“What about you?” she asks, tracing the tip of her finger in circles on my cheek.
“I found myself years ago, Sasha.”
“I don’t think so,” she says. Hearing this surprises me. It makes me wonder why she’d ever say something like that. “The you I have come to know likes to help people. I know you call cars women but they aren’t people. Be true to yourself, if I’m being true to myself.”
“I can’t go back to that life,” I tell her.
“You can. It’ll heal you and those nightmares of yours.” I didn’t tell her about my nightmares, or the shadows that follow me around like demons in the night. I haven’t told her about the half-blown-off faces I see in the sky, or the fact that most tree branches look like missing limbs from a distance. I haven’t told her that when I look out into the horizon of the deserts surrounding us, I see combatants heading toward me with weapons. I keep it inside. I hide it. I prevent anyone else from having to feel it.
“What are you talking about?” I ask her.
“You talk in your sleep. Almost every night. You did last night too. I know you don’t want me to leave. I know you’re telling me to leave so I don’t regret it someday. No one has ever cared about me this much.”
There’s nothing else I can say. She’s heard all my thoughts, knows my feelings, and can’t avoid the truth of me loving her.
But, I can avoid the truth of knowing whether or not she loves me because sometimes cliff-hangers are better for the imagination and the heart.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
ONE—I THINK I FOUND MYSELF—YEAR LATER
SASHA
“MOM, I’LL BE home late tonight, don’t wait up,” I tell her, zipping up my knee-high boots.
“I’ll be home late, too,” she says, walking out of her bedroom with a really short dress on. “Zachary is taking me out again tonight.” Zachary. The forty-something-year-old business mogul she met in the lobby of our apartment a few weeks ago. The divorce isn’t final between her and Dad yet, but it’s close enough that she’s moving on in a true non-housewife fashion. And to a man halfway between her age and mine.
A few weeks after I moved out here, I called her. After wrestling with what I hadn’t told her about dad, I let her know what she needed to hear, and I made her come out to Boston. She needed me, and I wasn’t ready to go home yet. I know I was supposed to do this on my own, find myself and all, but I realized she needed to do the same thing. So we’re together, but finding ourselves separately. Plus, the rent out here is almost completely impossible by myself.
Boston is high stress but also peaceful. I’ve enjoyed feeling lost in the midst of thousands of people occupying this city. No one knows who I am or anything about me, and that’s exactly what I want.
I take the T down the few blocks to my office building and stop at the coffee shop on the ground floor for my usual. They know me now and a lot of the times have my hazelnut coffee waiting for me. They must have memorized thousands of orders from the number of people who work in this building, since I think there are at least eight companies occupying the space here.
“Thanks, Rosie,” I say to the barista as she hands me my coffee. “Add it to my tab, please.”
“Already done,” she says with a fuchsia-lined smile.
I head into the glass elevator and up to the fifteenth floor where my cubicle awaits. I didn’t know how I’d like this whole office job business, but the paycheck is nice, and I get to design menus for one of the top-rated restaurants in the city. It’s almost perfect.
As I’m waiting for my computer to boot up, I glance over at the one and only picture frame I have sitting on my desk. It’s Jags and his silly grin with me at the bar the night I got a little too wasted. I only vaguely remember some moments of that night, but I remember taking selfies, and I remember dancing with him and singing at the top of my lungs—feeling like a million bucks, even if I was very aware that I would not be feeling that way in the morning. It was all worth it.
The thought of that night encourages me to take my