moments in life that leave a mark on a man. First love, first lay, first time you learn your parents aren’t perfect people. First time you realize you may have done irreparable damage to someone you love more than life itself. I’m at that stage of the learning curve. The worst part. You would think at thirty-three I would’ve learned that lesson already.
I’ve done everything I can short of tattooing an apology on my forehead. I’m even willing to negotiate the tattoo if she’s willing to listen. This is my last chance, the only hand I have left to play.
I board the train headed downtown. This feels like the right thing to do. That speech about not being in my league nearly killed me outright. I’ve never felt worse about myself, or more ashamed, and this is penance.
The doors close with a hiss and bodies jostle in place. That’s when I see the writing on the wall in a manner of speaking. Wall, door, doesn’t really matter. A cynical subway poet has replaced the Do Not Lean On Door sign with one that reads Do Not Fall In Love.
Anthem of the brokenhearted. I know how he feels. My broken heart is already pounding hard in anticipation of what’s to come.
Thanks for the heads-up, but it’s too late. The deed is done. It was done the day Riley ran into me. The day she saved my life. Because she saved me in every sense of the word. I was going through the motions before she crashed into me, barely living, barely surviving, waiting for the end to come.
The train stops and everyone pours out. I jog up the stairs. The wind cuts through me when I reach the top. You can see the 9/11 Memorial clearly from here and it makes me think about Riley’s father, everything she’s been through. Everything I put her through. I’ll gladly spend the rest of my life making it up to her if she’ll let me.
I was fourteen the day the towers came down. It was the summer I was diagnosed with cancer and whether you choose to see it as a stroke of luck or tragedy I wasn’t in the city that day. But I should have been. I should’ve been attending the private school only a few blocks from the World Trade Center. Instead I was in Boston, getting my first treatment, where I met a girl named Delainey Chen who would become my best friend.
I’ll always love Lainey. She gave a teenage boy with no hair and even less friends a reason to live. But that was a boy’s love, a selfish one, impulsive, desperate to be seen and heard. I haven’t been that boy in a long time.
For most of my adult life I thought I couldn’t let myself love again, to hope for a family, to build a life with someone. Fear held me back. Had me believing I was living on borrowed time, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Riley changed all of that.
The ferry is cold. Windy as hell. I flip up the collar of my coat, look ahead, to what awaits me on the other side if only she’ll have me. If the person of my heart and soul, my match in every way, can forgive me one more time. If she can give me one last chance to prove to her how much I love her.
“Hey, watch where the hell you’re going,” an old woman barks at me. It makes me laugh, reminding me of that fateful night at the restaurant.
I spent decades in a state of inertia. Not willing to go forward, but not ready to let go of the past. Riley didn’t save my life that night on Broome Street when she came onto the scene like my own personal Avenger, chewing gum and brandishing her stick. She saved my soul. Stole it for safe keeping. Because I sure didn’t have any use for it.
The ferry docks. I follow the crowd to the taxi stand, flag one down, and head to Riley’s place.
Riley
Moving day. Or D day. It depends on how you look at it. Whether you’re a glass half full or half empty person. I choose half full. I choose hope. I choose to fight. I may be battered and bruised but I will not let this world ruin me.
We’ll be spending Christmas next week in our new studio apartment. Mrs. Argento moved out last week. We closed escrow on this place