Bohdan’s never been a particularly talkative person. It was one of the first things I learned about him.
He doesn’t say a lot, but he says what he means.
And he said he was leaving.
So he must have meant it.
The only conclusion I can find, after turning it over and over and over in my head, is that my brain must have been right all along, since I had my first conscious thought that there was something wrong, just ... off about me, and little four-year-old Sloan tottered off to preschool with worries in her backpack beside her crayons.
It wasn’t that the life he had wasn’t enough anymore.
It was me. I wasn’t enough, and I never was.
“Maybe this is a good thing.” Tia leans forward, nodding softly like she’s trying to be encouraging. “You could talk. You haven’t spoken to him since. I can’t imagine how hard that is.”
“It’s not hard,” I bite out, but the tears welling in my eyes say otherwise.
It’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, becoming someone who doesn’t know him.
Tia taps the nail file against her fingers before she gently sets it down on the edge of the tub and comes to stand beside me. She drops her chin against my shoulder. “What do you want to do?”
“I’m going to ignore him,” I say, faking conviction and a smile that doesn’t meet my eyes.
She wrinkles her nose, looking half tempted to moan in exasperation. “For a whole week? I don’t think that’s the solution, Sloan.”
“What do you propose I do, Tia?” I wipe at my cheeks, watching in the mirror as I turn inward, all that fake confidence shrinking in real time. “I mean it,” I continue, words all small and sad. “What would you do?”
“What if we gave you two some space? You guys skip this private tour of the ship Talon arranged”—she rolls her eyes, and a tiny smile fights against my tears, peeking through like sunshine on an otherwise grey day—“we’ll go, and you talk? Just ... say what you need and put it to rest. I’ll catch you up. God knows there’s nothing so important you can’t miss.”
I blink and give a shake of my head. “I don’t want to talk to him.”
It’s a lie. I do.
I’ve wanted to talk to him every minute of every day since he left. It’s a visceral ache, really.
This empty spot in me that just rings endlessly because the person who used to occupy it packed up and moved out.
I could move on; I should move on eventually. But he carved out this home that I don’t think anyone could ever touch.
He built it from scratch. With rough hands that were soft with me, all the framing made of wood grown from his love and the foundation poured from understanding no one else could ever come close to offering. The drywall and flooring and paint and decorations and all those lovely things were put there by those hands, too. All the furniture the colour of his eyes and in the shape of his mouth, with lights dotting the ceilings like the freckles dotting my face.
Who’d ever want to try and live there?
“Why not?” Tia drums her fingertips along my arms, tapping at the tattoo still inked there.
I watch her finger touch the letter, and I wish she had a magic eraser. Bohdan lives in me, and I don’t need a reminder painted on my skin for the whole world to see.
It’s like wearing around my thoughts, a little sign strapped around my neck like a name tag:
Sloan Joseph
Once loved by Bohdan Novotnak
But not enough, as it would turn out
Just like her
I don’t know how to tell Tia that Bohdan leaving was all the proof my brain needed to launch a new campaign against me.
