My phone rings before I can find something else to listen to.
“Tia.” I smile into the phone, thankful, not for the first time and certainly not for the last, that my best friend called me.
“Sloan,” she croons, and I can just make out the resounding tap of her heels against marble. “What are you doing?”
“Leaving campus. What are you doing?”
“Leaving work.” The symphony of her heels is joined by car horns and inaudible conversation. Enough to tell me she just stepped out of her office, right by that stupid golden bull on Wall Street. “Thought I’d give one last shot at convincing you to come on my brother’s sad little Peter Pan–esque, ‘I’ll never grow up’ cruise before I catch the subway.”
I snort, starting my walk across campus again, the nefarious sounds of my footsteps chased away by the sound of my best friend. “It’s a good thing you went into accounting, not advertising. Your pitch needs a bit of work.”
“I do believe in faeries, I do, I do!” Tia shouts into the phone, the lilt of her laughter warm before she tries again. “You don’t want to board the ship, hit the second star to the right, and head straight on till morning?”
“Not only does the idea of a cruise in general sound unappealing, but the guest list really isn’t doing it for me.” I pause, the phantom ache from that empty place where Bohdan used to live making it hard to breathe, but I take a shaky inhale and keep talking before Tia can interrupt. “And it’s like you forget, I’m moving. It’s a lot to move from one apartment to another, let alone to an entirely new city in a different country. I can’t just call a moving company.”
“And what does our therapist think about this big move?”
I roll my eyes. “Lu isn’tourtherapist, she’s mine. And I’ll have you know that she thinks it’s a great idea.” She doesn’t, not really. It kind of goes against the basic tenets of Exposure and Response Prevention therapy, and it’s a bit more like avoidance for me to run away to a place Bohdan never touched.
Tia snorts, all laced with disbeliefs and the truths she knows about me and my brain. “Well, she’s always felt like my therapist. I’ve gained so many insights second hand. Lu is yourthird-longest relationship, you know. Are you going to keep doing video or ... ?”
“We’ve severed ties. She’s sent me on my way with a list of practitioners she knows in Toronto, and when I get settled, I’ll find someone.” I tip my chin up in a swallow, cross my arms, and ready for the inevitable.
“Does a break in therapy seem like the best idea?” Tia asks softly. I picture her lips twisting to the side, eyes clouding in concern.
I blink. Tipping my chin up further even though she can’t see it. “It’s only temporary. I’m perfectly capable of managing on my own for awhile. I’mfine.”
I hope the emphasis on the word that certainly doesn’t describe anything about me is enough to get her to drop it.
It is.
Tia changes tune, her voice rising again. “You know, I’d have made a bigger fuss about this move had your relocating to Toronto not brought you closer to me. Despite the short flight time between New York and Toronto, I can’t believe you’re leaving. You loved Seattle.”
Loved. The tense being operative and entirely telling of why it doesn’t bother me at all to leave.
I don’t tell Tia that, I try to deflect instead. “You forget I’m Canadian. It’s where I’m from. It’s where I grew up. It’s not shocking. It’s where I wanted to be before I was ... brought here.”
It doesn’t work. She gets right back to the heart of the matter anyway.
“Sloan. Don’t rewrite history.” I don’t have to see her to know she’s tugging a curl in exasperation, that she’s shaking her head slowly, something that looks like pity painted across her face. “Bohdan didn’t drag you by a leashed backpack to Seattle.”
I’ve stopped walking again, feet silent against the cobblestones. But I hear what those footsteps would tell me all the same.
No. You followed him, nothing but a little puppy. And in the end, it still wasn’t enough.
“What is love if not a leashed backpack?” I raise a hand, trying to be laissez-faire for once in my life.
“You’re my best friend. I love you. Is that a leashed backpack?”
Sometimes the wordsI love yousound a bit like someone dragging an axe along a whetstone, sharpening it, readying it to take another piece of me.
Bohdan didn’t take my ability to feel love when he left—even though I wish he did. It might have made things easier.
I love Tia. I love my parents. I love my grandparents. I love Talon and Jay, even though we don’t talk as much because they were his to begin with.
I still love him, even though I like to pretend I don’t.
He didn’t take any of that.
