Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
We’re back in Dr. Waitley’s office. For the last time. Sitting next to each other. For the last time. Pretending to be a couple. For the last time.
Thank fuck.
I need my own bed. I need to sleep like a starfish and hog all the blankets and wake up in the morning feeling marvelous.
As we wait in uncomfortable silence, I sneak a look at Xander.
His jaw is locked. The dark circles under his eyes are back. His curls don’t have the strength to look professionally mussed. He proceeds to cross his arms over his chest.
He looks like I feel. Exhausted.
No denying it.
We both didn’t sleep last night.
There was a moment in the middle of the night where he whispered, “Are you awake?” to which I said, “Yes,” and he said, “Can I snuggle you?” to which I said, “Yes.”
I didn’t realize his palm splaying across my stomach as he big spooned the shit out of me was going to feel so … lonely.
Like physically, we were connected. But that was it.
Before I have the opportunity to dissect that little tidbit, Dr. Waitley walks in with a clipboard, pages flipped over the top, like she just discovered the answer to Xander’s insomnia.
I reach over to Xander. One last time.
His fingers intertwine with mine. One last time.
He offers me a short smile. We’re in this together. Until the very end.
“It’s interesting,” Dr. Waitley starts as she takes a seat. “Your overall trajectory has you clocking in seven solid hours. Exactly like Ash.” She beams for a beat.
“That’s incredible,” I say, just as her smile fades.
“Except last night.”
I press my lips together. I glance at Xander.
He mirrors my strained expression. It’s obvious we’ve returned to our roots.
Fighting. And I honestly don’t have the strength for another impromptu therapy session.
The trajectory shows Xander should be sleeping fine once I’m out of his life, so please just deliver the paycheck.
“We recommend Xander continues with his cognitive behavioral therapy,” she says, flipping the chart closed and adding it to the pile on her desk.
“But based on what we observed during the study, we saw a marked improvement in sleep onset and duration.” And then she finally lets herself smile.
“We’re optimistic. If he’s able to replicate similar conditions at home, there’s every reason to believe that progress will continue. ”
“Thank you so much,” I say, and it’s the most genuine thing that’s come out of my mouth since I’ve met this woman.
Xander squeezes my hand and I look over at him. Thank you.
I squeeze it right back. You’re welcome.
Then, the strangest thing happens. A slow-burning warmth spreads all throughout my heart. Not sparks, like chemistry. Like a golden hum. It’s such an intense feeling of joy, I almost alert them to call the paramedics.
Instead, Dr. Waitley hands over a white envelope.
Signed, sealed, delivered. The money’s mine.
Out in the parking lot, Xander and I don’t linger.
We wrap up our goodbyes with an ill-timed handshake from me turned crushing hug from him.
Then we go our separate ways.
And that’s when the yearning starts.
At home, I slam the front door behind me, sliding all the way down so I’m sitting in the darkness of my apartment, trying to process what the fuck just happened.
I mean, I know we just wrapped up the sleep study, but that’s not what I’m thinking about. Every time I blink, I see Xander. And his dumb face.
Xander and his dumb curls, laughing. Xander and his dumb mouth beaming. Xander and his dumb eyes pinning me with a look so intense he might die if he doesn’t have me right then and there.
And because I’m a sadist, I texted him on the way home. I kept it light, but of course, we can read each other like a book now, so it was heavy with everything I wasn’t saying.
Thank you for the bonus. Read: I miss you.
Thank you for helping me sleep. Read: I miss you too.
You heading for a surf to celebrate? Read: Can’t we just, you know, fuck around?
Heading to the office. Need to play catch-up. Read: I’m sorry. I can’t do that with you anymore.
Oh, you working on getting a murdering bitch off on a technicality? Read: Nothing has to change.
Lol. Something like that. Read: Everything’s changed.
Have fun. Read: Damn.
Three dots appear. Then they disappear.
My finger hovers over his contact name for a moment; I’m thisclose to just calling him.
But to do what, exactly? Beg him to keep sleeping with me with no strings attached?
He wants me and he loves me. He’s right.
Everything has changed. And that is the nail in the coffin of my conversations with Xander.
“Fuck!” I shout into the darkness.
“Ash?” I freeze at the sound of my name coming from the other side of the door. I haven’t moved since I got home. I haven’t even turned on the light. “You in there?” It’s Em.
“No,” I say, half-heartedly. I don’t want to deal with the aftermath of Xander with the human embodiment of love.
“I have weed and Ben & Jerry’s,” she says, and it’s not lost on me that she is throwing back to the last time I walked away from Xander, eleven years ago. Reminding me she’s always been there. Through it all.
I sigh, reaching up to the doorknob and turning it without actually getting up off the floor. The door swings open and Em stands in front of me.
She looks down at me with a sweet smile, and without a witty remark about me sitting on the floor of my apartment in the dark. I love her. Why is it so easy for me to say it to her? Because she’s family.
Then she reaches her hand out for me, and I take it, hoisting myself off the floor.
I turn the light on and Em walks past me, making a beeline straight for the kitchen, rattling in the cutlery draw for two spoons.
I head straight for the couch. A moment later she sits next to me, pulling out a cute pink-and-orange tin with the word Houseplant embossed on it.
“You got Seth Rogen’s weed?” I say, surprised. “Damn, you fancy.”
“We’ve come a long way from our broke university days,” Em says, opening the one called Pancake Ice. She already pre-rolled a joint.
“You mean you didn’t have to go into Bong Jovi’s dank dorm room for a baggy?”
“Free delivery,” Em says, handing it to me. “Times have changed.”
Nothing has to change.
Everything’s changed.
I bring the joint to my lips while Em flicks the lighter, and I cough on the inhale like a fucking amateur.
I look over at Em, who holds my gaze a moment before we burst out laughing. Tears slip down my face and I convince myself it’s because of the THC. But I’m not so sure.
“I love you,” I say to Em as she takes a hit. She’s much more badass than me, holding her own.
“I love you too,” she says, turning on the TV.
“You know, you could marry me, take my surname, and change the prophecy.” She navigates to Netflix to find Criminal Minds, and we’re greeted with the biggest jump scare of our lives: my mother’s face.
Her show is getting the promotional push thanks to a “Five Year Reunion” special attached to it.
We both scream. And then fall into fits of laughing again.
I don’t know if it’s Seth Rogen’s weed, the fact that Xander is gone, or Em’s proposal, but something in me snaps at seeing my mother’s over-the-top veneers sitting inside a bullshit smile even I can see straight through. It’s her eyes—they’re the dead giveaway.
She’s not fucking happy.
I need to talk to my mom. You don’t watch (and rewatch) 324 episodes of Criminal Minds without learning that in order to catch a serial killer, you need to understand how they think.
And since Mom wrote the fucking manifesto-turned-reality-TV show on what happens when you ask one person to be “all” for you, she’s the one to give me answers.
In the formal living room of Mom’s apartment, I wait. And wait. And wait. Don’t let the word formal throw you. It’s the only room in her apartment that feels like home to me. I’ve come to know the comfiest grooves in the chesterfield armchair I’m currently reclining in as I wait.
Sitting opposite me is her assistant, Annie. I use the term sitting loosely. She’s more perched on the edge of the sofa, waiting for Mom to summon her at any moment.
“Annie!” Right on cue, my mother’s voice punctures the silence. Annie is up before I can blink, which tells me she must have a killer squat at the gym, and leaves.
I pull out my phone and mindlessly scroll through my messages, landing on the text chain from Xander.
His last message reads: Lol. Something like that.
The subtext: Everything’s changed. Fuck, it stings.
Like a metaphorical knife has weaseled its way into my heart and is staying put.
It’s part of my body now. I have to live with it.
And the pain. I have a thought that maybe I should just bail.
That this conversation is too hard to have anyway.
But the rejection message drives the knife in further, making my heart ache.
I need Mom to comfort me, to tell me I did the right thing, to soothe this pain.
“Mom!” I scream after the waiting goes on just a few minutes too long. You can put the kid in a formal room, but you can’t make her act like a grownup.
“I’m here, I’m here,” she says as she rounds the corner, wearing head-to-toe athleisure.
The boxy oversized T-shirt has big black letters that spell out IVY PARK.
Of course she’s wearing Beyoncé’s brand.
And of course she got the one item of clothing that shouts the brand at you from fifty yards away.
“Well, this is an unexpected visit,” she says as she leans in for the double kiss. After remembering the shit she pulled at the wedding, I offer her nothing. “I have cake!”
And just like that, Annie appears around the corner with a small slice of thick white icing around three layers of something. And a teeny fork.
Great. Wedding cake. Arguably the most disgusting cake available to eat.