I shook my head immediately. “It’s not him. It’s me. This is all me. He got me this… this… incredible opportunity. In the city I want to be in, with one of the most amazing mentors I could ask for, aside from him. And he did it because he wants to see me happy.” I choked on a sob. “I think it’s what he’s always wanted. And I can’t figure out why I fight it, why I seem to be so much more comfortable in misery than in happiness.”
“Well, I think a lot of that comes from what happened with Wolfgang. And that brings me to something else we need to discuss.” She paused, chewing her bottom lip a moment as she considered her next words. “I think you need to see a therapist in New York, Sarah.”
Mom watched me like she expected me to fight, to throw a fit, to say I was fine and I didn’t need to talk to anyone.
But none of that was true.
I wasn’t fine, and I knew it.
“I think you’re right,” I whispered in agreement. “Honestly, maybe if I would have sorted through all this before I got to Pennsylvania, before I worked with Reese, I could have been more open to him. I wouldn’t have pushed him away, pushed us away.”
“Ah, but see, that’s the funny thing about life, isn’t it?” Mom said, a genuine smile touching her lips. “It seems that way, but if you would have talked to someone immediately, you might not have even ended up in Pennsylvania. Or if you had, Reese might not have seen the same pain in you that has lived in him, and maybe, he wouldn’t have connected with you on the same level. Everything happens for a reason, mwen chouchou. But now, it’s up to you to decide what happens next.”
I returned her smile, nodding as she squeezed my hand. And slowly, like a balloon being filled with each new breath I took, hope started to float back into my soul. My heart raced at the thought of running to Reese, of telling him everything, of pleading with him to come with me to New York like he said he would.
Only, I didn’t know if that offer was still on the table.
“Manman,” I said after a long moment. “What if he doesn’t listen to me? I mean… I’ve been awful to him. I ran out of his house. I accused him of terrible things, of using me, of doing the absolute last thing I know he would ever do.” I swallowed. “And, I threw one of his biggest scars in his face. When I saw him with Charlie, I just… I snapped. I wanted to hurt him the way he’d hurt me, but it wasn’t even him who had hurt me at all.” I sighed, pulling my hand from Mom’s so I could bury my face in both of them. “Everything is such a mess, I can’t even see my way out of it.”
Mom clucked her tongue, reaching over to rub my back as I tried to sort through it all.
“He said he loved you,” she reminded me. “Right? The last time you spoke?”
I nodded, resting my chin on my knees so I could look at her. “He said I saved him, too.”
At that, Mom’s smile bloomed, and she shook her head, running the back of her knuckles along the side of my face. She stopped at my chin, framing it with her thumb and forefinger as her eyes watered over. “Oh, mwen chouchou. Who saved who?”
I choked on a sob, throwing myself in her arms as the emotion took me under again. Only this time as she held me, it wasn’t pain that wracked through me — it was hope.
“Thank you,” I whispered, my head still against her chest where she held me. “I couldn’t do this without you.”
“Do what?”
“Life,” I said on a laugh.
Mom laughed, too, pulling back to frame my face with her hands. “So, now what, my love?”
My heart squeezed, a completely different kind of anxiety causing my muscles to seize. This time, it was born of the fear of rejection, the fear of putting my heart on the line only to have it passed up, like a bowl of peas on a dinner table.
“Now, I tell him how I feel,” I said, heart racing as an idea came to me. It was stupid. It was big. It was risky. But if I had a prayer of getting back the man I’d lost, it would all be worth it.
“And how do you do that?”
I smiled. “By using the only language he’ll understand.”
Reese
At least the weather was on my side.
Just like on the anniversary of my family’s death, there was a torrential downpour soaking all of Pittsburgh to its bones the day before Sarah was destined to leave town. I drove through the gray, miserable rain on my way across town, taking in the foggy skyline as the sun dipped away somewhere above the dark gray clouds. It was just another Friday night at The Kinky Starfish, another day in my monotonous routine of surviving — and that’s all it was, surviving.
I didn’t live anymore.
It was the same state of being I’d been in before Sarah walked into my life, and it didn’t surprise me that with the knowledge of her leaving, I was slipping right back into my comfort zone of nothingness. For the last two weeks, I’d done the same thing every day — wake up, take Rojo for a long walk, work out at the house, play piano, lose an afternoon watching movies, pop open a beer as soon as five o’clock hit — unless I was working at The Kinky Starfish — and to be honest, even sometimes then. I was doing whatever I could to get my ass out of bed and keep going, even when it felt like there was nothing to keep going for.
But tonight was different.
Tonight, my pulse beat hard and haphazardly right along with the windshield wipers on my old car trying to combat the rain. Because I knew I would see her.
And I also knew it would be the last time.
I’d made a promise to Charlie when she chose Cameron that I would let her go as gracefully as I could. Well, it turned out I had about as much grace as I did vegetables in my pantry. That is to say — absolutely none.
But with Sarah, I would follow through on my promise.
I’d tried to keep her, tried to get her to listen, to believe me, to believe in us. I couldn’t make her choose me, and so I would choose to be happy for her, for her next journey — whether I was a part of it or not. This time, I would have grace in letting the one I love go.
Maybe because she was the one I’d loved more than any other in my life.
It seemed impossible, even as my heart beat the truth of it into my chest. How could I love her after only knowing her a few months? How could I feel this connection to a woman just barely over half my age?
None of it made sense, and I guessed that was the most intriguing thing about love. It didn’t have to make sense.
It didn’t have to be reciprocated, either.
The potholes in the back lot of The Kinky Starfish were full of water, and I sloshed through them as I parked my car, pulling my rain jacket on and popping open a large umbrella as soon as my door was open. My shoes were soaked in an instant, the rest of me barely saved from the coat and umbrella. It was the kind of rain that was nearly impossible to shield yourself from.
When I made it inside, I shivered at the air blasting from the air conditioner in the back of the kitchen. Shaking my umbrella off, I propped it by the door before peeling my jacket off and hanging it on the rack.
I was in such a daze that I didn’t realize mine was the only jacket there.
Or that my car was one of only two in the parking lot.
Or that the kitchen was empty, the lights dimmed, even though our doors would open in less than half an hour.