Page 99 of All The Ways to Miss You

She clears her throat. How much time has passed? Have I zoned for too long, all the while staring at her like a creep?

“Seriously, you don’t have to help. This has to be the last thing you want to do on a Friday morning. I’ll be fine,” Cait says.

“You’re carrying that mattress upstairs by yourself?” I point to the queen-size set standing inside the truck.

“I’ll use the elevator.” She shrugs.

I laugh. “You haven’t seen the apartment, have you?”

“No, well, photos. But that’s it,” she admits. “Everything happened so fast.”

“Unfortunately for both of us, there’s no elevator.”

“Oh.”

“And you’re on the sixth floor.”

“I see.” Her voice deflates further.

“So you kind of need me and these monster muscles.” I flex my biceps, expecting her to laugh the way she used to, but she appears too deep in thought to notice I’m joking with her. My arms relax and my smile fades.

She snaps out of it and proposes a new plan. “Maybe if you help with that one thing, I can get everything else?”

This part of her remains the same. Never wanting to put anyone out, and always prepared to do everything herself. She was always independent to a fault.

“Listen, I’m already here. Let’s just get it over with.” I stack three boxes, nudge them to the edge of the bed of the truck, lift them, and head inside before she can protest. “You can repay me by buying me deep dish.”

I turn at the top of the stoop, waiting for her reaction, but it never comes. She’s zoning out again.

“What’s that?” she asks.

“Pizza.” And it used to be our favorite after-hours meal. Something she wouldn’t remember. I haven’t even touched it since she left. I don’t know why I thought she’d remember this when she remembers nothing else.

“Yeah, sure,” she says with little emotion.

This is how the day progresses. With me doing anything to make her smile. A lost cause, it seems. If she does, it’s the wrong smile. What I learn is Cait isn’t the same person, so I shift gears to stop torturing myself.

“So, why Chicago?” I settle a box on the counter in the kitchen.

“Why do you live here?”

“Family. Friends. It’s my home. I like it. I have my reasons, I guess.”

“I like it too.”

“You’ve been here for three hours.”

“I have my reasons. No friends, no family, it’s someplace other than home,” she shoots back.

She’s not only happy about this prospect, but she’s running away from everything and everyone in her life. Again.

“You don’t know anyone here?” I ask as we make our way back down the stairs for the final load.

“No one. It’s a fresh start. A reboot. That’s what I was looking for.”

“Kind of crazy to move here from Maryland and not know anyone.”

“How did you know I lived in Maryland?” She stops.