Chapter Four
Chapter Four
At five a.m. something warm and gentle touches my face. Wait, no, it’s not gentle. It’s Miles pressing two fingers into my forehead and foisting me off his shoulder.
“Can we please get off the ferry now?” he grumbles.
I blink fully awake and nod, nothing witty to say. Because what a terrible night’s sleep. If he hadn’t been here I probably would have stretched out with my bag as a pillow. Instead we sat up as straight as possible and nodded in and out for hours.
We drag ourselves onto land and eye the train distastefully. I get the feeling he’s dreading more public transportation as much as I am.
“Coffee,” I say, like a zombie, pointing at a little café that’s just flicked on its lights.
“Coffee,” he agrees. Zombie number two, I guess.
We’re back out with our gallons of coffee clenched between our hands. It’s August so it’ll probably be hot again today, but right now it’s predawn and chilly. It’s so early that the sun is still a mere suggestion on the other side of the island, but this is New York, so there are already people lifting weights in the grass, yapping on cellphones, running the mile in under five minutes. I watch the world and attempt to think about nothing.
But his words come back to me. I saw the book. I’ve read that book. “So. Um.”
He’s staring at my profile, clearly waiting for me to say more. When I can’t come up with anything, he makes that same frustrated noise I’m starting to get acclimated to. “Look,” he says. “It’s clearly not my business. But…in terms of you taking care of Ainsley. Like I said, it’s better for everyone if you’re…not in a bad situation.”
“You know today is my last day, right? It was just a weekend gig while Reese was out of town.”
“Well, actually…I get the feeling that Reese might want to make it more permanent. Clearly you get along with Ainsley.”
I squint up at him. “How would Reese even know that? She’s barely seen me with her.”
He shrugs and looks away. “Are you saying that you would turn it down if she asked you to stay on?”
“Are you saying that if I stayed on, you’d perform a personal background check on my life to make sure I was a good influence on Ainsley?”
He throws one hand up. “It wasn’t a background check! You were yelling at strangers and sleeping in public! I just wanted to make sure…You said you didn’t want to go home…” He tosses his empty coffee cup in the trash can and his hands are suddenly smashed into his pockets. “Is there a specific reason, or…”
When I look up at him again, I see it for a split second. Genuine concern.
I’m worried.
Ugh. It’s my weak spot. I hate making other people worry about me. It’s why I’ve avoided my parents. Because then they’d see how I’m actually doing and everything would get so much worse.
I sigh and toss my empty coffee cup away as well. It hits the rim of the trash can and ricochets. Miles lunges forward and snags it out of midair, dunking it for me.
“I’m not in a dangerous situation, I promise. It’s safe,” I reassure him. “Seriously. I just can’t be there because—” My voice breaks and I clear my throat. “It’s just so fucking empty. ”
“Oh.” The sky is gray dawn now with a few splashes of orange. The Hudson is velvet-black and choppy, lapping up the light and tossing it back to us.
I mirror his pose and jam my own hands away. “Look, I’ll spare you the suspense. It seems like you’ve probably guessed some version of this anyways…I used to live with my best friend in that apartment. And a couple months ago…she died.” The words make my adrenaline start coursing through me. They don’t feel real. I feel like I’m doing a play. A really shitty play. “And saying ‘my friend died’ doesn’t convey what really—she was my sister. No. My A-team. My other half. And I’m so fucking stupid because I didn’t realize she was my whole life until she was gone.” The words are a waterfall and there’s no stopping it. I can’t look at him. “And I’m not…I’m not doing so well.” A sob sneaks out. “And I can’t be at home because all her stuff is in the same place it was since—”
I stop walking and sit on my heels with my knees pressed to my eyes. I tremble and attempt to squeeze myself down into nothing. When I crack my eyes I see the toes of two running shoes next to my sneakers. And then there’s one knee on the ground. I feel my ponytail slide out from my face where it’s gotten caught. He arranges it down my back.
“What was her name?” he asks quietly.
I roll my head to one side and look at the river. “Lou,” I whisper. “Lou Merritt.”
“Lenny and Lou,” he muses. “Like two old men.”
I laugh involuntarily. “She was the one who gave me that nickname. She said if she had an old man name, I had to have one too. My real name is Helen, believe it or not. But I’ve been Lenny since kindergarten, when we met.”
I reach into my pocket and pull out a creased napkin, mopping at my face. I wish this napkin were the size of a Buick. I want to pull it over my entire body and sleep for a year. Right here in the middle of the park.
“What’s that?” he asks. The laminated slip of paper rode along with the napkin and peeks up at us from between my fingers.
“Oh.” I’m clutching it so hard I’m surprised it hasn’t started smoldering. “It’s something that Lou and I…I’m trying to follow it…But I haven’t…” I give up on words and just hand it over to him. It’s strange to see it in someone else’s hand.
Live Again, he mouths as he reads the heading. Squinting, he surveys the bullet points and if he’s judging them, it doesn’t show on his face. But one of them makes him chuff a laugh.
“How many have you done?” he asks over the top of thelist.
“None.”
His eyebrows flick up.
It would be great if the tears corked themselves right about now. But I’ve been grieving long enough to know that that is definitely not how this works.
I put my head down and cry until my legs start to tingle from crouching and I get thirsty.
“We have to go soon or else we’re going to be late for Ainsley,” he says eventually.
I laugh involuntarily again. “Aren’t you supposed to be murmuring meaningless platitudes to me?”
“Oh.” He frowns and scratches at his knee. “Sorry.”
But it’s okay because he’s inadvertently said the magic word. Ainsley. She’s waiting uptown for me to take her to school and even if I can’t take care of myself right now, I won’t let Ainsley twist in the wind.
I stand up and scrub my face with my sleeve, heading back toward the café. Miles keeps pace and doesn’t say anything when I wordlessly disappear into the bathroom and reemerge five minutes later with a washed face and a clean T-shirt and leggings on. He’s got an egg sandwich in either hand and he wraps my fingers around one of them when I don’t make a move to take mine.
“You look like you’re about to dissolve,” he informs me, demolishing half of his sandwich in one bite.
I eat as much of my sandwich as I can manage and move to toss the rest into the trash as we jog down the stairs to the train, but he rescues it at the last minute and polishes mine off as well.
We don’t say anything as we sit next to each other on the ride uptown. At 42nd Street, he stands up to give his seat to a pregnant lady, and at Columbus Circle, I stand up to give mine to a woman with a cane. We stand shoulder to shoulder, swaying and listless until we make it to our stop.
When we’re on the sidewalk in front of their building, Miles suddenly stops walking. “Lenny—”
I just shake my head and point upstairs. “Gonna be late.”
I should probably be thanking him. For making sure I didn’t get serial killed last night. Or for preventing me from giving a grown man a wedgie. Or for breakfast.
But the thing about thanking someone is that it requires acknowledgment that the situation is, in fact, real. And I just can’t bring myself to do that.