“So now that we’re together, where are we, Chrissie?”
I lay my cheek back on his chest. “I don’t know.”
I can feel Alan’s stare, intense and indecipherable as it burns into me. Then, after several minutes, he leans in, capturing my lips and starts kissing me again.
~~~
I open my eyes and then shoot upright in bed. The stillness in the air makes reality cruelly inescapable. I’m alone in the condo. Alan is gone.
He left while I was sleeping without so much as a goodbye. Why would he do that?
Then, all the reasons it is better this way, one by one, flitter through my head. Nia. Neil. That it would hurt too much for me to watch him walk out my door.
I lie back down and curl around his pillow. It’s better this way. An ending we both needed. The dangling strings tied up. One last goodbye, understood, with the least amount of pain.
My eyes fix on an object on the nightstand. Alan’s silver lighter, and I recall that day in New York when he threw one at me and it hurt so much seeing it laying on the floor. I pick it up, an oversight, nothing more, but maybe not since I’m never sure of anything with Alan. I run my finger along its cool surface, feeling its coldness without bite. It was just an oversight, nothing more, but touching it hurts me, anyway.
CHAPTER TWELVE
I catch a plane for Santa Barbara instead of Seattle.
I exit the terminal and find Jack waiting at the curb in the drop-off loop. “Hey, Daddy. Thanks for picking me up.”
Jack smiles, taking my bag and putting a kiss on my cheek. “I was surprised when you called this morning. I thought you were going to Seattle with friends.”
I cringe internally. I’m almost twenty and I still fib to my dad about guys. How lame is that? Really lame, since it’s obvious Jack must know Neil is sort of living with me. Alan figured it out in two minutes.
“I’m still going to Seattle,” I say, climbing into the car as Jack puts my bag in the backseat. “I just wanted to come home for a few days.”
Jack climbs into the driver’s seat and turns on the ignition. “Everything all right?”
I tense. “Great, Daddy. Homesick, I guess.”
Jack smiles. “I miss having you around, too, baby girl. Get homesick any time you want to. I like having you here.”
We drive for a while and I stare out the window. Now that I’m here, it isn’t as easy as I thought it would be. And I suspect I was wrong thinking it would be easier in person instead of on the phone.
I take in a deep breath. “Daddy?”
“Yes, Chrissie?” he says with humorous exaggeration.
“Have I gotten any letters or anything at the house? Anything you’ve forgotten to give to me?”
Jack’s brows hitch up. “No. Are you expecting something?”
I search his face. “I don’t know. Maybe. I’ve been applying for internships for next year. I haven’t gotten any responses. I thought, maybe, I put the wrong address on the forms.”
I turn to look out the window again. Jeez, that sounded stupid.
Jack shakes his head. “We haven’t gotten anything for you here. But ask Maria. She always knows everything.”
Jack laughs and I force myself to laugh, too.
“So how’s Neil?”
“I don’t see him very much. He’s on the road a lot.”
“That’ll keep you out of trouble,” Jack says, in a way that makes my entire face color.
“God, Daddy.”
Jack laughs again.
“You doing OK at school?”
“Great. It’s been weird having Rene gone for the summer, but I think it’s been kind of good, us having a break from each other.”
Jack parks the car in our driveway. I climb out and wait while he retrieves my bag.
Inside the house, I ask, “Where’s Maria?”
Jack shrugs. “I don’t know. She’s home somewhere.”
I move down the hallway, poking my head into rooms, and then into the kitchen. OK, not here. I turn around and make my way down the far hallway, past my bedroom to the door at the end, and knock.
“Yes?” Maria calls.
“It’s Chrissie. Can I come in?”
The door opens and Maria smiles at me.
“Come, Chica.” She gestures me in with her arm. “I’m only resting. It’s hot today, but it is nice to see my girl.”
Maria closes the door and I sink on her bed, waiting until she sits in her chair.
“Maria? Have I gotten any letters, anything, you haven’t given to me?”
Maria stares and my entire body feels covered in needle pricks. I can tell, I can see it. Before she speaks it is on her face; it was her that kept Alan’s messages and letters from me.
I stand up, angry now. “Maria, answer me.”
Her face changes. “Oh, Chrissie...” and then the room is flooded in a rapid torrent of Spanish and English, the words too quickly spoken for me to fully understand. Something about protecting me. Something about me being like her own daughter. Something about Alan that I’m not even close to being able to translate.
Maria is crying, wringing her hands, worried and miserable.
“Please, stop talking,” I beg anxiously. “Why did you do this to me?”
“I love you, Chrissie. I did not want you hurt.”
“Well, you hurt me, Maria. More than you know,” I exclaim harshly.
“Señor Jack...”
“Don’t blame this on my father,” I say, cutting her off. “My dad would never have done this to me. He may not have wanted to give me the messages and letters, but he would have given them to me.”
She brushes at her tears and her face changes. “I kept the letters, Chrissie. I sent the gifts back. But I have the letters. I have them all. If you want them, the letters.”
She’s at her armoire, rummaging through things. She pulls out some kind of metal tin and hands it to me. It’s an old cookie tin, the kind we get fancy shortbread cookies in.
Seeing the tin makes me think of when I was little, watching Maria save everything—used tin foil, paper towels, half eaten meals—and that she is the only mother I’ve ever really known.
“I’m sorry I got really angry, Maria.”
She hands me the tin. “I did not think it good for you to give you this last year. So much was happening all at once. You and Señor Jack, both so unhappy.”
Her face is so sad that now all I can do is nod.
“Are you going to tell your father?” she asks.
I shake my head. “No, Maria.” I kiss her on the cheek. “I just wish you hadn’t done this.”
And before she can say anything else, I’m out the door toward my bedroom.
I sink on the bed, staring at the tin, afraid to open it. A year of my life in an old cookie tin. A year that cost me Alan forever. I’m not sure I should even look.
I lift off the lid. My eyes round. There are dozens of letters. I pick them up, my hands trembling. I start laying them on the bed by date. I wipe my nose, dripping with tears. I rip open the first letter and lay back on my bed.
I’m emotionally exhausted when I finish the last letter. They’re surprisingly long. Painfully loving. Achingly angry at times. In the last letter, a two page rant about what a bitch I am, below his name Alan still scribbled a phone number and wrote: I can’t breathe. I can’t work. I can’t think. Please, Chrissie, call me. Even if it’s only to tell me you’re OK.
New tears start and I didn’t think I had any more in me. I left New York. But nothing, not time, not even the angry letters Alan sometimes penned among the beautiful ones here, changed a thing.
I’m still in love with Alan, and he’s still in love with me. The only thing to change in a year, is that Alan is married and we are no longer possible.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Spring 1991…
I lie on my bed, trying to focus on my book, but I can’t.
Neil is reclined with his back against the footboard, sitting in his boxers, facing me. He’s listening to music on his Walkman. He’s doing nothing to disturb me, but I can’t concentrate.