because the noise and the many people had been too much for her and she had wondered for the first time if New York was still her home and her apartment still her sanctuary.

It felt like neither the city nor the apartment did want her there. Everything was falling apart or being a problem and the things that were neither and just perfect weren't so perfect anymore to her. Not even all the offers from the publishers, who kept asking the same questions and who kept giving her the same disbelieving look when she told them that yes, Jack was really existing and that no, they weren't a couple and had never been.

And she couldn't write anymore in this city, this was also a thing that was confusing her. Stuart had been right: Elmo was her inspiration and she couldn't write anymore without it.

And then she had admitted that she missed Jack. Not Elmo, not Alaska, or the Chieftain, but Jack Slattery himself. The guy that had cut her hair, bathed her in tomato- soup, slept with her twice, had taught her how to fish, fixed nearly everything she owned or lived in, saved her raccoon, and told her ex-fiancé that he had slept with her just so he would go and leave her alone. This Jack Slattery.

But also the stubborn guy who had refused to tell her who Lynn was, who had told her to leave him alone when she had tried to help him, the guy who had said he was only a subject for her, the guy who had ended their friendship because he refused to read the article she had written and which had been published without her permission. She missed even that Jack Slattery. She felt relieved after finally admitting it to her best friend.

And then Sam came into the diner, the plow-guy in shining armor, she had been happy for Jane, but she had also envied her. She wished Jack would come to New York and tell her that he was sorry and that he loved her and couldn't stand to be without her. She wished for him to tell her to come back, to come home.

And when that thought had registered in her brain the decision had been made. She would go home. Home to Elmo and home to Jack. She would tell him that she was sorry so often that he would understand that she really WAS sorry. She would tell him that he was her friend and not a subject. And she would tell him that she had feelings for him that had nothing to do with friendship.

So she jumped up from her chair in the diner, saw Liza admiring Sam and Jane, who were still kissing each other passionately. She wondered for a second if they would even notice it if she would now and then grabbed her jacket and ran.

"I gotta go", she said.

"Where?" Liza asked her confused and snapped out of her daze.

"Home", Marin replied and was out the door.

Back at her apartment she wrote a letter to the building manager, telling that she would let go of the apartment. And before Liza was back from the diner she had thrown some clothes into her bag and checked the flight to Elmo the same night. Ten o'clock. She would be back home at ten pm.

She stuck the dove into a shoebox and then set her free in the park so she could find her way home.

Completely ecstatic she took her phone out of her jacket pocket, without paying attention to the blinking sign in the right corner of the screen and called the Chieftain while she ran to her apartment to get her stuff.

"Chieftain", Ben answered the phone and sounded so familiar that it made her giddy inside.

"Hey Ben. How's the orphan Thanks Giving?" she asked with a bright smile that was audible in her voice… as well as her panting.

"Great. Are you ok?" he asked.

"Yeah, I'm great just running. I'm coming back to Elmo. There's a flight after Seattle tonight and with the time difference I think I could be in Elmo by ten ", she blurted out and then accidentally hung up, because she nearly crushed into a burly guy who was coming her way.

She thought about calling again, but then decided against it. Ben knew and they knew she would be back and that was enough. She had to hurry anyway to get to the airport in time. She stuck the phone back into her pocket, still oblivious to the blinking and the fact that she had put it on vibrate yesterday for the party and couldn't hear Ben's tries to call her anymore. Otherwise she would have known that Jack was on his way to her.

Because sometimes you have to do the unexpected thing. The thing that just feels right… but maybe would work better with a little planning and talking.

TBC