It hurts the same way it always does, along the scar first—a pulsing pain every doctor and psychologist I’ve ever had has told me is firmly in my imagination, that there’s no physiological basis for a hurt like that to be caused by nothing more than memory, because that’s what Sloan is now, memory.
It moves along my scalp, the way her fingers used to. It twirls in my hair before it slides down my face, almost lovingly. Reverently. Before it scrapes down my neck and digs into my shoulders, finding its way down to the place I’m told my heart still beats because doctors can hear it, where it lives and makes a home.
Exhaling, I swallow another sip of beer, eyes roving over the picture, this deep, hard-to-explain pain pushing against my chest when I look at her.
Hair tumbling around her shoulders, eyes even more blue because they’re sparkling with unshed tears, and those painful arena lights shining down on her.
I flip it over, twirling it between my fingers, and there it is. Her name and her old number in that beautiful, loopy writing of hers.
Sloan Joseph
555-6718
A smile twitches the corners of my mouth, and I press the bottle to my lips.
It used to strike me as funny that she’d written her last name down, too. Like she wanted to make sure I knew who she was and give me some piece of truly identifying information so I’d never forget her.
There was never a risk of that.
I don’t know how long I’m staring, but my phone rings when I take the last swallow of beer.
A picture of my mom lights up the screen, and I’m not sure I feel like answering, but I don’t want her to get the wrong idea, thinking I’ve died of migraine-induced heart failure or something else she’s made up in her head, and call the police for a wellness check when it’s not needed, because I didn’t answer.
It wouldn’t be the first time.
Discarding the empty bottle beside me, I place Sloan back where she belongs, right beside me in my wallet, and my mother’s voice croons through the speaker.
“Broucku.”Little bug.
Her voice sounds the way it always does, warm and loving, before it turns serious with the edge of a reprimand. “It’s late.”
“You called me.”
“It’s early here.” She’s visiting my grandparents in Brno, but I can hear her smile all the way over here in Brooklyn. I canimagine the whole thing pretty clearly, actually. Where she’s sitting in the apartment, window thrown open and cool, spring air filtering in while she watches the square with her morning coffee. “How are you feeling?”
My eyes pinch closed and out of habit, I press my fingers to my temple. It might seem innocuous, but it’s a frustrating question.
The only one I ever get asked anymore.
Never how I am, just as me, the person—but how I’m feeling.
Like the entirety of my being disappeared the moment my head cracked against the ice.
Maybe it did.
“Fine. I just got home. I was at the studio, sorting some stuff out.” I stretch my legs out along the chair, wincing when my right quad cramps. I swallow, pressing my eyes closed again. “Went out on the ice for a bit this afternoon with a friend who still plays here.”
I toss the words out before I can regret it, because I know it’d only be worse if I kept it secret and she finds out.
It’s met with silence.
Heavy, all-encompassing, and somehow choking me from an entirely different continent.
“Were you careful?” she asks, just like her words.
Pounding my fist into my quad, I push against the muscle spasm and try to take my frustration out on the shitty, underused, probably equally-as-frustrated tissue instead of my mother.
My therapist says I need to be better about that sort of thing.
