“Tomlinson,” I say over the screeching hinges. “I told you earlier, I’m not in the mood fo—”
The words fall off my tongue as the bag of peas falls out of my hands. I hear it hit the ground at my feet with a dull thud, but I don’t look down to see where it landed. My eyes are locked on the girl standing at my door. One of her small hands is still aloft, frozen in place mid-knock; the other is holding a pie dish covered in foil. The scent of baked apples and cinnamon sugar fills the narrow hallway where she’s standing, her upturned face illuminated by the flickering fluorescent light.
For a moment there’s only silence, interspersed by the occasional buzz of a moth flying repeatedly into the bare bulb overhead. I swallow sharply, trying to make sense of this implausible scenario: Josephine Valentine, standing on my doorstep in the middle of the night, holding a fucking pie.
Whatever careful speech she undoubtedly rehearsed in the mirror before coming here quickly disintegrates when she catches sight of me.
“Your face!” she blurts, horrified eyes sweeping across my features. “God, you look awful!”
I say nothing in response.
Seeming to realize this might not be the most appropriate of greetings, she coughs lightly and adds, “Are… Are you okay?”
I don’t know how to respond to that. So I don’t. Her eyes flicker toward her feet, avoiding mine. She’s nervous, that much is plain to see. Probably not half as nervous as I am, but I’m hopefully doing a better job at hiding that fact.
“Sorry. I guess it’s not really my business.”
I clear my throat. My hand is gripping the door knob so tight, it’s losing circulation. “What are you doing here, Josephine?”
She flinches, almost imperceptibly, when I say her name. As though just hearing it from my lips is enough to cause her physical pain.
I just can’t seem to stop hurting her.
“I…” she hedges uncomfortably. Her voice is small enough to tell me this interaction is not going at all how she’d planned. I bet she regrets her decision to ever darken my doorstep. “I brought you a pie.”
My eyes flash briefly to the dish in her hands before returning to study her face. The way she’s chewing her bottom lip is driving me to distraction. There’s a lock of hair falling out of her braid, into her eyes; I cross my arms over my chest to give them a task, so I won’t reach out and tuck it back for her. My tone is glacial.
“You brought me a pie.”
“It’s apple,” she hurries on, words rushing together in a breathy stream. “And it’s probably not very good. Honestly, I’ve never made a pie before. I just wanted to give you something. As a thank you. You know… for… well, for saving my life the other day in the storm.” She extends the pie out toward me, clearly wanting me to take it from her hands.
I don’t.
The pie hovers in the air between us, caught in suspended animation. The natural thing — the normal thing — would be to take it from her. But my arms remain immobile, crossed over my chest. If I release them, I worry I’ll do something stupid, like push the pie dish aside and haul her straight into my arms.
“So…” She sucks in a shaky inhale, clearly trying to maintain her composure. “Yeah. That’s it. That’s all she wrote, folks!” A nervous chuckle pops from her lips. She quickly clamps them together, stifling the sound. “Anyway. Thanks. I guess I already said that, huh? So… thanks again.”
The pie creeps another inch toward me. Her arms are now fully extended; the dish is almost brushing my bare abdominal muscles. There’s a part of me that aches to take it from her hands. To accept her awkward little peace offering and invite her inside — not just into my apartment, but into my life again. Into my soul again.
But I can’t.
I have nothing to offer her anymore.
Frankly, the fact that she’s here — on the doorstep of my shitty apartment, getting a first-hand glimpse into just how far from grace I’ve fallen — is setting off bombs of mortification inside my chest, a series of rapid-fire explosions that rock me to my core. Smoky self-loathing billows up into my airway; my voice comes out choked with it.
“I never asked for a thank you. Or an unannounced visit, for that matter.”
“That’s kind of the whole point — if the person has to ask for a thank you, it’s not a real show of appreciation, now is it? And since I don’t have your phone number anymore, I couldn’t really announce my arrival.” Her shoulders have gone stiff. Around the pie dish, I sense more than see her fingers tighten as her ire rises. “Would you prefer a carrier pigeon? Some sort of smoke signal? Telegram? Flash mob? Whatever the case, next time I’ll be sure to give you ten business days’ worth of notice.” There’s a marked pause in her stream of sarcasm. “Not that there’s going to be a next time.”
“A standard greeting card would’ve sufficed.” My eyes narrow, a thought suddenly occurring to me. “How did you find out my address, anyway? Last I checked, I’m not listed in the yellow pages.”
Her lips press closed. “Does it matter?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t see why.”
“Then you’re being intentionally imperceptive.”
She’s silent, avoiding my eyes. It doesn’t much matter, though. There’s really only one person who could’ve told her where I am; only one mutual point of contact with that information at his disposal.
I’m going to kill Tomlinson.
I shake my head slowly, lips pursed in a show of annoyance. “Did you bring a bribery pie down to the police station to get your information, or did he give it to you for free?”
“Don’t be mad at Chris. He didn’t tell me anything.”
“Except my fucking address.”
“What is this, your secret lair?” She rolls her eyes. “Spare me. It’s an apartment, not Superman’s Solitary Fortress.”
“Fortress of Solitude.”
“Ah yes, by all means, now is the time to correct me on my improper geek references!” Her scoff is mocking. “I didn’t care about your comic book phase when we were twelve and you made me borrow the entire collection from the Public Library because you were too embarrassed to check them out yourself. I definitely don’t care, now.”
The casual reference to our past hits both of us at the same time. We are so far removed from those two gawky kids we used to be — the ones who huddled in the boathouse rafters on summer nights, holding flashlights under a flannel blanket, tracing our fingertips across the inked pages. Reading snippets of dialogue in cartoon thought bubbles, laughing at the pop-art caricature drawings until our eyes grew too heavy to continue and we nodded off, a tangle of limbs, only to be awoken hours later by the sound of the lawn sprinklers going off before dawn. Scurrying back to our separate beds before anyone realized we were missing.
I’m not the only one who remembers. I can see the memories lurking in Jo’s eyes, playing out on the surface of her sky-blue irises like a projector screen of pain. For a moment, neither of us says anything. I’m afraid if I let a single word escape, all the rest will flood out after it. Words like I’m sorry and I screwed up and I don’t know how to fix this. Useless words that will get me nowhere.