Page 46 of All The Ways to Miss You

Through the door, I study the ease with which she moves around his kitchen. At the refrigerator, she removes a Chinese food takeout box, opens the top, and sniffs the contents. She blanches, sticking out her tongue before tossing it in the trash and moving to the next item.

My face drains of blood. My core temperature drops and my heart plunges into my gut. A thin layer of sweat forms over my forehead and palms. The toolbox handle begins to slide from my grip. The response is automatic to my disappointment, and it doesn’t help watching the woman eat his cold spaghetti from a Tupperware container and drink directly from his milk carton.

He’s lying. Mr. Gusterson’s words resonate in my mind. Is this what Evan’s lying about? That he’s had a girlfriend all along? He said he didn’t want one, or maybe he insinuated it? I can’t remember the exact wording now.

Whatever the scenario, I’m certain this girl is much more than a friend. Is she like me? Friends with benefits? Maybe this is the girl. I step away, toolbox in hand.

“You okay?” Evan looks concerned.

“Fine,” I say, biting off the word.

If there were something happening between us, I’d say it’s over now. To distract my own mind and all the distressing scenarios it’s playing with, I mumble, “I wanted to come down and thank you for having the shower fixed.”

Flustered, I set the toolbox down in the middle of the hall, too far from his feet. “Just—thanks.”

As normally as possible, I withdraw, but it’s times like these I forget what normal is. My movements are jerky and rigid, like a puppet on a marionette’s string. The weight of his attention follows me until I’m out of his line of sight.

I need to talk to Mr. Gusterson. Right now.

twenty

Mr. Gusterson doesn’t answer his door, and I suspect why. He’s passed out cold.

I conclude it doesn’t matter who the woman with Evan is because this is the last time I’ll remind myself of what is true. Evan and I were together one night; nothing else was ever promised. No explanations about our lives needed. In fact, if anything, the single promise made was to be nothing more.

This is your fault. You pursued him. He warned you.

The blame is all mine. I threw myself at him. It doesn’t help that Mr. Gusterson fanned the flames of doubt, leaving me confused. And it didn’t help to see Evan with another woman—a beautiful one.

I’ll give myself one more night to forget this dumb crush, even though I’m well beyond the acceptable moving-on period of Aggie’s rules.

I head for the freezer. After I find what I need, I plant myself on the kitchen counter with a container of chocolate-peanut-butter ice cream and peel off the top. I toss it aside and dig my spoon into the container wedged between my thighs. One hundred bites and two frozen legs later, I scrape the last bit of melted chocolate from the corner.

With the spoon hanging from my mouth, I stare off into space. In my mind’s eye, I see Evan’s dimpled grin, the aggravating way he teases me, and the way he touched me like I was the only woman in the world. When the amazing sex crosses my mind, I shake the images off and hop down in search of something else to eat.

In the back of the pantry, I find an off-limits Costco-size bag of double-chocolate Milano cookies Aggie keeps hidden here for emergency binges. I reach for them and pull them out. Staring at her name scrawled across the front in big block letters, I consider the consequences for eating them. Not good. But I’m desperate, and I promise myself I’ll replace them before she returns. I rip open the bag.

With cookie crumbs covering my shirt, I accept too late that I should have gone for a run or joined Aggie and Lou. If I had, I would have avoided Mr. Gusterson, Evan and his lady friend, and the oncoming sugar coma.

Groaning and rubbing my aching stomach, I drag myself down the hall. I flop into bed, nestle my head into my feather pillow, and close my eyes, searching for peace. After several hours of overthinking, my brain shuts down. This is a miracle in itself.

In a dream, I find a photomontage of torn images. A curious look from a stranger, the belly laugh of a baby with two small front teeth, a pair of well-loved red-white-and-blue roller skates, then a pair of reddened and scraped knees. And later, a painful broken arm, requiring surgery to reset the bone.

In the morning, my eyes snap open wide after I see a little girl with dark hair break her arm.

I replay the dream, trying to make sense of it. She wore the red-white-and-blue roller skates while gripping the back of a bike ridden by a friend. As she was hauled along, the friend rode too close to the curb. The dark-haired girl hollered right before she lost her grip on the bike and hit a mailbox, slamming her arm into the wood post.

Recalling the sickening crack of the bone and the searing pain, I flinch and sit up. I circle my fingers around my own wrist, searching for any trace of the injury. When I lift my arm to my face, I find the faintest scar etched in my skin. With all the other scars on my body, no one would ever notice this one. The outline is a silvery box drawn over my wrist bone. Is this a surgery scar? I can’t be sure, but I believe I am the girl on roller skates.

Could I be conjuring these images as a way to heal my mind and give myself some sense of a past? Or did those things actually happen? If they’re from before, I should be happy the memories are trickling in this way, but it doesn’t quiet my frustration to remember more.

Yes, I could call and ask my parents, but it would fuel their hope I might return home, and I have no intention of doing that. At least in Chicago, I can work through the thoughts without anyone pressuring me. I can absorb the information at my own pace, in my own time, and in the privacy of my own apartment without anyone acting as judge or jury.

My phone buzzes. I reach for it and swipe the screen to read a new text.

Ozzy

Let’s talk price. Hypothetically.