Chapter Twenty-Seven
I let the door slam behind me as I enter my apartment. I want Sonya to know I’m home. I want her to burst out of her room like a cuckoo clock.
Like I hoped, her door handle clicks and she pads into the living room.
“Excuse me, where have you been for the last two days?” she asks, raising an eyebrow. “And in the same dress I last saw you in?”
I drop my bag on the couch and grab an ice pack from the freezer.
“Is Jamie here?” I collapse onto the futon, ice pack resting on my chest.
“No dodging the question. You’ve been gone since I snuck Henry on the roof. That was two days ago. Are you upset?”
“No.” I cover my face with my hands and burst into hysterical laughter. “I’m definitely not upset.”
“Bennet, did you finally do it?” she squeals. I laugh even harder. It’s a nervous laughter, but I can’t stop it. “Bennet! Oh my god!”
“It’s so ridiculous.” I wipe a tear from my eye.
“Did you sleep together?”
I peek out from between my fingers, unable to hide the shit-eating grin spreading across my mouth. “Maybe.”
“I’m so proud I could cry.” She curls up on the couch next to me. “I’ve never seen you like this. At least not since Sam.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know.” She folds her long hair up into a twist and fans her neck. “Giddy.”
I know she’s right. I’ve been in a committed relationship with my misery ever since I moved here, and Henry has made me a mushy pile of hope.
“Yeah.” I smile. “Maybe.”
“I’m serious. Ever since he came into your life you’ve been laughing more. And you’ve come out of your shell.”
I shift the ice pack to the other side of my chest.
“Is it anti-feminist?” I ask genuinely.
“What?”
“That a man makes me this happy?”
She snorts and rolls her eyes. “Jamie makes me that happy, and she is definitely not a man.”
I bite my lip. “It feels…wrong.”
She kicks her feet over my lap. “I think it’s just love.”
“I didn’t say anything about love.”
“You didn’t have to.” She smiles like a demon.
I cringe. “Gross.”
“I know. It’s the worst.”
“Henry just can’t be my only source of happiness. I can’t rely on him for that.”
“Think of it this way.” She crosses her ankles in my lap. “Imagine your soul is made up of a bundle of matches. They’re not on fire or anything. They’re just sitting there. Do you follow?”
“So far.”
“Each one represents something in your life. A match for love, a match for family, a match for career, and all the other stuff that fulfills us. Still with me?”
“Mm-hm.”
“You’ve been pouring water over your matches to keep them in perfect order because fire is scary and you can get burned, but matches don’t want to be wet, they want to be on fire. All it takes is one thing to happen, one tiny match gets lit, and it’s like a domino effect, lighting all the other matches. All you have to do is light that first match.”
I scrunch my face and immediately have to stifle a smile at the memory of Henry calling me out on my scrunchy faces.
“Henry could be the thing that lights you up,” Sonya continues. “And so could a million other things. But you have to stop pouring water on your matches or nothing will ever happen, and you’ll stay in a cycle of sadness until you die alone sitting in your own waste.”
I cringe. “Horrifying. When did you come up with that analogy?”
“One hundred percent off the cuff. You impressed?”
“A little bit, yeah.”
She swings her legs off my lap and stands. “I’m going to visit Jamie at the coffee shop.” She grabs her purse from a hook by the door. “Think about it, okay? Light a match.”
“Tell Jamie I say hi.”
“Can I tell her you finally fucked the hot guy you’ve been flirting with since May?” she shouts back at me from the hallway.
“Sonya, volume!” The door slams before she can respond.
I open the freezer door and stick my head in. Matches burn bright, sure, but don’t they also snuff out quickly? What happens then?
The past still looms over my life, a shadow I can’t cast off, even with Henry’s light. I could lose him at any moment. After all, isn’t that what I do? Push people away? Look for what could go wrong? Didn’t I do that with Sam? With Andy? With Sonya and Jamie?
I know I want to be happy. I know that deep down, every fiber of my being wants to experience good things again, wants to love again. And yet. And yet there’s something stopping me from giving in to it all. Something messed up in my brain chemistry that focuses on the hurt and the pain. As if I don’t deserve to live any other way.
I crawl into my bed, my clothes smelling like Henry’s detergent, and I try not to think of the million ways I might fuck this up.