Chapter 43
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
SLOANE
ONE MONTH LATER
T he thing about healing is that you don’t know when it’s happening—not until you feel the effects viscerally and realize the world looks less dim and feels less burdened. That’s how I feel today. I didn’t realize until after therapy with Dr. Spooner. I was wandering through the flower market on Lexington Ave., breathing in the exotic and beautiful floral perfumes. I stopped, looked around, and realized my chest was less tight than usual, and the world felt vibrant.
Holding my purchase from the market—a bouquet that the florist called Winter Dreams— I meander back to our apartment Luca secured. We live in Washington Square Village, well-known for housing NYU faculty and easy commuting to and from work. The apartment is beautiful. When Luca said he got a job at the local college, I’d been too fucked up and fresh from all I’d gone through to question it. All I knew was he started going to work regularly, and his mom—Miriam—would show up soon after.
She’s taught me to cook, what the best television shows in the afternoon are, and how to center myself and not let the dark thoughts win.
For weeks, I’d drilled down into myself, regretting having been born into a world where so many hateful things happened to me. I have a man who loves me so much that he threw everything away for me and a mother I thought I’d never have.
Thinking back to coming home and finding Mom on the couch with needles hanging out of her veins and rushing to her side to make sure she wasn’t dead. I know that’s not my life anymore. It’s freeing.
I pass the doorman, leaving one of the purple flowers from my bouquet on his desk for him.
I peek over my shoulder to watch him lift it to his nose to sniff.
This inner peace I’ve found is something I’ll cling to for the rest of my days.
I know I still have a long road ahead of me, but the breakthroughs I made at therapy today have made me feel lighter and more optimistic about the future than ever.
Miriam was true to her word and got me into therapy with someone she’d been going to since Luca’s father died. As therapy usually does, we started initially and worked on present-day issues. She’s given me coping mechanisms for the panic attacks and made me realize how much control I have over the monsters that try to invade my memories and thoughts.
Brain training, she calls it.
Pressing the button for the tenth floor, I settle into the elevator wall and clutch my flowers. I never thought I’d live somewhere so pretty and on this side of town, but here I am.
I still feel guilty about Luca’s decision to leave the church, but Dr. Spooner helped me realize it was his decision, not mine. While I have sway over Luca, I can’t control his every move, and I wouldn’t want him to control mine.
She also helped me realize that our age gap—while unorthodox—isn’t taboo. I’ve never had reservations about the gap in our ages, but my newfound anxiety made me wonder if I should have them.
I exit the elevator when the doors slide open, turning to the right to head to the apartment, stopping short when I spy Myra on my doorstep. She’s rocking on her feet, her blonde hair pristine in a ballerina bun, and her knuckles rapping away at the door.
“Myra?” I say, stepping towards her tentatively.
There’s been so much going on with me I haven’t even thought of her, if I’m honest—too much to riddle out in my world. Guilt buzzes like bees in my stomach at the revelation.
“God, Sloane. I heard you were living here. I thought it was ridiculous, but… There you are…” Her eyes show some emotion, but it’s not sadness or relief. It’s something I can’t quite put my finger on as she rushes me into a tight hug, squeezing my winter dreams between us.
“Who told you I was here?” I ask her.
I can’t help but have a hint of skepticism because, to my knowledge, no one besides Luca, his family, and Ardesia Ricci know where I am.
“Stacy. She goes to NYU, you know? She said she saw you walk out of the building one day, hand in hand with a professor. She followed you here.”
Stacy is more Myra’s friend than mine. She’s a loud-mouthed gossip. However, her demeanor might’ve brought my best friend and me back together, so I stowed the thought and kept my lips sealed.
“I’ve been so worried about you. I reported you missing, you know?”
This is Myra’s thing: she requires recognition for whatever she does—a pat on the back for each good deed carried out.
“I didn’t know you reported me missing,” I tell her, not recalling whether I was told. I’ve been so focused on putting myself back together that I blurred out the surrounding world. I won’t feel regret, either. It’s what I had to do.
I move for the door, entering the key into the lock and pushing inside, holding the door open with my foot for Myra. She looks…apprehensive. “Come in?”
Tight-lipped, she nods and walks in.
I move around the kitchen, unable to find a vase and settling for a coffee can for the flowers. Since I started therapy, I’ve been stopping at the market, getting whatever flowers were on that week’s special to brighten up the space. Not that the apartment is drab, but a little color never hurt anyone.
Myra looks around the apartment, hands in her pockets as she chews the inside of her cheek. “This is a nice place.”
“Thank you. We only moved here a couple of months ago.” I continue to watch her as I hang my jacket and purse by the door.
Something’s off. She’s very uncomfortable, and I don’t understand why.
My gut says I shouldn’t have let her in, but it’s Myra.
“It’s good that you have this life now. When for so long you were…” she trails off, and I narrow my gaze, wondering where she was going with her line of thought.
Trash? Was that where she was headed with her sentence?
“It’s different, that’s for certain.”
I’ve gone from a tiny apartment I could barely afford, paying for my mom’s apartment and barely making it some months when the club was slow, to living in a beautiful apartment overlooking NYU and Washington Square Park. I don’t know if it’s something I’ll get used to, either.
“Why did you come, Myra?” I ask when she doesn’t strike up any other topic.
The silence felt crushing.
She sighs. “I just wanted to see you and see that you are alright. We used to be friends, you know?”
That last part strikes me as odd: how she’d used past tense.
“We are friends. Look,” I step towards her, grabbing her shoulders when she doesn’t remove her hands from her pockets. “I know I should’ve reached out, but I just got a phone this week, and I’ve had so much going on. I’m in therapy for everything that happened, and I needed to focus on me.”
Something shudders through her, vibrating into my hands like a warning. Her face loosens, though, and she tugs her hands from her pockets and hugs me again. This time, it’s warm and inviting.
“I’m so glad you’re alright. Of course, you needed time. I’m sorry. It just feels so weird to see you here, and I know some fucked up shit had to happen to you. I should’ve walked with you that night.”
She would have. We lived close to one another, but she went home with Josh, the man she’d been seeing. Was seeing? Is she still seeing Josh?
I realize that there was a massive disconnect between us when we used to be very close.
“Listen, let’s do dinner and a movie one night soon?” I tell her, pulling my phone out of my pocket and handing it to her to add her number. “Or drinks? Whatever you have time for.”
She beams, adding her contact info to my phone. “Yes, I need that.”
“It’s going to take some time for me to be… I was going to say the old Sloane, but I don’t know if I’ll ever be her again,” I admit.
She looks at me with pity in her eyes. “You don’t have to be her ever again, Sloane. You’ve got a second chance.”
There’s a haunting feeling tangling in my gut at her words, even long after she’s gone.
I’m sipping a glass of red wine when Luca walks in an hour after Myra leaves, and he surmises after one look at me that something’s happened.
He rushes to me, dropping to his knees on the floor in front of the couch and cupping my face.
The feel of his hands on me, mixed with the buzz of alcohol, is sinful, and I want to lean into it more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life.
We haven’t been intimate in so long. He’s been kind and understanding, asking for permission to hold my hand or even give me the lightest kisses.
“Myra was here,” I tell him.
His eyes grow questioning. “Your best friend, Myra?”
In the last few weeks together, I’ve told him so many things about myself, as has he.
I nod. “Yeah. She came to check on me because a friend supposedly saw you and me leaving the college and coming home.”
“Why do you look so concerned about the visit? Is there something to worry about?”
I shake my head, my mind still muddied with warring thoughts. “I don’t know. Something was off with her, and I couldn’t put my finger on it. Something in my gut said to keep my guard up.”
Luca’s face softens, his hackles lying down. “Sloane, that’s going to happen for a while. You won’t trust anyone after what you’ve been through.”
“No, this was different,” I tell him, leaning forward and placing my wineglass on the coffee table behind him.
He tucks my hair behind my ear, and the tickle sends a shiver down my spine, creating a ball of pins and needles at the very base of my bones. “Trust me. You’re going to be on high alert for a while. You told me that even Dr. Spooner said so, remember?”
I sigh, remembering our entire conversation last week about my session, deflating some. “I guess you’re right.”
“Hey,” he says, cupping my face with his hand. I lean into the warmth and sensation of his touch. “It’s not bad to listen to your gut. Just keep Dr. Spooner’s words in your head, too. It never hurts to be wary. You’ve been through a lot.”
That’s the understatement of the century.
I nod, leaning forward and brushing his lips against mine.
He’s been so kind to me in the last two months, giving me space and time to heal and put my broken puzzle back together, but tonight, all I want is him—his touch, his comfort.
He groans into my kiss, and I swallow it as I forge ahead with my tongue.
Pulling back breathlessly, he says, “Hey, maybe we should slow down.”
Watching the war in his heated eyes as he pants through his need is so fucking sexy. Even though he wants me, he wants me protected more. At all costs. Even from himself.
I smirk. “Oh, I wholeheartedly want you to go slow, Father Russo.”
He closes his eyes and groans as I press on, bringing my lips back to his and igniting something I hope to God he’ll put out.
If not, I might die.