And I’m probably going to push her away in the process.
That thought makes my spine feel like ice. I’m going to lose her if I don’t slow the hell down—and I can’t seem to remember to pace myself when she looks at me. My resolve just goes straight out the window and next time? Next time she could just walk. “Yeah, you’ve just blown me away so often, sometimes I forget you’re inching forward,” I manage past my numb lips. Why are my vocal cords aching? Probably because what I need to offer her, to keep her, is going to split me in half. “If you need more…space, Stella. I’ll give you that.”
The glow leaves her face. “What? I…no.” She takes a step forward. “No, that’s not what I meant—”
Her phone rings on the bench. A riotous series of notes.
That’s not her usual ring tone. I’ve been with her when Jordyn called. I’ve called her phone to locate it when she lost it in my apartment. Normally it’s just a light, repetitive chime. This is different. Judging by the way her face drops, it’s not a welcome sound.
“What’s wrong, Stella?” I reach out and cup her bare shoulder, brushing my thumb over the smoothness. “Who is that?”
She looks up at me, then away. Doesn’t answer me.
Instead, she moves out of my reach, snatches up her ringing phone and closes herself in one of the changing rooms. It’s a very scary thing, how fast everything has shifted in the space of one goddamn minute. I can’t get my footing. Or think straight. But I’m pretty sure I just fucked up. Badly. I created a divide between us out of fear of that exact thing. What the hell is wrong with me? And now she’s shut me out in a moment that I sense she could really use someone to talk to. “It’s Nicole, isn’t it? She’s out.”
“I think so. It’s her old number,” she whispers. “I’m afraid to answer.”
“Let me in. We can do it together.”
She laughs without humor—and I don’t blame her. I just got finished offering to give her space when that is the last thing on this earth that I want. Jesus. Does she feel insecure with me now? “Look, Aiden…this is too complicated.”
I watch the green silk pool on the floor of the dressing room. Her hand appears, picking it up and the sound of a hanger clangs against the wall. I’m experiencing all of it in fast motion. Everything is getting away from me. Moving too fast for me to fix.
She opens the door of the changing room, dressed once again in the black turtleneck dress and tights she wore to work this morning. I watched her put them on over the rim of my coffee mug and now I think…are we breaking up? I just found her.
“Stella, slow down.”
“Now you want to slow down,” she says in a shaky burst, avoiding my eyes. Her movements are unnatural. Nervous. I’m realizing too late how serious this situation is with Nicole and somehow I’ve forfeited my right to help. She tries to go around me and I step into her path to block her without thinking. “I have to go. Let me go.”
I can’t. I’m in love with you.
It’s the exact wrong time to tell her. To say those words out loud. So I keep them locked up tight even though they’re fighting to get out. “I swear to God, Stella, if you’re going to see her…and that puts you in some kind of danger, I’ll go fucking ballistic.” My vision starts to turn gray. “The thought of you hurt—”
“Stop.” She closes her eyes momentarily. “Look, Aiden. You’ve been my hero since day one. We can pretend it’s not true, but it is. I was trapped under all this…debris and you pulled me out. Gave me a place to heal. But if I’m going to stay here, if I’m going to feel like I earned this second chance, I have to be my own hero. Okay? And you need to have faith that I can do it. That I can do anything.” She pauses. “Please? Because I don’t even believe it right now.”
“Of course I do,” I rasp, heat searing the sides of my throat. “I believe in you every day of the week. Set your watch on it.”
“Thank you.” She hesitates on the threshold of the dressing room, then goes up on her toes and kisses me on the cheek. “Bye, Aiden.”
My knees threaten to buckle.
Standing there while she walks away is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.
But I suspect wherever she’s headed, she’s about to face something even harder, so I suck it up and start praying like hell that she comes back to me.
16
Stella
I’m outside your building.
When I didn’t answer Nicole’s phone call in the dressing room, that is the text she sent. She must have gotten the address from my parents. I don’t know how else she would have known where I’m staying. Have my parents completely given up on me that they would send Nicole straight to my doorstep when they used to beg me to take a break from her? There’s a possibility that Nicole tricked the address out of them, maybe by saying we had concrete plans to meet. That it was understood and I’d agreed to it. Or maybe Nicole told them that she’s still in prison and just wanted to send me a letter.
However she found me, she’s here now.
She’s in New York.
After being away from Nicole for so long, the fact that she gives me a massive case of anxiety is a lot more obvious than it used to be when I saw her every day. Somehow this pulse-pounding, on edge, twisted stomach feeling became the norm. But it’s not normal now. I don’t want to feel like this. I don’t want to be sweating under my clothes wondering what’s going to happen. Or what she’ll say to target my insecurities. Friends shouldn’t do that. It’s not okay and I know that now.
My legs are made of gelatin on the walk from the subway.
The shadows of evening are beginning to cast themselves on the sidewalk. The Christmas Eve buzz is alive on every block of the city, though the crowd is thin in my neighborhood, locals having traveled home for the holidays. Someone walks out of a coffee shop to my left and Nat King Cole’s voice drifts out with them. Big red bells made of Styrofoam and tinsel hang from the streetlights, shifting in the cold wind.
Oh my God, I’m so cold.
Cold and hollow.
I miss Aiden, even though I only left him half an hour ago. I’m pretty sure I hurt him. Or pushed him away. Both. If that patient, understanding man is frustrated enough to suggest we add some space to our relationship, I have well and truly messed up. But I don’t know how to make it any better. Not right in this moment. I can’t just sever the past from the rest of me. It hangs from me like an errant limb. It’s always there. She’s always there.
I turn the corner at the end of my block and I see Nicole, huddled up against the side of the building, blowing warm air into her cupped palms. She must have gotten her hands on some bad hair dye in prison because her naturally light brown hair is almost orange, about two inches of her roots showing. She has it pulled up in a messy bun. Her jacket is thin, skin pale. She’s cold with nowhere to go. Serious problems. Immediate ones that I didn’t have to worry about—and that’s when the guilt begins to prod me. Responsibility for her. Suddenly I’m walking with sandbags strapped to my shoulders and ankles whereas this morning, I woke up so light.