This is the place where I took a life.
Well, one of them. I’m responsible for Dom’s loss of life too.
I’m nauseous again, but luckily, I’ve already emptied my stomach and have nothing left to vomit. The platform is teeming with people. The electronic sign above my head tells me the next train arrives in two minutes.
I take out my phone, angle it up from my chest area to catch both my face and the Montgomery Street sign behind me, and snap a picture for Joe. I’m as pale as a ghost and look physically unwell. Not exactly how I’d like Joe to see me, but at least he won’t be able to smell the puke stench coming from my mouth.
I peer into the rails. They look so normal. So unassuming. Just a bunch of hot-rolled steel. There are no bloodstains, no human remains, no big SOMEONE DIED HERE sign. My tragedy has been dutifully erased. It only lives in my head now. The shriek of the approaching train pierces my ears. I hug the column, closing my eyes. The memory slams into me all at once, with forceful momentum. It is the first time I allow myself to fully remember. To go back and relive that scene.
Darling, take my hand. Take it.
I can’t, Mom. It hurts. My ankle hurts so bad.
Please. Let me help you. I can hear the train coming.
Then being hurled back to safety. Flung across the platform. Just to look around me and notice she wasn’t there.
I’m sobbing by the time the train arrives. My shoulders shake and my knees are bent. People are looking. The train stops in front of me. The doors slide open. I can’t do this. I can’t get inside. I turn around, toward the stairs, toward the world above. I’m going home. I can’t do this.
“Ever.” I hear a voice.
I look up, wiping my tears.
And there, in front of me, on the train in front of me, stands Joe. With his worn-out Levi’s. With tousled dark curls that frame my favorite face in the entire world. With a cigarette tucked behind one ear. Beautiful and handsome and alive. He offers me his hand.
“What are you doing h-here?” I stammer.
“You won’t find out unless you get on this train right about, let’s see . . .” He twists his wrist to check an invisible watch. “Now.”
I jump on the train a second before the doors slide shut. I fall into his open arms. He holds me up and tucks me under his armpit, like a protective older brother. He gazes down at me. “Hello, stranger.”
“You came here to watch me get on a BART?”
He rolls his eyes. “Don’t act like there’s anything good on TV these days. It’s not that big a deal.”
“You do have a point.” I decide to downplay the whole thing, to spare him any embarrassment.
I curl my fingers over his shirt, holding on to him. The train starts moving. We’re safe inside it. I don’t think about what happened last time I was here, and that is huge.
“I figured I can finish the book in a week if I lock myself up in a hotel room and write all day. I took some time off work.”
“Actual time off work?” I arch an eyebrow. “Holy moly, but I thought writing is not a real grown-up thing people do?”
He bites down a grin, hitching a shoulder up. “Call me Peter Pan.”
“You should be in the hotel, working.” I keep talking to distract myself from the fact I am on a train right now. And it’s moving fast, approaching another station, where someone could be under the tracks. I’m hyperaware of each breath coming in and out of my body.
“Because I need new experiences to write about, and as far as this one goes, it’s a pretty damn memorable one.”
I take a deep breath. “My breath might smell of vomit.”
“Sweetheart.” He tucks a lock of my hair behind my ear. “Nothing smells as bad as you did the night we went to the junkyard.”
I swat his chest and laugh. He kisses the top of my （clean and shampooed） head. “Missed you, kiddo.”
Missed me as what? A friend? A muse? A future sister-in-law? The love of his life? I have no idea where I stand with him, and I don’t want to disrupt the fragile peace we have.
I bury my face in his chest. Inhale his scent. God, I missed him. He smells exactly like he did all those years ago. Ocean spray, male, and darkness. The undercurrent of sweetness. The boy I love.
“I can show you around,” I murmur into his shirt. “You know . . . for research.”
“All right.” He gives me a slow, teasing smile full of promise. “For research.”
TWENTY-SIX
It takes me a few minutes to gather myself and think about where I want to take Joe. I decide against the wharf. Joe works at the docks. The sight of an ocean, no matter how broad and blue, is anyone else’s equivalent of a laptop screen or a calendar. It’s his job. I would take him to a museum or the Golden Gate Bridge, but not only has he already been to the tourist attractions, but it is also about the way he and I do things. We always take the path less traveled.