Chapter 22
Twenty-Two
“Closure? It’s a myth.”
The song was still playing when I woke up.
Or maybe it was in my head, and it was raining outside?
Either way, I think I slept for three or maybe four hours, which I considered a personal success.
The bedsheets were tangled around my legs: I must have moved a lot, restless in half-sleep.
Maybe looking for something that wasn’t there anymore, but the ache deep within me was still there.
Getting out of bed felt like peeling myself from another life; the shirt clung to my skin like a ghost refusing to let go.
I didn’t take it off, just pulled a hoodie over it, tied my hair back in a semi-neat bun, stared at my own face in the mirror like I wasn’t sure who I was looking at.
A familiar feeling crept over me: free fallin’, twice, in one year, a ‘halo’ effect nestled in my veins.
The world kept turning, the coffee still brewed, and the buses still came; the office door creaked the same way it always had.
Kevin the Cactus had bloomed a tiny white flower overnight.
Tom greeted me like he always did, with a nod, a dry joke, and a coffee-stained ferry update.
I still had to show up at the job where the man who had broken my heart had a desk in a tiny room with glass walls and a keycard to the same break room.
I took the long route to my desk, past logistics, past maintenance, past reception.
I didn’t even glance at the IT hallway. My stomach turned at the thought of hearing his voice, of seeing that familiar lazy lean against the doorway.
I kept my eyes on the floor, on my inbox, and on anything but the edges of the room where he might be.
I was sweating, my skin was burning under my hoodie, so I took it off in an attempt to breathe—just me and David B.
When I finally made it to the kitchen for a much-needed coffee, I saw it.
Of course, he was there, back in his place and in that casual sprawl, one hand in his pocket, the other wrapped around a mug.
Talking to two marketing girls, the same ones who always giggled too loudly when he teased them.
The all-familiar show of confidence, innocent flirting, and effortless jokes, from a man who was broken.
Or perhaps not, he was finally free, relieved: of dealing with me, of sharing songs meant for someone else, not heartbroken anymore.
He saw me, and I didn’t look away in time.
Our eyes locked for a fraction of a second: mine were wide; his, stormless.
I tried to play cool and keep his gaze, that blue-eyed gaze that had melted my brain so many times before, but my body decided to do its own thing: my index finger and thumb rubbing against one another, slight tremble, ears burning, danger incoming.
His gaze dropped, just for a moment, to the T-shirt I was wearing, with a faint intake of breath, as if recognition or memory stirred, or maybe it stung, at least a little bit. Then he casually took a sip from his mug and said something to the girls that made them laugh again.
My chest throbbed like someone had pressed a bruise.
So I turned around and left the kitchen.
I didn’t need coffee that badly. Could it be fight or flight?
Just like the first time his eyes locked with mine, but back then it was a thrill—now it was self-preservation. Definitely flight, this time around.
Mia was already out there, sunglasses on, a croissant in one hand and a cup of something suspiciously strong-smelling in the other, and she looked up at me like she knew.
“Hey, you,” she said softly. I sat down beside her, eyes fixed on the horizon where Gabriola blurred into the sky.
“It would have been his birthday today,” she said plainly. “I baked a cake. Nanaimo bar on the bottom, strawberry cream on top—it’s horrible, he loved it.”
“I’d love to try it after work, and I’ll pretend to enjoy it with all my heart.” I bear-hugged Mia with all the strength left in me, tears pooling down my cheeks. “You want to hear something pathetic? It will cheer you up, I promise.”
“Yes. Please. Now. Especially now.”
“He almost broke me and treated me like another fling, and I’m wearing his T-shirt, like an idiot. Can’t help it, yet. Do you understand any of this?” I said.
“And you won’t,” she said. “For a while, and that’s okay, that’s the way that love goes.”
“I took the long way to avoid him, but it didn’t help—I still saw him. In the kitchen, back to his usual ways.” I laughed once, dry and small. “He looked at me like he didn’t know me or like he was hoping I wouldn’t see him.”
“Let’s eat and celebrate sadness with pastry. It won’t fix everything, but food is always the solution, well, except for my cake creation. Even Talia won’t touch it.”
I took a bite of the croissant. It was buttery and warm, and totally inappropriate for the situation.
“I’m so sorry,” she said then, voice quiet. “I should’ve warned you earlier, and I should’ve seen it coming.”
“No,” I whispered. “I wouldn’t have listened.”
She nodded. “Probably not.”
I let the silence hold between us. The wind moved Mia’s curls across my face, and she pushed them back gently, like a sister would.
“Is this the part,” I asked, “where you give me a plan on how to survive a slow-motion heartbreak?”
“Nope,” she said. “This is the part where we sit here as long as we need and remind each other that surviving is the plan. Girl, you made it through fire and shattered glass already, so I shouldn’t be the one giving misjudged advice to you.”
“Mia, you’re the one who had someone torn away from you, without your fault. My heartbreak is my own doing.”
“That’s not true. And I also want to say this,” she said.
“I know what he did was wrong, completely unjustifiable, and perverted in a way, for making you believe, making you fall, knowing your history. Perhaps he couldn’t stand to be alone or lonely, perhaps he felt so unlovable that he didn’t predict you could fall in love with him.
Or perhaps he was narcissistic enough to know what he was doing until it was too late. ”
“Do you have a point, Mia? Because my ribcage is about to cave.”
“But in his defense, I believe he truly saw something special in you. Otherwise, he would have gone home with a bunch of Ellas of this world every other day. Call this an attempt at dry humor at the wrong moment, but your stretched-out sports bra from school didn’t exactly scream diva.”
“Do you think he did? Go home with a bunch of Ellas when he was sleeping with me?” My hand was trembling at the thought.
“I honestly believe he didn’t. And today he’s not back to usual, believe me: he smells like a whisky distillery from a mile away.
Only he knows why or what his intentions were, but I don’t think he’s taking all this as lightly as he pretends to.
And you did look truly happy; you glowed, you were sexy as hell, even in your grey hoodie.
You reclaimed your strength and light—and that’s worth something.
For heaven’s sake, you dragged me to a shopping spree in the middle of a workday!
Even if it was—is—short-lived, and for wrong reasons: it worked. ”
“So why do I feel like this?”
“Because the heart wants what it wants. And it will want this for a while.”
I looked out over the terrace rail. “Do you think closure is a real thing? Like… that it exists? I wish for just one moment, one day, one minute with him, to make sense of it all, to breathe and move forward.”
Mia thought for a moment. Then shrugged.
“I think closure’s a myth. Closure and healing?
You never get it. There is no meeting in a coffee shop afterward, where you both sit down and magically “close” a chapter, and be fine with it.
You never are. There is always someone who loves more, who feels more, who has all the questions but no clear answers.
You have to do that coffee shop meeting with yourself.
Over and over again, before you catch up with time, and each painful memory turns into a fonder one, because there is no forgetting, either”.
I blinked hard, trying to comprehend the hard truth. My brain understood, yet my heart didn’t follow.
“But there are butter croissants,” she added, nudging me. “And people who love you. And photos on your doorstep reminding you who you were before all this.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“For the pastry?” she teased.
“For everything,” I replied, and meant it.
After I returned to my desk, I saw a familiar Post-it carefully placed in my notebook calendar.
“That one always looked better on you.”