okay. I’ll bring them tomorrow. Let me know a time. – Highland
This is it then. The end. I’m still waiting for that weight to lift off my chest. For the big ah-ha moment where I flex my biceps and realize I’m strong. Look at me, setting boundaries. Healthy ones. I should be motherfucking happy that I’m a day away from not being jerked around anymore.
But I feel a longing to see Jack again and sadness that it won’t be the same after tomorrow.
I let out a long, cantankerous groan, “Estou morrendo de saudade.” I’m dying of saudade.
Alright, I know I’m being dramatic.
A beer bottle taps my shoulder.
I look up and meet a pair of pierced brows that rise in asshole-ish fashion at me. Wouldn’t want it any other way, especially as Farrow tells me, “You didn’t just say what I heard you say.” Handing me the beer, he takes a seat beside me on the edge and dips his inked legs in the pool where mine have been.
Like me, he’s bare-chested and just in swim trunks. Unlike me, his body is covered in pirate and skull tattoos. I’ve known Farrow since before the neck tats.
“I said it,” I say into a hearty swig, and more clearly, I repeat in Portuguese, “Estou morrendo de saudade.”
Farrow rolls his eyes halfway around Center City.
“I think your eye-roll passed Fishtown.” I push my curls back, feeling my rolled bandana around my forehead. “Better be careful, Redford, the hipsters there are gonna think you’re too cool for them.”
He cracks a smile that levels-out in concern. After a swig of his own beer, he tells me, “I haven’t heard you say that since Darrien.”
My college boyfriend. By far the Mount Vesuvius of break-ups that I’ve ever experienced. I thought he was the one at first, but it erupted after an argument over microwavable pizza bites.
I haven’t eaten a pizza bite since.
Deep down, it wasn’t about the food. After our fight, he dumped me in the fucking Yale library while I was cramming for mid-terms. I failed three of my exams that semester, and I didn’t consider the dumping a rejection because I thought about dumping him too.
But the more alone I was afterward, the more I missed him. The more Farrow would take me to bars so I’d stop embarrassing my ass by texting him.
And I’d groan out, Estou morrendo de saudade.
There is no direct translation of “saudade” into English. To me, it’s always been a nostalgic longing for a love that’s missed and gone. When I left for college and missed my brother and sister, sometimes I’d call them and groan out, Quero que você mate minha saudade.
I want you to kill my saudade.
I want you to kill this longing feeling inside of me.
“I feel like I’m breaking up with the guy,” I admit to Farrow, tipping the beer to my lips. “And all we’ve done is flirt like kindergarteners.”
“Man, what kindergarteners do you know that understand blow-job euphemisms?” he asks in a rising wiseass smile. “You’re more like middle schoolers.”
I grin. “Yeah, you’re right. Your husband is more like the kindergartener.”
He goes to shove me in the pool, but I careen back and laugh.
Farrow raises a hand in surrender. “You’re not going in the water, only because of that.” He points at the phone, referring to my fracturing heart. “He text you back yet?”
“Yeah.” I show him the text. “What time can I stop by tomorrow?” I chose the penthouse as the meeting place.
“Pick anytime, Oliveira. The door is always open.” He tilts his head back and forth, reconsidering. “More like, partially ajar for you.”
“Aw, fuck you,” I say in a grin and text Jack.
Morning. 8 a.m.
I press send, hoping it didn’t sound too curt. But I can’t exactly attach a bunch of heart emojis. He’s giving me enough mixed signals to power the sun, and I don’t want to add to that.
I set my phone aside on the gray stone.
“I think it goes up like this. Oh, wait, fuck, no the other way,” Sulli says in the water, setting up a pool volleyball net with Luna and Jane.
Banks and Akara jump in the water to help them. Akara’s hair has grown a little longer this summer, the black strands wisp over his ears and brush his neck.
All of SFO is on the rooftop hanging out together. The penthouse is a mega-upgrade from the 900-square-foot Rittenhouse-Fitler townhouse that burned down. We’re not all cramped together, for one. For another, it’s a fucking penthouse. 33rd