“Do you think you might just need more time to heal?”
“Maybe, but they’re starting the new season and they want to get things moving. I’m not ready to go back.”
“You shouldn’t.” Water ripples over my bare toes, and it’s shockingly cold. “I worry that you’re still in danger.”
“I can hire people if it comes to that, but I just want to be here for a while.”
Something in her voice makes me look at her. “What’s on your mind?”
“Sometimes I feel like I’ve been carrying around this giant bag of shit for most of my life. Dragging it behind me when I was tired, sitting on it when I was wiped out, asking porters to carry it when I was busy, but always keeping it.”
I laugh. “Good visual!”
“I want to let it go. And I don’t really know how.”
“You could walk away.”
She gives me a side-eye. “Yeah, gosh, why didn’t I think of that?”
“Touché. Sorry.”
Her sweater ripples in the wind. “I think I have to be here to work it all out. My dad, that summer.” A pause. “The baby.”
The baby she gave up for adoption. My heart squeezes with painful memory. I nod slowly. “Do you want to talk it out?”
“Not right now.”
“Is your dad even still alive?”
“I don’t know. Even though they didn’t charge him with child abuse—”
“Assholes.”
“The good thing is, I don’t think he’d get away with it now.” She shrugs. “Different times.”
“Sorry, I interrupted. You don’t know where he is?”
“Nope. And do not care. People hated him even if he didn’t get charged. And thanks to Joel there was no church left.”
I press my lips together, thinking of his hectic appearance when he brought a letter for me to give Suze. Which I truly intended to do.
And never did.
It was the letter, his distraught appearance at my grandmother’s door, that confirmed what I’d suspected all along. He was in love with her. My guilt is as heavy as an anchor, and I shut the door on it quickly. It can’t help right now.
“He was one cruel motherfucker,” I say with feeling.
Suze laughs, and I feel justified in keeping my secrets for another day. “Those words out of your mouth! Oh my God.”
I glance at her, the wind catching her hair and tossing it in her eyes. The face that is as familiar to me as my own, and in that moment, I’m so glad she’s back. When she’s with me, I am freer to be myself.
The recognition blooms, a truth hidden beneath so many layers of time and resentment. Attempting lightness, I shrug. “You’re not the only one who can turn a phrase.” I call out, “Jasmine! Want to get ice cream?”
She whirls around and runs back to us like a platypus, hands flapping, knees kicking, a goofy expression on her face. I wish for her this perfect unselfconsciousness forever, but I know it won’t last. Instead, I wish for her to have people in her life with whom she can be her entire, whole self, like I was with Amma, the way I was sometimes with Suze.
A whisper creeps in. The way I am with Ben.
Too soon!
Jasmine runs in front of us, Maui chasing her, playfully trying to grab her ankles. I slow, my hands in my pockets, and confess, “This whole thing with Ben is scary.”
“Scary how?”
“He’s such a good friend, and I don’t want to mess that up, but oh, Lord.” I widen my eyes. “Last night was . . .” I shake my head, tell the truth. “The best sex I’ve ever had in my life.”
Suze laughs. Her eyes crinkle at the corners. “This is bad how?”
“I haven’t let myself feel so much in a long time. Like, what if it all falls apart and he breaks my heart and then I lose my friend as well as my lover and then I’m all alone again?” Tears fill my eyes, tears of wonder and fear and overwhelm.
She loops her arm through my elbow. “Listen, I mean this in the best possible way, Phoebe.”
I look at her.
“So what? So what if it ends? What if he dies? What if the world ends? What if? Would you really trade having this . . . joy . . . right now for some awful thing that might not even happen?”
“I know what you’re saying, but it’s not really that easy, is it?”
“It’s only harder if you insist. Don’t take things away from yourself before you even get to enjoy them.”
“I don’t do that.”