Page 54 of Where You Are
We have an occasional beer on his boat, we go out to eat, and we bring each other coffee. We even hang out with Sasha and he’s not a total asshole.
I’ve stayed busy and active, and having two good friends to talk to about anything and everything keeps me steadily moving forward.
I’m healing. I’m still not whole, but I’m healing. I’m better than I was.
The improvement has made me feel like calling Sarah. I send emails to her and my dad here and there, but it’s been a while since I’ve heard her voice, mostly because it just reminds me I’m not where I should be, and bringing on more small storms that set me back.
After buying a good chunk of minutes for my burner phone, I dial her number.
“Melanie?” her voice is breathless with a tone of desperation when she picks up, and I’m immediately concerned.
“Yeah, it’s me. Are you okay?”
“Oh my God, Melanie,” her voice hitches and she breaks down in hysterics.
I can feel my heart pounding in my throat, and I scramble to talk to her and get her to tell me what’s going on.
“Sarah! What’s wrong? Are you okay? What happened?”
“Melanie, I’m pregnant.”
Oh my God.
* * *
Sarah’s five months pregnant with twins.
I’m happy for her. Really, I am, but I’m also devastated. Devastated that I’m missing it. Devastated that I can’t do it too. And once again, I wonder if maybe I can get away with going back. My sister is pregnant for God’s sake. In fact, half her pregnancy is already behind her and I’ve missed out on it. I’m going to be an aunt without actually being an aunt to a little niece and nephew. Not to mention I’ve put my own dreams to do the same thing on hold.Although not by choice.Maybe Anthony’s forgotten about watching me by now. I’ve been gone a year after all.
No. Even if I’m not on his immediate radar, he’ll check in on me eventually. When I went home before, he knew exactly how long I was gone and when I had come back. And he spent the time I was back digging up what he needed to hurt the people in my world. And he still has it.
So far as I can tell, he’s held up his end of the deal. He hasn’t done anything that he threatened. So long as I keep up my end, which is to stay gone.
Sarah didn’t pull out any stops in our conversation either. She let me have it; how much it hurts her that I came home so briefly and left again, how hard it is on her not getting to have me there during this special time for her and Mike.
In the last email I sent her, I tried to evasively explain that I was in a good place, both literally and figuratively; that I was living a good life and I wasn’t in a good place to leave yet. Talking to her this afternoon, she made her frustration with the concept abundantly clear. She hurled it all at me and I took it, letting every hit land, letting it make me miserable because it should.
And then she brought out the big guns in a way I didn’t expect…
“I can’t help but wonder if this has something to do with Matt,”she’d said.
I swear, my heart dropped through my body and crashed through the floor, like an elevator in a skyscraper that had its cables cut.
“What are you talking about?”I asked her in a low, trembling voice.
She proceeded to tell me how Matt had come looking for me right after I left, and just as I was about to plead with her not to tell me anymore, the line started cutting in and out and the call disconnected.
Now, I sit here in my room, my heart heavy and my head spinning. I feel completely drained. I’ve come to realize in my time away that as long as things are not as they should be, these back-slides are not going to stop. I’m always going to have them, and so I’ve learned to cope better when they happen, and my foundation is far stronger than it was in the beginning.
I need to move.
I’m just putting my hair up after pulling on sneakers to go for a walk when there’s a tap at the glass slider. I open it to reveal Ben, holding up a six-pack of beer.
“Hey loser, wanna-?” He cuts himself off when he looks at my face. His expression sobers and he shakes his head, setting the beer down on the table. “Let’s go,” he holds his hand out for me to take and I oblige as we walk out the slider and into the night air.
As we walk, his hand is warm wrapped around mine, and it’s like it’s infusing a soothing balm on my spirit that is only slowly and meagerly trying to revive itself. We don’t talk for a while which is our norm when one of us is off. After all the months of this weird friendship, we still avoid talking about anything deep. Instead, we simply recognize that both of us have our baggage and let that be our solidarity, allowing us to coexist.
We finally find a place to stop and just take in the water flowing up to the sand. I can feel something developing, and on one hand it feels good and like it should happen, but on the other, something feels off; like I’m just not ready.