before. It’s different, it fills me with prospects and aspiration despite the overhanging dread of what could happen now that I’d betrayed my best friend and her family.
Lindsey squeezes my hand. “Yeah, we did, babe. You okay?”
I mull over her question because I’m far from okay. But for the first time in what feels like forever, optimism coats my guarded heart.
I try to smile. “I’m not, but I will be.”
“We did what we had to do,” she tries convincing me, and I love her for her effort but nothing could demolish the reality of what we’d just done.
“I know. Except now we’ll be looking over our shoulders forever. And not only that, I betrayed the one friend who has always had my back.”
My eyes fill with sadness thinking of Adriana. What I said wasn’t entirely true, but she did have my back when she could.
“I’ll never get her back, Lindsey, that’s what kills me the most inside. I just sent her brother and her dad to prison.”
“You will. Hey, come on now.” She grabs my chin and lifts my head to meet hers. “Everything will be okay, just not today. But that’s all right because we’ve got each other.”
Love flourishes for this woman I look up to. A woman who’s smiling at me, talking to me, consoling me the way a mother should be doing. Lindsey is my mother. At least, she’s the closest thing to one that I’ve ever had.
“I hope you’re right. At least, I won’t do any time now. And thank you. I don’t know what I’d do without you, sis. You’ve been more of a mother to me than our real one ever was.”
Just mentioning prison, brings a weakness to my knees, and not the good kind. The kind that makes you want to crawl into a ball and die because in some fucked up universe it’s the better option.
“You’re my sister. I’ll always be there for you.” She circles her arm around my shoulders and we walk down the steps. “Now let’s get you back to the clinic.”
Love.
My heart had only endured love with pain, love with hate. Love turned my heart to coal until it became a black pit of ash, an emptiness with the sole purpose to keep me alive. As a young girl, I believed the fairy tales Lindsey used to read me at night. I believed love was beautiful, unconditional. It carried happiness only love could bring. I yearned for that happiness despite not knowing whether it was real. All I wanted was to be cherished by a parent who was supposed to love me. Every day I waited for my mom to smile at me for doing all my homework or for getting good grades at school. I’d wait for her to tuck me into bed at night and utter words I don’t ever recall hearing from her.
I love you.
But a smile never graced her face and those sweet little words never spilled from her lips. Lindsey was the one who showed love, the only one I could count on. My sister, my mother, my teacher, my friend. She was everything I needed and all that I truly had. Until Roamyn. My past suffocated all belief I had in love. Love of a parent. Love of a man. Love of a friend. But in these past few weeks of Roamyn visiting me every day, opening up to me, sharing his life with me, he’s revived my faith.
I love him. I think I always have.
I intertwine my fingers as nerves and excitement jitter inside of me. I tilt my head lower keeping my hair around my face as if it will somehow hide me from the NYPD officers who aren’t looking for me because they don’t know I’m not at the clinic. Ever since I started rehab, I’ve had two police officers guard the building twenty-four hours a day, for my protection. It was mandatory after I testified against the largest crime family this city has seen in who the hell knows how many years.
Sadness creeps over me when I think about Roamyn not stopping by today. I stayed by the living room near the front entrance and every time someone came through I looked up to see if it was him. I’d never spent so much time out of my room. It was surprisingly refreshing, but sad all the same because he never showed. My chest tightened with the loss of our routine. A habit we’d formed with every minute