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The elevator dings. I step in, press the “close door” key, and hit the number 23. Then I lean into a corner of the gold-plated box and squeeze my eyes shut.
There’s a part of me that hates it that I still feel so much for him, that time and circumstance haven’t snuffed these feelings out. I’ve seen therapists and analysts and healers. It’s the lack of closure, I tell myself as I chew on my lower lip. It was Central Park and finding that a brief exposure to him can still light me like a match. It’s the helplessness I feel at that. Who would like it? Love is awful. Even tainted love can come back from the dead and slash you.
I’m lost in thought when the elevator lurches to a stop. I step out onto the building’s rooftop garden feeling heavy. I remember that night on the roof of my old building. How I waited there for him after that unexpected call, and then he stepped outside, and he was hurt. Because his dad attacked him.
That girl and boy are in the past, I tell myself as I step over to the rail. That’s how this works, isn’t it? It’s like train tracks. One direction, only once. Once you’ve passed a spot, you can’t go back. Every however many miles, everyone on the train just disappears and other versions are spawned. People that look just like the versions before, and have some overlap, but…aren’t the same. Are they? I’m not.
There’s a big tree out here. Over to my right, beside the rail. What kind of tree is that? It almost looks like an oak tree. Something from a storybook that ought to have a rope swing on it. I wonder how it got up here, and when. I walk slowly over to it, stand under its branches, peer over the rail. I watch the traffic, tracing bright veins with my tired gaze, wondering at every soul behind each little smear of brake lights.
And I feel him behind me. Tears well in my eyes. I struggle to fill my lungs as I feel him step still closer.
“Hi there.” It’s a murmur.
My lungs forget their function as I look over my shoulder at him. I’m try not to stare, but I drink in the details of his body in that tux. He’s holding what I think’s a cigarette—until I smell it in the wind.
One look at his face and I can see his eyes are heavy-lidded.
“Madam D.A.”
“Don’t call me that,” I whisper.
“Why not?”
“Do you want to be Houdini?”
His lips curve into a lazy grin. He looks decadent. Like a gorgeous, perfect hedonist in God’s own flawless body. And that tux.
“I’m all right with that,” he says.
“Are you high?”
He blinks, lips twitching. “What do you mean?” He takes a drag of the joint, holds it in his lungs, blows it away from me.
“That’s not a cigarette.”
He smirks down at it then up at me. “What is it?”
God, but does his voice have to be like that? I think I can see a scar on his cheek, but I tell myself it isn’t so. The ring I had on that night had been twisted around, so the tall emerald was nestled against my palm when I struck his face.
“What do you think?” I can see his chest rise on a breath, and for a moment, his face looks so serious—as if for just one heartbeat, he forgot his high. “Do I look older?” He smiles sadly. “Do I still look like that kid you knew?”
“I don’t think I knew whoever you’re talking about.”
He holds the joint out, and now I can’t read his face. “You like?”
I fist my hands. “No, of course not.”
“You guys putting people behind bars for green stuff?”
“This isn’t 1999.” I curl my lip—a put-on for him. So he can’t see that I’m almost panting at his nearness.
“What’s it like?” He leans back against the railing with one elbow, looking slim hipped and wide shouldered. “Having so much power?”
“I could ask the same of you.”
He smiles, looking like a scoundrel. “I’m a business person. Nothing special there.”
“No?”
“Nah.” The word is soft. It draws my gaze to his lips. Why do they have to look the same?
“I saw you see me,” he says.
I look at the floor—because I can’t just be smooth.
“That night after the election. You were looking at me.”
“I was looking at the middle. You just happened to be there.”
“Why the middle?” God, his voice is soft like smoke. His smoke smells good; I still like marijuana even if I left that off the campaign flyers.
“That’s where you look, just…you find a person. To lock onto. Helps you not process how big the crowd is.”
“It was big. Everybody came out for the pretty woman with the big brain.”
Something changes with his face. I think I see him clench his jaw, and then he takes a breath. He looks uncomfortable. Like something’s hurting him.
