10. Anika
— ? —
Anika
He knocked at exactly nine o’clock.
I was standing three feet from the door, coffee in hand, watching the shadow of his feet through the gap at the bottom. He’d been out there for at least ten minutes already, probably gathering his courage. Or rehearsing whatever speech he’d prepared.
I didn’t open the door.
The knock came again. More confident this time.
I took a sip of my coffee.
“Anika.” His voice was muffled through the wood. “I know you’re in there. I can see the light.”
I didn’t respond.
“I drove myself again. Didn’t hit anything this time. I thought you’d want to know.”
Still nothing from me.
“I’m wearing different shoes. Sneakers. They’re not even designer. I bought them cheaply at a regular store. Like a normal person. It only cost me three hundred bucks.”
I bit my lip to keep from laughing. I almost called out to tell him three hundred dollars for sneakers isn’t cheap.
“I stood in line, Anika. There was a line. I waited in it. For twenty minutes. Behind a woman who was arguing about a coupon.”
The silence stretched. I heard him shift his weight, the soft thud of his back hitting the door.
“I’ll wait,” he said quietly. “However long it takes.”
I went back to my painting.
At ten o’clock, I opened the door.
He scrambled to his feet so fast he almost fell over. His hair was disheveled, his jaw shadowed with stubble, and he was indeed wearing white sneakers. They looked wrong on him, like a costume he hadn’t quite figured out how to wear.
“You’re still here,” I said.
“I never left.”
“I know. I could hear you breathing.”
He almost smiled. Almost. “Can I come in?”
I stayed in the doorway, blocking his path. “You said two weeks.”
“I did.”
“I said I set the rules.”
“You already…did?”
“Rule one.” I leaned against the doorframe and watched his face. “You don’t get to come inside until you answer a question.”
Wariness showed in his expression. “What question?”
“When’s my birthday?”
He opened his mouth.
“March,” he said.
“What day in March?”
The silence that followed was its own kind of answer.
I watched him search his memory. Watched him try to pull the number from whatever filing cabinet he’d stored it in, somewhere between quarterly earnings reports and merger deadlines. Watched him come up empty.
“I…” He swallowed. “I know it’s in March. The middle week of March. Either the sixteenth or seventeenth. Giovani always…”
“Giovani always handled it. Yes. I’m aware.” I kept my voice steady, even though something inside me was cracking. “The fifteenth. March fifteenth. We’ve been together for years. And you don’t know my birthday.”
“Anika…”
“One more question.”
He looked like a man facing a firing squad.
“We just spent a week on our wedding anniversary. Or we were supposed to, before you skipped the actual night for a business dinner. So tell me the other one.”
“The other what?”
“The other anniversary. The day you asked me to be yours. Before the ring. Before the money. When we were nobody.”
“October fourteenth,” he said immediately.
For a second, hope flickered in his eyes. Like he’d redeemed himself.
“That’s the proposal,” I said. “There was a photographer hiding in the bushes and a reminder in your phone. I saw it pop up every year. October fourteenth, Proposal Anniversary, send flowers. Very romantic.”
The hope died.
“I’m asking about the day that was just ours. The day that didn’t have a photographer or a party planner or a Giovani to remind you. The day when it was just you and me and the beginning of everything.”
His face went pale.
He didn’t know.
I could see him searching. Could see him rifling through memories, trying to find something that had clearly been filed away under unimportant, not billable, doesn’t require follow-up.
“I don’t…” His voice cracked. “I don’t remember.”
“April third.”
The words settled between us.
“We were in college. It rained all day. My umbrella broke outside the library, one of those cheap ones from the drugstore, and I was standing there fighting with it like an idiot. You walked up and gave me your jacket. The brown one with the coffee stain on the sleeve. And you asked me to be your girlfriend.”
“The library,” he whispered. “I remember the library.”
“I said yes before you finished the sentence. I was so nervous I could barely breathe, and you were grinning like you’d won the lottery. We went to that coffee shop on Ninth, the one that closed years ago, and you held my hand across the table even though your palms were sweating.”
His eyes were wet.
“That was the day, Neil. That was the day that mattered. Not the proposal with the hidden photographer. Not the wedding with the guest list full of strangers. The day in the rain when you gave me your jacket and I said yes.”
“April third,” he repeated, like he was trying to burn it into his memory.
“You forgot it. You forgot the day we started.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I know you are.” I started to close the door. “Come back tomorrow. Know the answer.”
“Wait.” He stepped forward, his hand catching the edge of the door. “Anika, please. Give me another chance. I can learn this. I can remember.”
“You had years to remember. You had it in your head once, and you let it go because it wasn’t important enough to keep. But I bet you can name the day and the hour when you first signed a multi-million dollar deal.”
“It was important. It is important. I just… I let other things crowd it out. I let work and deals and…” He trailed off, looking lost. “I don’t have an excuse. There isn’t one.”
“No. There isn’t.”
I pushed the door closed. His hand dropped away.
“Tomorrow,” I said through the wood. “Nine a.m. And Neil?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t just memorize the date. Understand why it matters.”
I slid the deadbolt home.
Then I walked to the couch, sat down, and cried.
He’d forgotten the beginning. He’d forgotten the day we started.
How do you rebuild something when the foundation has been erased?
After a while, I got up and went to the door. Pressed my eye to the peephole.
He was still there.
Sitting on the floor of the hallway, his back against the wall opposite my door. His knees were drawn up, his head bowed. He wasn’t looking at his phone, wasn’t doing anything. Just sitting there.
I watched him for a long time.
At noon, Anwesha came up the stairs with groceries. I could hear her outside. She stopped when she saw him.
“Mr. Franco.”
“Ms. Chatterjee.”
“You’re blocking the hallway.”
“I’m aware.”
She looked at my door, then back at him. “She’s not going to let you in today.”
“I know.”
“So why are you still here?”
He looked up at her, and even through the peephole, I could see the rawness in his expression. The man who commanded boardrooms and intimidated CEOs, sitting on a dirty hallway floor like a supplicant.
“Because leaving feels like giving up,” he said. “And I’m not ready to give up.”
Anwesha studied him for a long moment. Then she stepped over his legs and opened the door.
“There’s a bathroom on the next floor,” she said. “In case you need it.”
“Thank you.”
At seven, the building super came up to investigate reports of a strange man loitering in the hallway. I heard Neil explain, calmly and without embarrassment, that he was waiting for his wife. The super looked at my door, and shrugged.
“Don’t block the fire exits,” he said.
“I won’t.”
At nine, I turned off the lights and went to bed. Before I did, I checked the peephole one last time.
He was still there.
His head was tipped back against the wall, his eyes closed. Not sleeping, I didn’t think. Just existing. Day one of fourteen.
He hadn’t earned the doorway.
But he hadn’t left either.