My eyes are watering at this point. I should have been there with her at the beginning. I should have shared some of this pain. I take her hand. “Mika, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left you alone like that, okay? I promise I never forgot about you and Sam. I still love him, and I think about him every day.”
Mika pulls her hand away. “It doesn’t look that way to me,” she says through tears. “Seems like you’ve moved on with your life. I see you with your new group of friends. All of you at lunch, laughing like nothing’s wrong. Like Sam was never even here.” She wipes her eyes again. “Did you even cry once when he died?”
The question stabs me. I hate that she thinks of me this way. “Of course I have,” I answer. Had she asked me this back at the diner, I might have said otherwise. But I’m not the person I was then. Because I found Sam again. If only I could just tell her this. “I know it might not seem like I care about him, but I do. Of course I do, Mika. But it’s complicated. You have to understand—”
“I know when you’re not being completely honest, Julie,” Mika says. “I know when you’re keeping things from me, too. I also know you meant what you said at the diner that morning. How am I supposed to believe you changed your mind since then? Just like that—”
“Because something strange happened since then,” I tell her. “I wish I could tell you, but I cant. I’m sorry. You have to believe me, though.”
Mika dismisses this with a shake of her head. “I can’t do this, Julie. I’m tired of all these nonanswers,” she says. “And I can’t take being ignored anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve called you a dozen times since he died,” Mika says. “And you never picked up. I know you didn’t want to talk to me. When I needed you. And yet you expect me to sit here and listen to this?”
Mika’s been calling me? I stare at my phone again, trying to remember when. It’s Sam’s calls, isn’t it? When I’m on the phone with him, nothing else comes through. That’s why I keep losing text messages, calls, and I don’t know what else. It’s like our connection is blocking me from everyone else. It’s keeping me from Mika, the person Sam asked me to make sure is okay. And I can’t even explain myself to her. “It’s my phone…” is all I can say. “Something’s wrong with it.”
What else am I supposed to say? How do I fix this without telling the truth?
“Maybe it’s time you go,” Mika says abruptly. She looks away, letting me know she doesn’t want to hear more. Like she’s about to get up, ending our conversation. I wish I could tell her everything. So she will understand why I’ve been acting the way I have, and know I haven’t let go of Sam because I never needed to. Because he never left me. But I don’t want to risk our connection. My hands clench and unclench as I hesitate on the couch, deciding … After all, Sam left it up to me, didn’t he? And there’s still a chance nothing bad will happen if I tell her. I can’t keep letting Mika think this way. I can see how much she’s hurting. I need to be there for her, like I promised him. I can’t let her go through this alone anymore. And I can’t lose her, too. I want to break down this wall that’s building between us. I don’t even know if she’s going to believe me, but I swallow my breath and tell her anyway.
“Mika, listen—” I take her hands before she gets up. “The reason I’m not getting your calls … or why I’m not grieving over Sam, is because we’re still connected. Me and Sam, I mean. He isn’t gone yet.”
“What are you talking about?”
“This is going to sound strange…” I start to explain, carefully choosing my next words. “But I can talk to Sam. On the phone. I can call him and he picks up.”
“Our Sam?”
“Yes.”
Mika gives me a look. “What do you mean, you can talk to him?”
“I mean, he answers me. Through the phone,” I say. “I can tell him something, and he responds. We’ve been talking for hours, almost every day, like old times again. And it’s really him, Mika. It isn’t anyone else, or some sort of prank. It’s Sam.” My heart pounds inside my chest. I don’t know what else to say.
Mika takes this in. “Are you sure about this?”
I lean forward, squeezing her hands. “I promise it is. It’s his voice, Mika. It’s him, it’s Sam. You have to trust me.”