“Allison, no. God, please don’t say that.” Esben has tears in his eyes as he tries to take me in his arms.
“No, no, please don’t touch me.” It’s all I can do to hold myself together the little that I am. “I have to go. I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I’m all screwed up again.”
“You’re not making any sense. Please, just sit down, and we will figure this out,” he pleads.
“I can’t. Esben, I told you ages ago that I was broken. Maybe I wasn’t then, but I definitely am now. This will be better for you in the end. I love you so much, but this will be better.”
I back away from him. Everything is so confusing, so depressing and terrible. Before I can do something stupid, like change my mind, I turn and leave the room. This is the only smart choice I have. There will be no recovery for me or for us.
Somehow, I am in a cab on the way to LAX. I call Simon, and when I hear his voice, I desperately want to cry again, but I don’t.
“Allison?”
It’s seven blocks before I can form words, but he waits. “I need to get home. Dad, I need to get home. Please help me. Please help me. Please help me.”
“Get to the airport. I’ll find you a flight.”
“Please help me,” I keep saying.
“I will.”
CHAPTER 31
BAKED
For two days, I do nothing but cry and take refuge in my bedroom at home. Bruce Wayne barely leaves my side, snuggling and trying to comfort me. He’s big on snoring, and I find the sound oddly soothing. By Tuesday, I am out of bed and probably severely dehydrated, but at least the crying has stopped. Simon has taken the week off work, and he keeps trying to talk to me, but I don’t want to talk. I want to bake. Cookies, cakes, layer bars, custards, pies . . . everything.
I just want to bake. No matter how inept I am in the kitchen, that’s what we do. That’s all we do.
On Friday, Simon and I are in the kitchen, surrounded by so many sweets that it looks as though we are in a pastry shop. Bruce Wayne is snoring loudly in the corner of the room, asleep in a very fancy dog bed Simon got him. The only thing I will talk about is how to perfect my icing skills or how to properly hold the bag for piping filling into the profiteroles, and Simon has patiently walked me through all of the recipes that I picked out. But as I am obsessively eyeing the sprinkles I’ve just put on a cookie, Simon slams down a rolling pin on the board in front of him.
“What? Is something wrong with that dough?”
He sighs loudly and takes off his apron. “Allison? Kiddo, you know how much I love you and that I support you no matter what. In everything that you do. Right? You know that?”
“Yes,” I say softly, and I sprinkle another cookie.
He braces his hands on the counter and looks across at me. “But right now, I do not support you in how you’re handling things, and I am not going to enable this any longer. If my daughter is doing something unhealthy, then I have to speak up, so that’s what I’m going to do.”
“You read the texts. I told you everything that happened and—”
“Stop it!” he snaps. “Be quiet, and listen to me. Yes, I read the texts. Yes, I heard your asinine theory about only getting one and about how you think you’re powerful enough to have caused Steffi’s death by falling in love with Esben. It’s ridiculous, and it would be irresponsible of me to say otherwise.”
He’s making me sound crazy. “I didn’t say I was powerful enough—”
“Basically you did. It’s called magical thinking. And it’s garbage.” He pulls over a stool and sits. “My dear, you need to pull it together. Steffi’s death? It’s a massive loss, it is. Your best friend died. A friend with whom you shared a very tight bond. You are entitled to grieve and be angry and sad and a whole bunch of things. I give you that. What I don’t give you is support when I see you walling yourself off again. From me, from Esben, from people who love you. I do not support letting you go back to an even darker place than before, especially not after all the progress you made. I saw how happy you were, how you came out of your shell in a hundred ways this year, and I am not going to let you throw that all away. Look, honey . . .” Simon takes the sprinkles from my hand and sits still until I am forced to look at him. “Steffi was wonderful in so many ways. Spirited, dynamic, funny—so funny, right?—beautiful, smart, and tough as anyone could be. But maybe too tough.” He pauses to let this sink in. “Do you agree?”
I think about this for a while. “Maybe,” I admit.
“I think she was. So tough that she pushed you away when she could have used your help. That makes me very sad. Yes, we all had to respect her decision, because she was forceful as they come, but it’s still sad. And I think that, while she was a role model in so many ways, Steffi also gave you some very misguided ideas about life. About people. She decided that we only get one special person in life, because that’s all she could handle. It made allowing you in and no one else sound reasonable. It made rejecting Cal and Joan sound reasonable. It’s unfortunate that she did that to herself. But that’s not how you have to be, Allison. You don’t have to push everyone away to protect yourself.”
I stare blankly at him, unable to respond.
Simon’s face softens. “Haven’t you been happy this year? Hasn’t it felt good to be close with people? I can tell you that I’ve really enjoyed being with you in a whole new way. Don’t go backward, sweetness. Don’t. It’s a huge mistake. Steffi put Esben in a complete no-win situation. What the hell was he supposed to do, huh? You tell me what you would have done if you’d been him. There was no right choice.”
“But”—I know this sounds stupid even as I say it, but I have to get it out—“he wasn’t loyal to me when he should have been. It’s like he chose Steffi over me.”
“That’s incorrect. You are not seeing this for what it is. At all. Esben was loyal to her because you were so loyal to her. It’s kind of a big goddamn weight that she unfairly placed on his shoulders. He couldn’t violate her trust, and, because of that, he had to violate yours. Esben had to choose the lesser of two really rotten evils. If you’d stop being so nutty,” he says, smiling, “you’d see that.”
I sit for a while and think about all of this. “I really freaked out, didn’t I?” I finally say.
“Yeah. You certainly did.” He snatches a cookie from the tray in front of me and eats it whole. “Look, you might be confused about what Steffi and Esben did. Get over it. They both did what they thought was best for you. They both wanted you to get through this with as little damage as possible. Steffi would most definitely not want you disappearing into a squalid shell again, and she would not want you ending your relationship with Esben. She wanted the opposite.”
I notice that the cookies in front of me are getting wet. Apparently, I’m crying on them. “Steffi loved me. For real.”
“She did.” Simon presses a tissue to my face. “You know that. Listen to your heart.”
“And Esben loves me. Also for real.” The cookies are about to get drenched.