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Hannah kept her eyes downcast and gave what I thought was a shaky nod.
“You’ll come back,” she said, repeating it to her pancakes like they could make it come true.
I dug into my food then, suddenly insatiably hungry. The food hit my empty stomach and started filling a gap that had grown there. I figured I should eat while I could—it was likely that I was going to spend a lot of months hungry from here on out.
Hannah left me.
She hailed me a cab and then stuffed me in it without following, claiming that she had somewhere to be. I felt a little abandoned, but trusted that I’d see her again before I left. The taxi took me to my apartment block, and I wandered up, memorizing the ratty hallways and the feel of my broken door under my hands. I told myself that I was doing the best I could in my situation, but somehow, I still felt like I was failing. I paced the room, letting my fingers catch on the memories that floated there like spiders’ webs. Most of them weren’t even based in this apartment, and I told myself I was being ridiculous, but I couldn’t help it. I loved New York, the bright lights that would welcome me at any hour of the day or night, the locals in the shops that learned your coffee order just because they saw you every day. I loved the people and the noise, the university, and I loved, above all, Julian.
This realization had my heart pounding, and made me stop my pacing. I loved him. This whole time, I had thought I was playing around with a schoolgirl crush, when what I was feeling was simply love so intense, there was no way that I, a girl who had rarely been loved, could recognize it. Now that I knew the name of the feeling swirling through my body though, I had to let him know. I pulled my phone out with an urgency I had never felt and typed in the number I had memorized from the battered business card I carried. I deliberated over it, my heart pounding, eyes wide, adrenaline coursing through my body.
I couldn’t do it.
Not like that. I wasn’t going to let the greatest profession of my life happen over the phone, so I stuffed it in my pocket after glaring at the time. I didn’t have long. I glanced at the bag of books. I could leave them here and have them thrown out for sure, or take them to the Goodwill and have them politely tell me to throw them out. Between that and never telling Julian how I truly felt, the choice was easy. I grabbed my suitcase, and flew out the door, not making any time for a long goodbye with my apartment.
I arrived at the subway station at the same time the train did, and I flew down the stairs and onto the train without slowing down, almost colliding with a man wearing a suit.
“Be careful,” he grumbled, steadying me with large hands.
“Sorry!” I said, giddy.
I was anxious the whole way to the Upper East Side, and the moment the doors were open, I was moving again. I felt like I was gliding. I couldn’t feel the weight of my suitcase as it flapped behind me or the contact my feet made with the steps as I took them two at a time. I raced down streets and alleyways before I was stood in front of the house on East 76th, panting out of breath and my courage suddenly waning.
He was in there somewhere. The man I was sure I loved, the man that I couldn’t leave without telling him exactly how I felt. I wanted to do something romantic like throw rocks at a window or hold up a boombox. More than that though, I wanted to run into his arms and feel him hold me. I wanted to kiss him with the little breath I had left in my lungs, and then kiss him again. I thought I saw his shadow move from an upstairs window, the one that I believed was in his personal living room, but I wasn’t sure. I walked forward, taking in every step I could, dragging my suitcase with me. No one opened the door, but I was grateful for this. It meant that I could take my time, pushing in the way I had so many times before. I entered the foyer and hadn’t even taken my shoes off before the silence was interrupted by the sound of someone’s soles clicking smartly against the spiral staircase.
“Evelyn,” Julian said, rounding the corner.
His eyes were intense like he longed for me to say something, and oh my God, I wanted to speak. I wanted it all to fall out of my mouth and make things simple and easy, but there was still Hannah, and I needed to be at the airport in less than an hour. This same foyer had been the place I’d learned who he was, and how difficult my life would become with him in it, so close, yet so far. Now it was the place where I was going to either fix it all or let my life implode.
“Julian,” I said, surging forward, “You need to know that I l-”
There was the sound of more feet entering the room, and then my best friend was there, looking at me with delight in her eyes.
I stopped dead, almost falling forward with how automatically my feet stuck to the floor. Julian took a step back from me and cleared his throat. Thankfully, Hannah seemed oblivious to what had almost just happened, because she was staring at me, a piece of paper in her hands.
“You don’t have to move away!” she crowed.
Chapter Nine
Julian
Ihad meant to spend the day working.
Hannah hadn’t come home the night before, and while I was worried, I knew she was probably just at Evelyn’s. Neither of us had heard from Evelyn, and frankly, I was concerned. Of course, I hadn’t told anyone that. It wasn’t my business if she was okay, I told myself. It didn’t mean I slept well, and it didn’t mean I wasn’t happy when I woke up to a text from my daughter that began with the line‘Ev is okay’.The rest was a little more concerning.
Ev is okay, kind of. Is going back to Oregon??? Will explain when home—be home soon.
I paced while waiting for my daughter, only for her to come back and tell me some of the most devastating news I’d heard in a long while.
Evelyn was leaving, and not just temporarily. I became unreasonably angry at the hurricane. At a force of nature that could no more control its path than I could control my feelings for my daughter’s best friend. I couldn’t let her just leave. She needed to know, if nothing else, that it hadn’t all been in her head, and that I felt something for her too. Not an inconsiderable amount of something either. There had been a handful of times that I had gotten so close to telling her what I felt, and fallen short. I was a coward. I was scared of my daughter, scared of society. I was scared of losing everything I’d carefully built, and more than that, I was scared of feeling the kind of heartbreak again that had closed me off from the one person I should have poured all my warmth and affection into when she was growing up.
“Well, she’ll stay with us,” I declared, and Hannah rolled her eyes.
We were in my home office, and I had put away my work to discuss the much more pressing matter of Evelyn leaving.
“I already asked her, Dad, she refused. You know how she is about money and what she sees as charity.”
I wanted to roll my eyes like my daughter had, because only a woman as stubborn as Evelyn Stearns would refuse that offer when her only other option was to return to whatever hellscape she’d already escaped from once. I didn’t know the gory details about her life before NYU, but I could assume that it wasn’t pretty. I recalled the panic written across her face when the storm had surged, and the pain in my chest at not being able to hold her, to comfort her. Whoever had raised her had not taken due care, and left her scarred. I didn’t care about the scars, but I wanted to hurt the person who made them. I certainly didn’t want her returning for more.
