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  Thick facial hair covering the lower half of his face, perfect caramel skin, light brown eyes; this man looks as delicious as I hear the food they serve here is.

  Jordan starts speaking loudly to him, now. But the man isn’t having it.

  “I saw the entire thing, sir. And I don’t appreciate you disrespecting my employee.” Jordan tries to speak but the man cuts him off. “I’m not going to ask you to leave, I’m telling you. Leave.”

  “I’ve never been so disrespected. I’d like to speak to the owner.”

  “I am the owner,” the man says, and Jordan bangs his fists on the table.

  Over their argument, I’m eyeing the owner, a smirk on my face. When he rolls his eyes to the sky, I snort a laugh and Jordan glares at me.

  While this man looks like a slice of perfection, I’m becoming increasingly embarrassed by Jordan’s righteous indignation.

  I came to end things with Jordan and since that seems to be accomplished, it’s time for me to go.

  “This has been fun and all . . .” I push the chair back and I’m a little unsteady on my feet. The owner, in an attempt to keep me from falling, grabs at me and manages to knock my soda over. All over the front of my new forest green wrap dress.

  Brown liquid drips from my dress, down to my toes, making me cringe at the feeling of moisture pooling in my strappy heeled sandals. My mouth is open, and I haven’t moved when the owner grabs a napkin from the table and starts to wipe at me. Right where my crotch is located.

  While I’d had a split-second fantasy about getting him close to that region, I hadn’t expected it so quickly.

  I burst out laughing. Jordan scoots back and tosses his napkin on the table. As he storms out, I wipe at the tears from my eyes.

  “What a gentleman,” I murmur, mirth still in my voice as I pull out my debit card.

  “No, no. You don’t have to,” I’m told as his hand touches mine to stop me. I look up and he’s giving me this lopsided little grin, a hint of an apology in his brown eyes.

  “I guess I can stop by Taco Bell or something on my way home. Thanks anyway.” I gather my things, grimacing at the feel of the damp material against my skin.

  “Why don’t you get cleaned up and I’ll bring something out?”

  I pause, weighing the options. It couldn’t hurt to stay in his company. Certainly didn’t want to walk around looking like I’d pissed myself.

  “You sure?” I turn back to face him and gauge his expression.

  His smile is friendly with a hint of flirtatiousness. Newly single me appreciates the way his eyes appreciate me.

  “Absolutely,” he answers easily. “My name’s Gavin.”

  He holds a hand out and I take it. Not much of a handshake as we size each other up. I pull mine away with a smile.

  “Gavin, huh? Nice name.”

  He holds my stare, eyes unblinking and lips twitching with a smile wanting to grow. I remember he’s waiting for my name.

  “Mine’s Denise.”

  “Never met a Denise before.”

  He places his hand on the back of the chair to brace himself.

  “I’m the only one that counts,” I tell him and take a seat on the chair he’s touching. I reach for the napkin Jordan discarded, dabbing at the stain, hoping it’ll at least dry soon.

  I hear him laugh as he walks away, and I wonder what the hell I’m getting myself into. My phone vibrates.

  Sabrina: Break up with the tool yet?

  Me: Yup. And met a hot guy while doing it.

  I set my phone down and reach for the menu just as Gavin returns with a fresh soda.

  “Take your time. Wave anyone over when you know what you want.”

  He walks away, and my phone vibrates again, interrupting the very inappropriate response sitting on my tongue at the sight of his ass.

  Sabrina: Well, shit. Look at you go.

  I wave the waitress over and ask her where Gavin went. When she points toward the back, I grab my things and head in that direction, despite the sputtering coming from her mouth and the stain still making my dress stick to my skin and panties underneath.

  I walk into the kitchen and he doesn’t seem the least bit surprised to see me.

  “I figured I’d come see what it was like back here instead.”

  “You’re more than welcome.” He pulls up a stool. “Have a seat.”

  There are pots and pans and food everywhere. Gavin mans the prepping, it seems, while the rest of the food simmers under the staff’s watchful eyes.

  “So . . . what’s the deal?”

  Gavin’s hands move methodically and without thought. His fingers grip the knife and he looks up at me, waiting for an answer.

  “With?”

  Sitting so close to the counter like this, I have unfettered access to his profile. There’s a bump on the bridge of his nose. I wonder if it’s genetics or if he was ever an adventurous little boy. Perhaps a confrontational young man?

  I wonder and more and more, I yearn for the knowledge.

  “The guy.”

  Lips pressed together, eyes squinted a little, he catches the way my features have displayed my curiosity.

  “It’s a compliment that you want to know.”

  He shrugs, and it does nothing to stop his working hands.

  “You’re here. I’m here. He’s not.”

  I’m quiet.

  “Is it not natural to wonder?” he asks.

  This time, I laugh.

  “I’m not entirely sure what’s natural,” I answer.

  “Whatever we’re doing. Who cares?”

  All while he cooks, we go back and forth, talking about anything that comes to mind. I’ve always enjoyed engaging in less than strategic conversations so I tell him as much.

  “You’re good at conversation,” he tells me as he sets a dish in front of me. “It’s attractive.”

  “Thanks,” I say before I start eating. After a few bites, I ask him what he’s eating.

  “Just some braised beef. It isn’t on the menu, but I get tired of eating the same thing every day.”

  “It looks really good.”

  I’m halfway done with my chicken and I’ve got my eyes on his plate.

  “I always want to try more than one dish. It gets me into trouble.”

  “I have a solution.” He smiles and swaps plates with me. “Now you can try both.”

  I’m all smiles as I dig in and oh, it was a great idea to switch meals. This man is a genius in the kitchen.

  We talk and talk and eat and before I know it, he’s opening a bottle of wine.

  It isn’t until the last of his staff is gone that I’m noticing just how empty this place is. I glance around, the wine glass almost at my lips, and offer him a smile. I start with a smile because he doesn’t know how this will end. But I think I might.

  I plan on giving my body to Gavin.

  And never seeing him again.

  “You look like you’re planning to take over the world,” he tells me as he pours more wine into the glass I’ve set down.

  “I’m looking for the best way to tell you that I want to have sex with you.”

  He takes what I say in stride, like this is completely normal, his smile easygoing and his eyes unflinching. I love his eyes. They’re dangerous for my purposes because I love them already and loving one part of him could give way to loving all of him.

  I only want to love him tonight.

  “Why rely on words?” He shrugs, and I push the glass away to hop on the counter. He wordlessly moves between my thighs.

  “Make it unforgettable,” I whisper before dipping down to kiss him. One press, two, and then another. He tastes as intoxicating as the wine.

  “Isn’t it already?” he asks and then he’s sliding the hands on my thighs up, up, up until I’m breathless. He avoids touching me where I expect him to, merely peeling my panties down. They get caught on one of my heels and he leaves it dangling there. “I doubt I’ll ever forget this.”

&n
bsp; I want to tell him to shut up, but I don’t have the chance because then his face is beneath my dress and I feel the same way he does. I won’t ever forget this even if life turns me into someone I barely recognize. I’m holding onto the way he feels the same way I’m holding onto the counter.

  Every hurt hidden in my body shifts to make room for the memories I’m making with Gavin. He feels so good and warm and perfectly made for this moment.

  When he looks up at me, those eyes burn holes in my armor. He stares like his eyes had always been looking for mine, and I know . . . fuck. I can tell that this, whatever this is, will kill this hard-hearted part of me if I give him anything more than tonight.

  Once I come, panting in the aftershocks, he heads to the restroom to clean up.

  And before I can second-guess my decision, I leave, only my empty glass showing that I was ever there.

  Some sort of twisted Cinderella.

  Broken people break things.

  You were shattered glass that I was hellbent on salvaging;

  Picking up the pieces and shielding them with my own soft flesh.

  You’ll hurt your hands holding onto something that doesn’t belong to you,

  My mother always said.

  I never understood

  Until I met you.

  Day 1 Post-Gavin

  My memories want to kill me. They have this need to pop up and make me want to sleep for the next few days while the wave of grief pulls me into its undertow.

  I wonder if he’s thinking about me. I wonder if he worries or if we’d gotten so far from happy that he only feels relief. I think about my value in his eyes and that I may find someone who’ll make me happy someday. My mind jumps forward and then backward again.

  You’ll be fine.

  Fuck him.

  . . . but you love him.

  But he doesn’t love you.

  Maybe . . .

  Gavin is everywhere. In my apartment, in my bed, in my fucking head.

  I have to keep myself from texting, wondering if he’s still here, in America.

  Wondering if there’s any way to fix this.

  He’d once told me that he felt like he’d been a broken person that I’d fixed.

  And now I was the broken one.

  I missed you more,

  The more I tried to move past you.

  You refused to be forgotten,

  And refused to be experienced.

  I’m in limbo;

  No peace in sight.

  Day 42 Post-Gavin

  I’m not going to spend another moment of my free time inside this fucking apartment. These walls are starting to feel like bars in a cell; my emotions, a warden, frowning down at me, cracking a whip, keeping me cowering in a ball in my bed.

  So, I get up. And I put on some leggings, a T-shirt, and the same cardigan I’ve been wearing all month. The one Sabrina and I picked out during my first outing after Gavin left me in my apartment alone.

  I inhale, so deeply that it hurts.

  After I lost the baby, I tell myself.

  Because it happened. It happened, and I had to move forward now.

  I finish putting my hair in a bun, wishing I had a car for once. I could go for a nice long drive.

  Instead, I walk outside and head toward the T, to South End, hoping that within the crowd of culture, I can find some sort of direction.

  There’s no lack of company once I get there. Voices and people dressed in their alt clothes with color in their hair, ready to offer opinions and ideas on a whim.

  There’s this creative charge in the air; people are selling jewelry and artwork in some stands and food in others.

  I’m alone but I’m far from lonely.

  Passing by the old warehouses that now house some of the most beautiful artwork in the world awakens something in me.

  I follow a small crowd into one of the warehouses, each step a decision to follow some sort of instinct. Or maybe nothing at all.

  After all, I’d planned and failed. Maybe it was time to see what life was like when I didn’t plan at all.

  There are areas showcasing different artists. The crowds are thinner in here and I feel like I can breathe for a moment. I head toward an area in the back corner.

  Several hues stick out to me and my love of naming colors is put to the test. I see mauve and rust, terracotta and azalea purple. But more than that, I see more shades of blue than I’d ever seen in my life.

  I’m drawn to one painting.

  At first glance, it’s a woman holding her infant, wrapped in a blue blanket. A woman, painted in hues of blue; the entire painting is in blue.

  And yet, the artist somehow makes it stand out beside its neighboring paintings, full of other colors.

  One would just see it as a woman and her child.

  But I saw more.

  In the lines of her face.

  In the silence of her baby; no life in its form.

  It could be sleeping. But something told me otherwise.

  “What do you think?” A voice behind me asks. My hand is over my wildly beating heart and the other has my purse clutched closely to me.

  “You scared the shit out of me,” I tell her with a slight chuckle. My eyes scan her, black boots, black stockings, floral dress, and blue hair. Not bright blue. More like the color of a basket of ripe blueberries.

  Perhaps admiral blue?

  “Well?”

  When she doesn’t offer an apology, just a patient smile, I glance around and see that we’re alone.

  “What do I think?” The last word of the question sounded a little louder than I intended. I look back at the work of art.

  It still speaks to me, though it’s much quieter with this woman watching us.

  “I . . . think it’s beautiful.”

  “And?”

  I press my lips together as a I make a thoughtful sound.

  Did I want to open old wounds with a complete stranger?

  Did I have anyone else willing to really listen?

  “It’s heartbreaking,” I say, telling myself that at the end of this, I’d likely never see her again anyway. “At first glance, it looks like a mother and her child. Simple. And maybe . . . a year ago, six months ago, I would’ve seen it as that and kept moving. But something about it seems . . .”

  “Familiar.” She supplies the word, sounding more like she was stating something she absolutely knew to be a fact than offering a suggestion in place of my uncertainty.

  My eyes cast downward, away from the strokes of beautiful blue in front of me.

  “Something about you seems familiar,” the woman behind me says. I can hear her step toward me and then I feel her body heat as she stands beside me.

  “I think you were meant to come here and maybe I was meant to meet you,” she whispers as she sinks down to sit at the bench just behind me.

  “Yeah? What makes you think that?” I sit beside her, crossing my ankles and placing my hands on my lap.

  I stare at her, marvel at the confidence in her words, even if she might be a nutcase. What’s the worst that could happen?

  Murder.

  Internally, I shove the idea away.

  “I wasn’t supposed to be here. But something told me to come.”

  She sits back, and I follow the movement. Relaxed, still surrounded by that air of quiet confidence.

  “Here?”

  “Yes,” she says as she looks around the room, stopping at each painting for a moment with a smile. She ends at the painting in front of us and starts rubbing at the bracelets on her wrists. They’re bangles, and they look like they have words engraved in them. “I lost a child once. So long ago that . . . it’s almost hard to remember what her kicks felt like.”

  Her words cause me to sit back.

  “You know what that’s like.” Again, that certainty. We’re strangers but only in the simple way. The way that we’ve never actually met; we don’t know each other’s names.

  But in the most transcendent way,
we’re kindred spirits. Our experiences have made it so.

  “You were a lot further along than I was,” I tell her. “But, yes. I know what that’s like.”

  “I never had anyone to tell me this . . . so I want to tell you. There is hope and things will get better. Not only is it a natural evolution but life hands us hard times to give us strength and to make sure we truly feel the good that’s going to come. And it’s going to come.” She brings my hands to her chest.

  “But when? When will I feel better?”

  “When you finally feel like you deserve to,” she tells me with a hint of laughter, as if it was that easy. But I had nothing else to base her words on, not knowing anyone else who’d dealt with what I had but on a much larger scale, from the sound of it.

  Losing a child plagues you, no matter how long you held them in your body or in your arms. Every milestone is met with a longing. Today, they would’ve been this age. Or I would’ve been this far along in my pregnancy.

  I would’ve been someone’s mother.

  If I hadn’t lost my child, maybe I wouldn’t feel so broken right now.

  Nothing is worse than your own body’s betrayal.

  It happened to me. And it still shocked the shit out of me when I think about it.

  “You mentioned you weren’t supposed to be here?” I ask on an exhale.

  She nods and leans her head toward me with a small smile.

  “I’m sure my husband’s looking for me as we speak.”

  “Well, don’t let me keep you,” I start and lean forward to get up. Her hand grips my arm and she shakes her head.

  “I don’t speak to strangers often. I like this. Just a moment more?”

  Her brown eyes are wide, and I nod, not being able to fight the fact that I liked it as well.

  We sit in silence for a moment, just staring at the painting in front of us and I wonder what the artist felt when she painted it. If she had any idea that two strangers would meet in front of it and connect in an honest and pure way.

  “I requested that I be displayed in the back room. My work is only for the people who wish to see beneath the surface,” she says, and the last sentence sounds like it’s more for herself than for me.