CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE The City Without Andre
Los Angeles had always seemed too large for accidental loneliness.
There were too many people, too many restaurants, too many freeways carrying lives in every direction. Yet after Andre left, Maya began seeing absence everywhere.
They had a taco place in Mid-City.A bookstore in Pasadena.A bench near the lake at Kenneth Hahn Park where
Andre once spent forty minutes explaining why a bridge railing was badly designed.
A hardware store in West Adams where they argued over cabinet handles for a house they never bought.Maya did not avoid those places forever.Dr. Brooks encouraged her to reclaim them.
"The city didn't break up with you," she said.Maya rolled her eyes.
"Do therapists take a class in annoying metaphors?
""Several."So Maya returned.She ate tacos alone and discovered they were still good.She bought a book in Pasadena and did not cry.She sat on the bench by the lake and watched ducks move across the water.Each time, memory rose and then settled.Six months became nine.Jalen remained gone too.Once, Maya saw a photograph of him on a sports website standing beside a famous basketball player at his studio.
He looked healthy, successful, smiling.The image did not make her want him back.That realization felt like freedom.She still wished him well from a distance.She also stopped confusing forgiveness with access.Work became bigger in a good way.
Maya's agency promoted her to executive creative director.
She led a national campaign that won an industry award.
For the first time, success did not feel like something she wanted to immediately report to Andre or use to prove something to Jalen.It belonged to her.On the anniversary of Andre leaving the townhouse, Maya went to dinner with Tasha.
"I thought you'd be sad today," Tasha said.
"I am. A little.""You don't look like you want to crawl under the table.
Progress."Maya smiled."I still love him.
"Tasha nodded."But it doesn't feel like an emergency anymore.
""That's progress too."Maya stirred her drink.
"Sometimes I wonder if he met someone.""Of course you do.
""And sometimes I hope he did. Then I hate myself for hoping he didn't."Tasha laughed softly.
"Human beings are very inconvenient.""Extremely.
"Maya looked around the restaurant.A couple at the next table was celebrating an anniversary.
The woman wore a diamond ring that caught the candlelight each time she moved her hand.Maya thought of the house listing with the lemon tree.She no longer kept it.One night months ago, she had finally thrown the printed page away.Not because she stopped wishing things had gone differently.Because she accepted that a future imagined is not a future owed.