“I’m so, so sorry, Corey. I should have called you and told you. I should have trusted you. You deserved better than that. Our relationship deserved more than that.” I say it all into the fabric of his shirt. It’s easier than looking him in the eye.
“It’s okay… well, it’s not. I did deserve better than a text message, after three years.”
“I know, I really am sorry.” I say it again, as if repeating the words will make them any more true.
“Hey, look at me,” he says.
I lay a hand on his chest and push myself up so I can look at him. His face is close to mine. I can see the slight chip in his bottom front tooth. “I loved you, Rye.”
Loved. Loved. The past tense makes me feel like I’ve been turned inside out. I’m raw to the world and it’s my own fault. I’d done an excellent job of convincing myself that Corey would never be right for me, not for the long term. Because our relationship doesn’t make sense, on paper at least. On paper, I don’t end up with the white guy, especially considering how consumed I’ve been these last few months （or a lifetime, really） with all the ways race oozes its sticky tentacles into every relationship, every interaction, every intention. It’s damn near blown up my relationship with my best friend. But here I am, my cheek on this pale chest, realizing that Corey may well be a white man, but he’s no more “wrong” or “wrong for me” as a best friend or a life partner than Jen is. I’d talked myself out of loving him because I had an expectation of what my life should look like, who I should be with had clouded my vision of who I wanted to be with. There are no easy choices, no safe choices, you can’t plan your way to happiness. So even though it goes against everything I’ve ever told myself about how my life should look, and it won’t be easy or uncomplicated, I know it’s what I want, who I want. So there’s only one thing to do.
I close the two inches between Corey’s face and mine. I kiss him. It’s not enough. I’m not close enough. I climb on top of him and arrange myself so that as many parts of me are touching as many parts of him as possible.
We’re not going to make it to the bedroom, to the fresh sheets I put on the bed this morning, just in case. Within seconds, Corey is shimmying out of his dark jeans and I have the familiar shock of his pale penis and blond pubic hair. Before Corey, I somehow thought all of them were the same color, so his bright pink dick took me by surprise. Right now, it may be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. And while I used to love our drawn-out foreplay, I don’t want or need any of that. I’m desperate for him to be inside me as quickly as possible. I want to give myself over to him completely, until we both can’t take it anymore, and that’s exactly what happens. It’s been too long since I’ve had this feeling, a euphoric release and total surrender that I only ever experience during sex or at certain points in running, consumed not by thoughts or worries or anything at all, except the purest of pleasure. It’s bliss.
Corey looks up at me, flushed with pleasure when we’re done. “So yeah, wow.” He traces a lazy finger around the edge of the black lace bra I carefully selected—again, just in case.
“Like old times.” I smile down at him, wipe the beads of sweat from his forehead.
We take a minute to rearrange ourselves on the couch so that I am lying on top of him. Our breathing slows, starts to match breath for breath. I wait for Corey to say something and sense he’s waiting for the same. Now what?
There’s a lot of things I want in this moment: Corey to stay over （I don’t even care that his hideously loud snoring will keep me up all night）; for him to wake me by burying his face between my legs like he used to; or for him to wear my pink bathrobe in the morning while I make us eggs. All the fears, the doubts—they’re still there, and I could let myself give in to them and convince myself all over again that it’s too much, that it would be too hard, it’s too late. Or, or, or. It’s funny that I’m acting like I have a choice at all. This, whatever it is, is happening.
Through the panel of windows, I watch fluffy white flakes flutter through the ink-black air. As I work up the nerve to say what needs to be said, I hear the most beautiful sound.
Do it, baby girl. Show him your heart. Gigi is back.
Chapter Sixteen JEN
Dear Tamara,
I don’t know if you’ll read this letter, and maybe it’s selfish or wrong for me to reach out to you, but I had to try.
There’s nothing I can do to take away your pain, but I want you to know how badly I feel for your loss, how I think about your son every single day, how I will regret what I did for the rest of my life.
I have a son now too. His name is Chase and he’s six weeks old today. Becoming a father has changed me, made me a better man. I think about this little person all the time. I’ll do anything I can to keep him safe, to protect him. I’d die for him. And I don’t know what I would do if anyone ever took him away from me.
I can’t make excuses for what happened in those five seconds, but I want to own up to what I did. You deserve that. You deserve your son back; I wish I could give that to you, but I can’t. One day I will have to tell my own boy what I did. I’ll have to tell him so that he understands the power we all have to harm other people even when we don’t mean to.
I’ll tell him because I want him to be better than me, to do better than me.
I became a cop so I could help people, not hurt them, and I fell short. And even though I’ll never work as a police officer again, I hope I can still find a way to help people, to do some good.
I don’t know if you want to hear this. My wife says as a mother this is what she would want to know. I held Justin’s hand while we waited for the ambulance. He told me his name and I told him to hang on. He asked for you and I said you were on your way.
I don’t want you to think that I believe there’s anything I can say or do to make this right. There’s not, I know that. I don’t expect you to forgive me. I only want you to know that I will carry your son’s memory and do the best I can with my own life to honor his.
Kevin Murphy
The letter lies there on the kitchen table, tucked beneath a vase of fresh deli daisies. The words slant across the page in Kevin’s best penmanship, the cursive the nuns taught him at St. Francis. He had debated typing it.
“No. That’s too formal. Typing it wouldn’t be right,” he said, to himself more than to me.
Each time he messed up he started over with a fresh piece of paper, the discarded attempts crumbled and scattered like little rocks across the floor. Until finally, he had a version he was happy with—then it sat right here on the table for two days, while Kevin decided what, if anything, to do with it. Neither of us has touched it, by some sort of unspoken agreement.
I don’t want it to be the first thing Riley sees when she gets here. It’s just Riley, I remind myself.
My kitchen’s a wreck and I regret I didn’t clean up more. There are half-packed boxes everywhere, adding to the chaos. I make a half-hearted attempt to wipe up spilled breast milk from the table with my bare hand, throw some odds and ends cluttering the counter into a box, along with the letter, laid carefully on top before I close the flaps.