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Chapter Forty
Nala
I go home.
I don’t remember leaving my apartment, or getting into my Jeep. I don’t remember the drive over, but I’m here now, sitting in the driver’s side, staring at my mother’s clapboard bungalow that has wildflowers growing everywhere in a beautiful kind of chaos, only a small path visible to the front door through all of the blooms.
It’s Friday, which means she’s working, probably filling orders before she packs it all up and heads to the market or some fair this weekend. I should get out, let her know I’m here, that I just…needed to be here, in this safe place, where even with the tears, I have nothing but good memories. But I don’t get out, can’t seem to make my limbs work and listen to my brain. Can’t really seem to think, only feel, and what I feel nowhurts.
The front door opens, and Mom’s slight frame fills it. One look, and she heads my way, opening my door and unclicking my seatbelt like I’m a small child instead of an adult.
“I’m here, my love. I’m here.” She doesn’t say anything else, and maybe that’s what it is, or maybe it’s the knowledge finally settling in that I left Malcolm, but tears pool in my eyes and fall silently down my cheeks, blurring my vision and making me hold tighter to her when I step down. “Oh, Nalani, baby, what hurts?”
“Ev-ev-everything,” I stutter out. Then we sink to the ground, arms around each other, my head on her shoulder while she croons to me and I weep. I weep and weep and weep among the flowers in my mother’s walkway, and she holds me tightly, keeping those fragile pieces from shattering to the point of no repair.
+ + +
Mom settles me at the kitchen table with its multicolored chairs, wrapping a knit throw around me before she goes to the ancient stove and begins water for tea. We’re silent while the kettle comes to a boil, but it’s a comfortable silence. One of the many things I love about my mother is her ability to wait.
She doesn’t push, doesn’t ask, she just waits. Which is probably why, in this moment when my heart feels like it’s been pulled from my chest and left a gaping void, I tell her everything. I start at the beginning when she sits down, sipping from the cup that smells faintly of mud and flowers. Even that brings me comfort, as it’s the same tea she brought me whenever I was hurt or sick or sad growing up.
Sipping my tea, I tell my mother about my love for Malcolm Brady the boy, and how my heart seemed to beat only for him. I tell her about our secret beach meetings, and how he would send random texts when he was traveling and I was still here. And then I tell her about all of the bad decisions I made trying to prove my adulthood, drinking and partying and hooking up with boys so I could prove to the one boy I wanted that I wasn’t a child.
Finally, I tell her about the night I confessed my love, and his harsh rejection, and the night not long after that when everything about me was stripped down until I was one thing: a victim. I tell her how I faced that man the other day, how I stood up and did my best to be strong, and in some way, I owe Malcolm for that…and it makes me angry. That’s where today’s story starts, the story I tell her to explain why I walked away, why, when the love of my life was on his knees, begging me to love him enough, I couldn’t.
“It’s not about love, Nalani, but trust. Do you trust Malcolm to love you, to cherish your feelings, the way you love and cherish his? To wait for you to be ready for something before he does it?”
This is the first thing she’s said. Her eyes are damp, and her throat is raw, but she doesn’t shed her tears, doesn’t make me go back and relive the parts I survived. It’s as if my mother, another woman, instinctively understands what maybe a man can’t: we don’t need someone to save us, not because we don’t want them to, but because we understand that asking them to save us is putting a pressure on them that is unbearable. No, we don’t need to be saved from the world, we just need to be loved.
We just need to be trusted.
We just need to know at the end of the day, we’re all he sees, like he’s all we see, all we need, all we want.
Malcolm…his passion for vengeance is so great, so ingrained, that sometimes, he forgets the people around him because his quest becomes singular. I can’t be an afterthought, no matter how much I love him.
“I don’t know,” I answer honestly. Sipping my beautiful, rose-colored muddy tea, I blink tears from my eyes, annoyed with them. “I know he wants to cherish me—and I know he does in his own way. But…” I swallow, because this part is hard. “But he never asks. He never listens; he never tells me what he’s feeling or why. He tells me he loves me, that he can’t live without me. But…he doesn’t share himself, not all the way, and then he goes and brings my demons, my ghosts, out of the crypt and throws them in my face and I can’t live like that.”
The slamming of a car door has both of us looking up. When Jordan’s willowy frame appears on the other side of the screen door, my mom stands to let her in.
“Nala,” she says, settling down on the chair next to me, her hand reaching for mine. “I was with Brooklyn and Mal called him.” Her fingers tighten on mine. “What happened, friend?”
In true Jordan form, she doesn’t ask if I’m okay. She a mathematician, a scientist. One look and she knows how I am. “I told him to go,” I say. She doesn’t blink, doesn’t look shocked, and I feel better. “I don’t know if it’s the right thing, because it hurts, but I told him that night, Jordan, and he didn’t listen. He said he would kill him, and I looked right at him and told him I didn’t want him to think of Ezra, of him, I wanted him to think ofme. That’s what he could give me: love me no matter what.”
I shake my head, heart aching, throat constricted. “But Malcolm doesn’t hear stuff like that, and he did what he always does—which was what he wanted, and just like last time, it ended up hurting me.” I swipe at tears that fall without permission, hating that they are there again, so soon. “I’m okay,” I tell her, but my voice cracks, giving me away, and I turn my face into her shoulder and cry while she pets my hair. “I want to be okay,” I hiccup, and she nods.
“You will be.”
I wait for her to tell me that he didn’t do it to hurt me, to remind me that he loves me, and ask if there’s a chance I can forgive him. But she doesn’t. Instead, my beautiful friend graciously accepts tea from my mother, not even batting an eyelash at its taste when she sips, though we both know she’s far more used to tea time at the Four Seasons than homemade kitchen tea. When mom stands and announces that this is the perfect time for cake, Jordan gets that light in her eyes that only comes from carbohydrates.
“You know I learned to cook from my mom, right?” I tell her. “And my mom’s a vegan, so you are almost guaranteed to be eating cake that tastes worse than this tea and has a texture akin to wet sand.”
Jordan eyes the tea, and then she shrugs and sips, reaching over and linking our fingers. “I still think tea and cake with my best friend and her mom sounds like the perfect thing right now.”
I stare at our hands, and remember her words…because it’s been a long time since I had a best friend, and right now, as hurt as I am, I know that Jordan won’t let me break, not like I did before.
“I love you, Jordan.” My words are quiet, but she hears them because her lips curve and her own eyes get wet.
“I love you, too, Nala.” She squeezes my hand. “Whatever you need—I’m here.”
And then I lay my head down on the counter and let the sobs come again.
