Chapter Twenty

It was awkward at first. When Jake was away I forgot how it was to be with him. It had been replaced by time with Alice. With Jake, it was easy, uncomplicated. He easily accepted the first night I wanted to spend alone at my dorm, where I had gone only a couple of times for fresh clothes during the previous week.

Was it too early to fall into his arms after the time with Alice? Alice. I kept thinking about her. I dreamt about her marble skin, her eyes, her smile. That night in my dream, she was wearing a white silky dress. We were on the beach, she was further away from me than I wanted. She kept walking, turning to look at me, smiling sadly, and walking further. I ran after her, but she always stayed the same distance away. I couldn't reach her. I woke up panting, the feeling of loss running in my veins.

Classes started again after the holidays and my job resumed. I had much less free time.

One evening, I was working on the assignment I needed to turn in a few days later. A slow fall of snow circled behind the window as I tried to focus my attention on the screen, when my phone started ringing. Miranda.

"Hey," I said.

"Hi, I'm outside of your dorm. Can I come in?" she asked, her voice unusually quiet.

"Yes, sure. Come on in."

In a few minutes, she knocked, and when I opened the door I froze. Miranda's eyes were red. Dark makeup was smudged around her eyes as huge tears rolled down her cheeks. She sniffed, a wet shaking sound, and I rushed to her, wrapping my arms around her, shielding her in a cocoon.

"What happened?" I whispered as she trembled in my hands.

She sighed but didn't say anything. I pulled her inside, closing the door behind us.

Miranda sat on the edge of my bed and dropped her head in her hands. I sat next to her and slowly rubbed her back.

"Brian doesn't want to be with me anymore," she said quietly.

"What?" I almost yelped. Out of all the things that could have happened that was the last I would have thought. "Tell me what happened, Miranda."

"We had this huge fight. It started stupidly: I asked him to fix a table for a week, he kept forgetting and I kept reminding. Today he was upset because one of his professors keeps bullying him and I didn't notice that he was upset," Miranda said and sniffed again, "and I told him angrily about the table, asked him, ‘How difficult can it be to fix it?'. And he thought that I was saying that he's stupid like his professor that keeps humiliating him always says. He went all quiet when I fumed and then he said, ‘Fix it yourself'. But I was beyond angry by that point. You know when you can't stop?"

She turned to me, tears still rolling, I nodded.

"I made a mistake. I hit where it hurt him most in that moment. I said that maybe the professor was right. Maybe he secretly agreed with the professor, since he kept allowing himself to be treated like that. You should have seen his face." Miranda's voice shattered. "I didn't mean it. I was just so angry. And he stood up and walked slowly to me. He said ‘If I'm so pathetic, from now on you can do everything by yourself,' and he turned and left."

Miranda inhaled sharply. "It's my mistake. I didn't mean to be cruel. It was like a violent ball rolled inside me and I could not stop it. He meant it, Emily. He's going to leave me."

I laced my arm around her shoulders and slowly rocked us as she cried. "The ones we love the most are the ones who hurt us the most, they know where to hit. He didn't mean it," I said.

"He did, you should have seen his disappointment," she whispered. "I tried to call him, but he turned off his phone. I texted him that I'm sorry, so, so sorry. I asked him not to leave me."

She fumbled in her bag and pulled out her phone. "The battery is dead," Miranda said, looking at the dark screen. "He didn't reply."

I looked at the charging port of her phone, it was different from my iPhone.

"I'm so sorry," I said quietly. "It's a fight, not a breakup, Miranda. You'll laugh at it in a few days."

"But why did he say what he said?"

"Because he was angry too, and it was a way to get back at you. Did you mean to hurt him?" I asked.

She looked up at me, her hair was pushed up into a ponytail, eyes brimming with tears, red spots on her cheeks. She shook her head. "No."

"And he didn't mean it. I know Brian, he didn't."

"But sometimes I'm so angry at him, sometimes I want to claw his eyes out, or mine, whatever. Sometimes he drives me mad, and I know I infuriate him occasionally, and I'm working on myself. I'm trying to be calm, but sometimes the bomb hits and we clash so hard …"

"That's what living together means," I said, smiling. "It can't be nice and sorted forever. We all have feelings, bad and good days, and fighting is a part of life. There is no happy couple in the world who never had a disagreement."

"Do you fight with Jake?" Miranda asked.

I shook my head. "It's too early for us, I guess, and we don't live together."

"Right," Miranda whispered.

She was calmer, her breathing even. I stood up and went to the tiny bathroom, retrieving makeup remover with cotton pads. When I returned to her, she was watching her dead brick of a phone. I soaked the pad with lavender-smelling remover and gently rubbed the black stains from her cheeks.

"Thank you," she whispered.

"Tea?" I asked.

She nodded, staring down at her empty hands.

I put an electric kettle on and poured green tea leaves from the set Alice had given me for Christmas into a glass teapot. I looked back at Miranda's drooping shoulders and fished my phone from my pocket.

She's with me, at my dorm.I texted Brian.

I barely had time to turn off the sound as the message pinged back. Coming

Miranda watched as leaves opened in the teapot when she finally emerged from her dark place.

"I didn't know you liked tea," she said.

"It's a gift from Alice," I explained.

Miranda didn't know about our intricate scheme, and it was not the time to tell her about it. She swirled the tea in her cup and took a sip. A slow tear was running down her cheek again.

I found her hand and squeezed it.

"Everything will be fine," I said, and it hurt me to see her barely nodding.

A loud knock interrupted the silence. I rushed to open the door. Brian was breathing fast, his jacket unzipped, worried eyes scanned the room and he almost ran to Miranda when he spotted her on my bed. Before she could say anything he made his way inside, dropped to his knees in front of her, and cradled her cheeks in his hands, kissing her gently.

"I'm sorry," she said quickly, her mouth inches from him.

"I didn't mean what I said, I won't allow you to be by yourself," Brian said, as his hands wrapped around her, as he ran his fingers over her body as if checking that she was alright.

Miranda kissed him, and her hands were restless too as she pressed him close. "I'm sorry," she whispered between kisses.

I turned away as my eyes watered. Even in such a perfectly matched couple as Miranda and Brian, there were blunders. There were always blunders in relationships. As I tried to give them some privacy, I kept wondering, what would be our blunders, in our triangle?

* * *

Alice and Jake were both silent for a couple of days, waiting for my move. I invited Jake for our usual walk in the park. We met under our usual lamp post, we drank our usual coffee, and he told me about his parents.

"They missed Alice so much. I had to lie and say that she was working. But they would understand. I hope one day you will meet them."

He truly believed that our trio could work.

"Tell me about them," I asked.

He looked at me, one eyebrow raised.

"They are strong together, and they do everything as one. The balance has been worked out over the years of marriage. They are faithful as far as I'm aware, even though they had their fair share of arguing when we were younger," he said.

"What did they argue about?"

"Nothing major really, I guess it was the point that it comes to in each marriage, even the strongest, when the other person starts to irritate you by simply existing. My dad had a difficult midlife crisis. For months he was angry at us, at Mom. And then, fed up with walking on tiptoes around him, she just exploded, which turned our house into a minefield for weeks. But it worked. They worked it out."

My mind wandered to Miranda and Brian, who were trying to build their relationship with honesty, who were almost always together, not without the small fights along the way. But they were working on it.

"Are you proud of them?" I asked.

"I love them. I'm proud of how they deal with all troubles now. How gracefully they move together. They set a good example, you know."

I nodded, still thinking that a lasting relationship needed constant work.

"Emily?" he asked and stopped. The soft light from a lamppost shone in his eyes and his hair stuck out of his hat. "Can I kiss you?"

"Yeah, sure, why are you asking?" I mumbled.

He stepped closer and gently lifted my face up. He drew the line of my upper lip with his finger, the touch making my heart race. Slowly, he erased inch after inch between us, and his lips touched mine. It was like a question, tender probing. His fingers slowly went to my neck, as I responded to his touch. Jake let out a shuddering breath when it clicked in me, when I clung to him, opening my lips to his, letting his tongue graze mine.

"Stay with me tonight," I whispered.

He did.

Back in the dorm Jake slowly undressed me, covering every inch of exposed skin in kisses, gently rubbing the skin between my legs. When he was inside, we moved slowly, as if it were a dance, the wall of pleasure mounting as I was under him, peaking.

He wrapped his hands around me, and I pressed my back to his stomach as we lay together afterward. Jake's breathing became calmer, slower. But I was looking at the opposite wall, barely allowing myself to think.

Something was wrong. It was different this time. Even as my body responded to the familiar touch, my mind was not there. And as I lay there, my heart was thundering in my chest, hoping that Jake was asleep.

After spending my time with Alice, after loving our days together, after the tenderness of our nights, I wanted to be with her. As an icy feeling spread inside me I understood one thing. It was awkward because the person who kissed me was not the person I craved. I needed Alice.

* * *

I was surrounded by books. My job in the bookstore brought in so little money, it mostly didn't make any sense to even turn up anymore. But I did what I loved. I loved sorting the books, the smell of a new copy when I flipped through it. For just a couple of hours a few days a week I organized shelves and bestsellers lists. There was even a rainbow section my manager let me organize by color.

That job made me forget about the daily life of an adult, that soon, so soon, I would need to find a real job, and stop playing around.

It made me calm, reminded me of the library I used to visit as a kid. The first time, I clutched Dad's hand as he walked me into a well-lit local library. I remembered how I dropped his hand when we reached the kids' section. So many books were stacked on the shelves that they were like mountains, hovering above me. It was my personal heaven. It still was, but I hadn't set foot in the library of my hometown for years.

My little job was a replacement for that library.

I checked the watch on my phone and moved to straighten the shelf at the front of the shop. It was still littered with Christmas glitter. As hard as I tried to wipe it away, the sparkling pieces of plastic clung to the floor, shelves, books, and my pants.

Something yellow glistened outside. A familiar yellow car was parking in front of the shop. I watched Alice maneuvering into the tight space with a master-like precision. But right after she shifted to park, she froze for a moment, looking at her hands on the wheel. She wasn't moving, and then suddenly she dropped her head into her hands, rubbing her temples. Something troubled her. I wanted to run to her, to ask why, what was the reason she looked so worried. Because watching her like that hurt.

I turned around and went to find Jill, my manager, and owner of the shop.

"Can I leave early today, please?" I asked.

She checked the time on an ancient-looking round clock mounted on the back wall. It was ten minutes "til the end of my shift.

"Sure, it's not like I pay you for all the hours you stay here late," she said.

True.

"Love you, Jill," I said as I hurried to collect my backpack and coat from the back office.

I rushed outside at the same moment Alice was climbing out of the car. Soft white snow was falling as I walked around the car. It danced in the air around Alice's face and she had to blink some snowflakes out of her eyelashes. Her eyes widened in surprise when she finally saw me. She didn't have time to say anything, because I draped my arms around her and found her lips with mine. Those lips I missed, lips I loved.

"Hi," I whispered.

"Hey," she was smiling. "Do you want to go for a ride with me?"

"I'd love to."

Alice beamed. Inside the car, our usual cups of cocoa stood in a holder. A small bag of marshmallows and candies was placed on the dashboard. Both Jake and Alice made a point of keeping me warm, always bringing some kind of hot drink.

It smelled perfect inside, sweet.

"I'm sorry I came, I'm not sure with all these new rules if I can see you whenever I want," she said. She put rules in air quotes.

"Don't say it like that. There are no rules, no schedules. This idea of me deciding when and who to see is draining. I don't want to decide. I just want to be a girlfriend. To whom her girlfriend makes surprises like showing up after her work," I smiled. "I'm happy you're here."

I made a move to kiss her, but it was impossible in the cramped car with steaming cups between us. So I gently stroked her cheek, her silky skin under my fingertips.

"I missed you. Having you all to myself for a few days was…" she said, her throat bobbing. "And now I can't even know if I can see you. It's difficult. I'm not like Jake. I'm not that open."

I knew that all along. She used to say that she was difficult in a relationship, but when there were only two of us, it was simple, like breathing. But that was just a few days, a few perfect days of holidays.

"You can see me anytime. Always. We'll figure it out, okay?" I said and wrapped my fingers around hers. Her hand was so warm against my skin. I lifted it and planted a kiss on her wrist, making her giggle. She was ticklish.

Alice held my gaze for a few long seconds, her thumb stroking my palm.

"Yes, okay, we'll figure it out."

She smiled, and every time she smiled, my heart melted. She didn't know one thing about me. That I was not like Jake either, I was like his sister.