Emma
Nadia picked up on the second ring, her voice arriving with that familiar, high-velocity energy that usually managed to vacuum up all the oxygen in a room.
"How did the session go? Tell me everything."
I pulled the scratchy motel comforter up to my chin, bracing the phone against my pillow.
"Full disaster. Mascara to my collarbone."
"I'm sure you slept good after that." Nadia let out a low laugh. That was her superpower. She refused to treat my worst moments like tragedies, and somehow that made them survivable.
I gave her the abbreviated recap while my fingers traced the faded floral pattern on the bedspread. The suffocating warmth of Camilla's office. The ridiculous homework assignment I'd been given.
"Which you're not going to do," Nadia said.
"Obviously not."
"What was it, anyway?"
"Find one thing I used to love. Just one small thing, and sit with it without judging myself."
I closed my eyes against the harsh glare of the motel lamp. Here was the part I couldn't bring myself to say out loud: I'd tried. After the session, I'd sat on the edge of this sagging mattress for an hour, scraping the bottom of my own memory for a single interest that hadn't been swimming.
I scrolled through my old playlists. Nothing. I tried to remember a restaurant I used to love, a dish that made me close my eyes on the first bite. Nothing. I thought about books, movies, places, any small piece of a life that used to belong to me. And I came up blank.
There was nothing left to find. James had been thorough about that.
Every time I'd shown enthusiasm for something, he'd find a way to make it small.
You're still listening to that? That's kind of sad, Em.
Bit by bit, I stopped playing music. Stopped cooking.
Stopped reading. Stopped wanting. Until I was exactly what he needed me to be: a woman with nothing of her own.
"Nothing," I whispered. "I can't come up with a single thing."
The line went quiet for a beat. Rare for her to hesitate, to brake before speaking.
"That's okay," she said, her voice dropping low and fierce, the one she kept for my bad days. "We'll figure it out. We'll make a new list."
We. That word always took me apart. I didn't deserve her. She'd crashed into my life eighteen months ago during my absolute worst week and simply refused to leave. I had been sitting in my car in the parking lot of my rheumatologist's office, fresh off a devastating appointment with Dr. April.
The news was bad: the lupus was flaring again, and the medication adjustment meant I was going to gain more weight and feel exhausted before things got better. I was crying into a crumpled fast-food napkin with the windows fogging up, when a sharp knock rattled my glass.
There stood a total stranger, holding two iced lattes, looking at me like she couldn't decide whether to laugh or call someone.
I rolled the window down out of sheer bewilderment.
"One of these was supposed to be for my aunt, but she just got pulled into an emergency consult and now I've got a spare," she'd said, thrusting the plastic cup through the gap. "And frankly, you look like you need the caffeine more than she does."
I blinked, wiping my eyes. "Your aunt is Dr. April?"
"Unfortunately. Family dinners are just her lecturing us about our sodium intake. Look, do you want the oat milk latte or not? I can't do dairy. It's a whole metabolic saga."
I took the coffee. Without an invitation, she'd climbed straight into my passenger seat, introduced herself as Nadia, and spent the rest of her lunch break convincing me that throwing a solo pity party in a medical plaza parking lot was a perfectly valid use of an afternoon.
Eighteen months later, she was still the only person in my life who hadn't left, hadn't been pushed away, and hadn't taken the hint when I tried to self-destruct in her general direction. Everyone else got the message. Nadia just kept bringing oat milk.
"The pipes are finally clearing, Em," she said now, pulling me back. "That's all the crying is. You spent three years with the tap rusted shut, and now the water's running. Stop treating basic emotional hygiene like a felony."
"I'll add that to the list of things people keep telling me are healthy but feel exactly like waterboarding."
"Good. Write it down. Laminate it."
I smiled, but the motion felt strange on my face. My cheeks had forgotten how to hold it.
Even as her voice washed over me, my mind kept drifting back to the sterile lobby of the clinic, to the encounter I hadn't mentioned to her.
Excuse me. Can I get past?
He'd said it the way you'd say it to anyone in your way, some stranger you'd already half forgotten. I had stepped back like a well-trained dog, and he had pushed through those glass doors without a second glance.
Ralph Brandt hadn't recognized me.
I'd spent years bracing myself for the wrong kind of pain.
I had anticipated the shame, the agonizing horror of someone from my golden past seeing the heavy, swollen wreckage of my present.
Running into him, of all people, with my face ruined and medication weight clinging to my frame.
I used to lie awake at night rehearsing what I'd say if I ever ran into someone from the old life.
I'm great. Doing something new. Yeah, I missed it for a while but I'm past that now.
A whole prepared speech, packaged and designed to prove I wasn't drowning.
I never needed it. He didn't even ask.
What took its place was so much worse. He had looked directly into my face and seen a nobody. I was invisible to the boy who used to know the rhythm of my breathing from three lanes over.
Or maybe he had known it was me. Maybe he'd looked at the disaster I'd become and decided I wasn't worth the breath it took to say my name.
"Em? Hey. Did I lose you?"
"Sorry. I'm here." I swallowed. "I need to tell you something else. I'm going to James's place tonight to get the rest of my things."
The silence that followed was different. Nadia's playful quiet and her serious quiet lived on separate continents.
"Tonight," she repeated, the warmth vanishing from her tone. "Emma, you don't even have an apartment yet. You're still living out of a suitcase at a motel."
"I have the money from that voiceover gig. I'll find a place next week. I just… I need my life back, Nadia. I can't leave my boxes there anymore. Every day they're still in his apartment feels like a tether. I need to cut it so I can breathe."
"You could stay in my spare room. It's literally just collecting dust and unfolded laundry. It's not doing anything noble."
"You've already done enough."
"That's not how friendship works. There's no ledger, Emma. There's no tab."
"I'm not going to be another person's project.
" The words slipped out with a bitter edge.
James used to tell me that was my natural state.
Dead weight. A broken thing someone else always had to manage.
He'd say it so calmly, with that small, sympathetic smile, his hand on my knee, like he was comforting a child who kept making the same mistake.
'No man is going to want to carry a messed-up woman like you, Em.
You'll come back. You always do.' Three years of that, and the lie had fossilized inside me.
It wasn't a voice in my head anymore. It was bone.
"Accepting a safe place to sleep isn't the same as being a burden. You're confusing the two."
"I'll think about it."
"Which is your polite way of saying no."
"It means I'll think about it. I have to go, Nadia."
She sighed. More love than frustration in it. "Fine. But you text me the second you are out of that apartment. I don't care if it's midnight. You text me."
"Deal."
We hung up, and the room dissolved back into its stale, beige silence. I sat on the edge of the bed for a long time, staring at my hands. Camilla said that ending one chapter is how you start a new one. I was clinging to that today like a raft.
I reached for the remote and flipped on the television. I needed noise. Something louder than the inside of my own head.
I wasn't looking for him. But there he was.
Ralph filled the screen, sitting in an interview chair on ESPN. Even on the crappy motel television, he commanded the frame. Black shirt. Sharp jaw. Sunglasses indoors again. He sat easy, shoulders squared, like nothing in that room could touch him.
"It was an accident," Ralph was saying, his deep voice smooth and controlled.
"I turned, and my arm connected with her during the post-race rush.
It wasn't intentional. I reached out to her camp immediately to check on her, and I personally ensured she received VIP access to the finals as an apology. We've spoken, and she was gracious."
The anchor nodded, pivoting to the next question. I picked up my phone. The headlines were merciless. Arrogant prick. Bully with a gold medal. Typical entitled athlete. Classic PR cleanup.
I studied his face on the screen. The internet's version of him didn't fit the boy in my memories.
When I was twelve, a pet dove he'd raised from a hatchling died.
Ralph had spent three hours in the garage finding the perfect shoebox, lining it carefully with layers of tissue paper and cotton balls so the bird looked like it was merely sleeping.
He'd dug the grave himself in the backyard under the lemon tree while Theo and I watched from the porch steps, eating popsicles.
And when the dirt covered the box, Ralph didn't just shed a few dignified tears.
He broke down, sobbing so hard his whole body shook.
Theo had put a hand on his shoulder. I'd handed him my popsicle, because I was twelve and that was the only comfort I knew how to offer. He took it, still crying, and ate the whole thing. That was how the three of us worked.
Used to.