If only I could figure out a way to recharge the latter.
She’d be showing now. She’d have a bump. And my niece or nephew would be growing inside of her. I had taken last night to deal with my pain. And today was for my joy. I was anxious to let it chase away the worst of everything, hence me risking precisely everything by walking in the doors.
I should’ve taken more care of my appearance. I hadn’t for the precise reason that in doing so I’d be tempting the universe into thinking I wanted to encounter Heath. Dressing up would be tempting fate.
So I had my hair in braids, messy because I’d slept in them after my bath. It was balmy in L.A., so I only wore a thin white tank, with strands of necklaces I’d collected on my travels slung around my neck.
My white skirt flowed down to my ankles where I’d put on heeled wedges that Rosie had obviously left and I thought were cute. My skin was a lot more tanned than usual since I’d spent as much time out in the sun as I could. Trying to warm my bones.
I’d lost weight because I had eaten barely anything since I’d booked my tickets to come home. Not because I wanted to lose weight or anything like that. I battled with Lucy all our lives with her obsession with food and weight. I ate what I wanted and didn’t let society’s notion of ‘beautiful’ dictate how I saw myself in the mirror.
It was my own actions that made it hard to stare at reflective surfaces lately.
I guessed I looked good.
Carefree.
Like the usual Polly.
Which was exactly what I was going for.
The cool, manufactured air of the reception hit me as I walked in, chasing at the beads of sweat that were forming in the middle of my chest. My body temperature tended to increase when I was nervous. Or when I was terrified.
I was both right now.
And I didn’t even get two steps inside the reception before I stopped dead.
I had told myself the chances of seeing him were low. Miniscule. He, like Lucy, was barely ever in the office. He’d disappeared entirely before and after my wedding, apart from the day of the drive-by shooting when he shattered my fractured heart and disappeared until I left him standing in my doorway a year ago.
It wasn’t a nine to five job, obviously. The offices were expensive and comfortable not because the employees spent a lot of time in here but because they needed to be welcoming to clients.
I wasn’t a client, I was family. I should’ve felt welcome. But his presence was a ghost in these halls, so I didn’t feel welcome whenever I came here, which was as little as possible.
And then the ghost turned tangible as the flesh and blood man strolled from the hallway into the reception. He was looking down at his phone so he didn’t see me until he was halfway across the foyer. Getting closer to me.
When he looked up, he stopped his steps abruptly.
His gaze told me a lot of things.
One thing was a roar among the rest.
I was definitely not welcome here.
“You’re back.”
The two words were harmless in any other context. The combination of them nothing that could be packaged or structured into something that would hurt.
And words could hurt.
Sticks and stones did break bones. But words broke souls.
I knew that better than anyone.
Because two seemingly innocuous harmless words did just that. Tore through the broken pieces jabbed at my insides for good measure.
It wasn’t about the words.
It was the voice that spoke them.
The man that spoke them.
The man whose face I’d forced myself not to think of for an entire year. So naturally, it was the face ingrained into my memory like I’d stitched it there, sewn it into the fabric of my mind.
And I didn’t recognize him.
Just like I didn’t recognize that flat, cold, empty and dead voice.
I couldn’t even say cruel.
Because cruelty required energy. Some sort of effort.
Nothing was there inside of that voice I pretended I didn’t hear in my dreams. In my nightmares.
His gaze flickered over me blankly. With disinterest.
Not hatred.
Or longing.
It should’ve been anger.
I’d prepared myself for that. Prepared myself for the inevitable meeting that we’d have because of our mutual connections. I hadn’t expected it to be so soon, but ripping the Band-Aid off was meant to be good, right? It was meant to make it hurt less. I’d known it would hurt, but I didn’t think much could hurt more than what I’d already done to myself.
I’d reasoned it would kill me if he looked at me in hatred.
Oh, how I longed for that now.
Because that flat and empty gaze ruined me.
Right there on the spot.
I had to stay standing. Because we were in the middle of my brother-in-law’s offices. There were people. People staring between the two of us like they might two bombs lingering near that fatal zero on the counter.