Page 85 of 32 Days in May

“Not if I could help it,” I say. Then I add, in a pathetic, small voice, “I really like the version of myself I get to be with you.”

He recoils, an unstoppable, biological response to me, physically turning himself toward the door where he now has a white-knuckled grip on the handle. Go, I think. Go now and finish us off.

Eventually, in a voice barely more than a whisper, he says: “Will you be okay if I leave?”

I reply, “I don’t think I have a choice.”

Wednesday, May 24

I wake up on the couch, the movie still paused on Keanu standing alone in the park. I always stop right before he takes off the blindfold and realizes he’s alone. I rewind to the beginning.

Up until yesterday, I thought I was Charlize. I thought I would get the luxury and privilege of leaving Marco. It felt like something I deserved—the right to walk away unscathed—after everything else I’d gone through. But instead, I’m here—sick and hurting and confused.

And Marco is somewhere else—on a plane, in Los Angeles—living his life.

How could I have been so dumb? Of course it was always going to end this way.

My phone is quiet except for an occasional ding. Allie keeps sending me videos. She doesn’t know what happened. I’m too embarrassed to tell her, to gently request that she leave me alone.

I reach for the notepad on the floor, next to the trash can I’ve had to keep close by.

things i never knew before lupus:

I add one more:

you might feel like a Charlize but you are actually a Keanu—advertising asshole who gets laid and thinks he deserves the entire fucking world.

Thursday, May 25

Alone in the quiet of a life and a house that no longer feel like mine, I play Liv’s voicemail one more time while every cell in my body throbs and aches.

She doesn’t sound desperate, just tired and very, very sad. It doesn’t matter what she said to me, why we fought. Her voice comforts me. I can almost smell her vanilla perfume, her spearmint gum, her essential Liv-ness. I can almost feel her head resting on my shoulder, the closest we get to hugging.

Liv has always been vicious and dramatic. And I would always meet her in the afterglow with a joke, a shrug, a peace offering.

I wasn’t supposed to walk away. Maybe I’m a runner, but not from Liv. Never from Liv. Even if she deserves it.

I have to drive to Philly.

I have to talk to Liv in person, and we have to make up. Too much time has passed already, the damage of which I can’t even begin to quantify. It makes my pulse race and my throat feel like it’s closing up.

I drag myself back into the bedroom to get dressed even though my head feels magnetically drawn to the center of the Earth and my hands are too stiff to button my jeans.

I need my sister.

She’s the only person who can help me through this, help me untangle this mess I’ve made and maybe find a way I can save myself from this situation. I don’t want to sink back down into the deepest, darkest place I’ve ever been—but right now, it doesn’t feel like I have any control.

The ride from Evergreen to Philly is treacherous, and while sitting in traffic on the Walt Whitman Bridge, I dry heave into an old coffee cup, feeling like someone has lodged an ice pick through my left eye. Nothing comes up. The morning light reflecting off the cars around me is so blinding I spend the last mile driving with partially closed eyes. My throat is as raw and ragged as my dignity when I pull down the narrow side street where Mike and Liv live.

I forgo parking altogether and leave my car running in the middle of the street with the hazard lights on. Each step I take feels like a headfirst collision between a broken, exposed bone and the sidewalk. I’m somehow both sweating and freezing cold. Maybe Liv’s sixth sense kicks in—but more likely she can hear my labored breathing when I finally make it halfway up her porch steps.

The front door swings open and she appears, still in her pajamas, frizzy-haired and wide-eyed.

“Nadia, what the hell?”

“Liv,” I pant. “I’m sorry.”

“You look . . .” She blinks twice, hard.