“Let’s play this out.” He places his elbows on the armrests and steeples his fingers beneath his chin. “If you believe her and she actually has matured, grown, and you go home, restart your life together, and it all works out, how would that feel?”
“I’d be the happiest motherfucker on the planet,” I admit with a wry smile.
“And if the two of you try again and it doesn’t work out?”
A sinkhole opens in my stomach, sucking down my smile.
“That’s the thing,” I say, gritting my teeth until my jaw aches. “I can’t imagine going through that again. Losing her again. If you’ve been run over by a bus, you don’t go stand in front of another one as soon as you can walk again.”
“So losing her again would be too devastating.”
I nod.
“And she’s not worth the risk,” he says calmly, like he doesn’t know how that would set me off.
“I didn’t say she’s not worth it. I just—”
“Don’t want to lose anything else?”
“It hurts too much.”
“We’ve never really talked much in detail about when your parents died, which was your first major loss. I know you were young, but could you tell me what you remember about that day?”
I’ve so rarely talked about this. I told him they both died in a car accident, but I’ve never unpacked thatday. Not with anyone. My fingers twitch on the armrests. Everything in me wants to squirm, wants to run, but I force myself into stillness and draw a deep breath.
“I got off the bus,” I start softly. “My mom was always home when I got there, but that day she wasn’t.”
The image crowds my mind, me sitting in the porch swing, rocking back and forth with a backpack at my feet. I was huddled into my coat, putting on gloves when it got colder and started getting dark.
“And then the cops came.” I draw a deep breath. “A police officer said there had been an accident and my parents weren’t coming home.”
I laugh shakily. “It’s amazing how vivid it is in my mind. Every time I’ve lost someone, it’s captured in Technicolor, and slowed down so every detail is engraved on me.”
“Go on,” Dr. Musa says. “This is good.”
“Then Byrd came and took me home with her.”
“You said before that you found your aunt when she passed away. Do you mind telling me a little about that?”
I clear my throat. “When I found Byrd, all the ingredients for her limoncello cake were on the table. The kitchen smelled like lemons.” I rasp out a brief laugh. “I’ve never told anyone that.”
“Not even Yasmen?”
I shake my head. I’ve never shared the losses, and I see now that was a mistake because it gave them even more power over me. I never told anyone that Byrd was wearing her favorite pair of earrings, and one had slipped halfway out. I carefully pushed it through the small hole in her ear. Never told anyone that Henry had my mouth. I held him, light as a ball of cotton, dark hair plastered to his little head, and I traced his lips. He hadmylips and I wanted to cry because I would never hearhimcry, but the tears wouldn’t come. And I can still smell the paint mingling with Yasmen’s perfume in the nursery when she told me to go. When she delivered the greatest loss of my life. When I lost her.
Our traumas, the things that injure us in this life, even over time, are not always behind us. Sometimes they linger in the smell of a newborn baby. They surprise us in the taste of a home-cooked meal. They wait in the room at the end of the hall. They are with us. They are present. And there are some days when memories feel more real than those who remain, than the joys of this world.
“Live long enough,” Dr. Musa says softly, “and you’ll lose people, things. We just need to learn how to deal with it in ways that aren’t isolating or destructive. You have to decide if beingafraidof losing Yasmen again is worth neverhavingher again.”
Since that night, I haven’t allowed myself to trust her. I thought she razed my life, but now I know she did what she did to save her own. Now I know I played a part. Now I understand that everything I saw in black and white was shaded, nuanced in ways I wasn’t in touch with my own pain enough to grasp. Now my feelings rise, unwilling to be denied.
Do people remember the exact moment they fall in love?
I’ve learned it’s not one moment, but a million of them.
I fell in love with Yasmen dreaming of our bright future over cheap Chinese food in a raggedy-ass apartment with no heat and shitty water pressure.
I fell in love with Yasmen a little more, a little deeper, every time she took me into her body, showed me how passion burns your tongue when you taste it.