“I hope you weren’t hoping that I’d forget about you two because I’m with someone else. Was it happening when I was with him?”
“No!” she said quickly shaking her head. “No, but…it wasn’t really that long—”
“Then we’re fine.” I sat up and leaned back in my chair. “As long you weren’t actively lying to my face, we’re fine. But I’m not sure how I feel about you just taking off after my grandfather’s funeral. I thought we were friends.”
She hung her head and her auburn brown curls spilled over her shoulders. “We are! I’m sorry! I should have been there for you…I just…I don’t know, I just got scared. You were now my boss, and with my mom, and Howard, everything was happening so fast I bolted.”
I understood that. I was actually jealous. I wanted to run away too. I wanted to run back to Montana right before my grandfather passed away. Back to when everything felt so simple.
“My mom is so angry with me,” she began to sniffle. Grabbing the tissue box from my bottom drawer I walked around my desk and sat beside her. “Why do I feel like I’m failing at everything? Howard and I aren’t…we were just messing around and now we have a kid. But we don’t love each other. And I told him he was to be involved, and he should be involved, but it feels so forced. Like I have no control over my life at all. Everything always goes…just not how I want.”
I also understood that feeling so I hugged her…especially now. “You aren’t failing at everything, Li-Mei. You’re going to be okay. You have me, and not to brag I’m actually a pretty cool friend to have. So come on, I can’t have you ruining your makeup. It’s fabulous as always,” I told her brushing her hair from her face.
She sniffled and looked to me with her dark eyes. “It is nice, isn’t it?”
I laughed and nodded. “Yes, it is, and there are cameras outside. Do you really want to ruin it?”
She laughed with me. We were both being silly but at least we were laughing. She hugged me awkwardly.
DUN-DUN-DUN-DUNNNN!
“Jesus Christ!” She jumped away from me and stared at my phone as it vibrated and played Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 in C minor.
“My mother,” I told her as I reached over to silence the call. “I wanted to block her but I figured she’d call Adith or come here making a scene again.”
“Yeah, I heard about that. Is everything okay?”
“With me? Yes. With her? I have no idea,” I replied. I never knew what was going on with her. Was it my job to know? At what point did you have to cut your own mother off? She’d never been there for me. I’d gone from never seeing or hearing from her, to hearing from her every day now. The never ending onslaught of pain she inflicted left me exhausted. And yet a small part of me—the child in me—was happy because she could never deny me now. I was her child and we were family. She needed me. She couldn’t run from me anymore. It was wrong. We were both holding each other hostage and it was going to end badly, how could it not? Both of us could not go on like this but what was the solution? I had no idea. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever have an idea.
“Esther? Esther?”
“Huh?” I looked to her only to find her staring directly in my face. “Sorry, what were you saying?”
“Nothing, but it looked like you were going to another world there for a minute.”
If she only knew.
Knock. Knock.
“Come in.”
Howard stepped inside but froze as his hazel eyes shifted between the both of us. I could tell he was unsure of how to act but Li-Mei stood up and said, “She knows, don’t be awkward.”
Howard looked to me and I smiled and nodded, which made him relax a little. I appreciated that he was awkward instead of pretending as if nothing was amiss here. It meant I was right to care and see the overarching good in them. Neither of them had betrayed me and yet they were still concerned about hurting my feelings.
“Did you need something?” I asked him.
“Oh right,” he shook his head then nodded it back behind him. “He’s done.”
“What? Already?” I got up and marched towards the door.
He stood in the center of seating area taking pictures with a forced half-assed smile on his face. He looked exhausted for someone who hadn’t even spent fifteen minutes talking.
He was as handsome as always, though even more so because I’d gotten to dress him. When we were in Montana he’d pretty much stuck with dark jeans, his V-neck shirts, his favorite leather jacket, and boots whenever he’d gone out. When inside, he rarely wore a shirt—not that I was complaining. I think I actually enjoyed his old style too much, that’s why I’d chosen clothes that were the opposite of what I had gotten accustomed to seeing him in. I had traded his leather jacket for a gray blazer, his V-neck for a blue button down, and his jeans for tailored pants, making him look as if he just walked off a GQ cover shoot, while happening to match me perfectly…perfect except for the fact that this wasn’t really us. This was the work us. The causal side of us was reserved for each other…and Lieber Falls.
He looked up from shaking Rita’s hand and our eyes met. And just like that, everything I’d come out to say to him fled my mind. The corner of his lip turned up and as if he was oblivious to those around him—those who were rushing to pull out their books for him to sign, and those who openly gawked at him—he walked past them all to get to me. Time seemed to slow, and every step he took changed the world around us.
One step, he was in the middle of the publishing house, walking to me as I stood beside my office door. The next, his black hair grew long, his dark eyes became slanted, and he stood clad in black just outside the Palace of Heavenly Purity. And I, the Palace of Earthly Tranquility. He held a sword in his hand, and I held a sword in mine.