Chapter Twenty-Seven

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Ellie

When Kieran disappeared around the corner, I made my way on unsteady legs to my place. On autopilot I made tea, patted Floyd's head, stared at the wall.

I'd done the right thing. The responsible thing.

I'd had love that didn't ask anything of me, wanted and adored me for who I was, not what I could do, and I'd denied it, devalued it, thrown it in the trash, because obligation mattered more.

Maybe I was dying. Every breath felt like it was squeezing through a smaller and smaller opening in my throat. The tea mug was hot in my hands, my un-air-conditioned cottage a tiny oven, but I was covered in goosebumps, my teeth chattering.

No. I didn't want this. I didn't want to be alone.

"Pick up, pick up, please pick up," I begged as Nicole's phone rang. Please don't have abandoned me, too.

"What's up?" Her distant voice laughed over loud reggaeton. "I'm at my cousin's birthday in Fremont."

"Help," I choked out. "Help me."

Her laugh evaporated. "What's wrong?"

I jammed my hand into my eyes, but the tears kept coming. "Everything," I sobbed. "I fucked everything up."

I waited for her to demand answers, but she only asked,"Where are you?" her voice all calm competence.

"Home," I choked out through my tight throat.

She yelled to someone that she was going. "Don't move," she said to me. "I'll be there in twenty."

"Fremont is thirty minutes away," I said, but she'd already hung up.

I WOKE UP the next morning and took an inventory of my body.

My eyes felt like they'd been buried in salt. My lips and nose were chapped from all the bawling I'd done on Nicole's shoulder. Worst of all was my chest, which felt like a sadistic surgeon had cut it open and hadn't bothered to put it back together again.

"She lives," Nicole said, standing by the screen with a glass of water. Her red Le Tigre T-shirt looked like she'd scrunched it into a ball and then put it on, and her hair was in a haphazard bun on top of her head.

"Maybe," I croaked.

"Take these," she said, coming forward and pressing two ibuprofen into my hand, "and drink this. Do you want food?"

I popped the pills in my mouth, chugged the water she offered, then shook my head. "I want to sleep more." When I was asleep, I wasn't thinking about the mess I'd made. "Wait, where did you sleep?"

She reached for the ceiling and groaned. "The loveseat. You need to take that piece of crap to the dump."

I winced as I watched my friend roll her shoulders and crack her neck. "I'm sorry," I said.

She paused midstretch. "Oh, fuck that, " she yelled. "You would do the same for me, anytime, anywhere, and you'd do it because you love me."

It was like I'd been wandering in the dark and run smack into a door. I grabbed hold of the hard certainty she offered and said, "I take it back, then. I love you."

She smiled tiredly, reaching out to pat my leg under the covers. "Good. You should."

I dozed for the rest of the morning, occasionally waking up when Nicole spoke softly on the phone. In Tagalog with her mom, then in English with Jay, beginning with Nicole apologizing for being an asshole, and then Kieran's name, anger turning into concern, then sadness.

At one point there was a light knock on the door.

"Is she all right?" I heard Ben ask when it opened. I couldn't see him, but he sounded like he was wringing his hands.

"No," Nicole answered, the single word like a guard dog's growl. "She's sleeping."

"Can I do anything?" he asked tentatively.

"I think you and Diane have done plenty," she said coolly.

A long pause. "This is my fault," he said, sounding twenty years older. "I need to make it up to her."

Another second of silence, then, "She'll tell you how when she's ready."

"I'm glad she has you," he said, and the door closed.

I buried my head under my pillow. I knew it wasn't all Ben's fault. Sure, he'd done a great ostrich impression, burying his head in the sand instead of noticing that Diane's grief had metastasized into something vicious. But why hadn't I said something sooner?

Because I thought love was conditional, that was why. I'd never gotten the enduring, forgiving love that parents are supposed to give, and it had left me without foundations, fragile and insecure. Without those foundations, I'd sacrifice everything to feel valued.

If I wanted to stop hurting, I had to stop hurting myself.

Now I heard more Tagalog, this time in person.

A minute later, Nicole leaned around the screen. "Rise and shine. Nanay delivered leftover arroz caldo for you." She slapped down a crumpled receipt on the quilt, ink scrawled across the back. "She says this is the recipe. Though you should test it, she probably ‘forgot' an ingredient."

I felt like the oldest, crappiest dishwashing sponge, raggedy and wrung out. "I'm still not hungry."

"Your sad brain is lying to you." She headed into the kitchen and grabbed a pot from the ceiling hooks.

"I'm not, honest. Leave it in the fridge."

I cringed when she banged the pot onto the stovetop and said, "God, why you do make it so fucking hard to do nice things for you?" She slopped the rice porridge into the pan and turned on the heat. "I want some now, so you can sit and watch me eat it once you're clean."

Clearly there was no reasoning with her.

When I came out after a tepid shower, she was sitting at the kitchen table with a steaming bowl and my first-ever recipe notebook.

"Why are you looking at that?"

She spooned arroz caldo into her mouth and turned the page, sparkling with silver-green ink from my favorite Gelly Roll pen. "I wanted to see where Nourish came from. Since you didn't lock them away, I assumed they were fair game."

Don't think of Kieran. Don't think of Kieran.

The rich smells of long-simmered chicken, onion, and garlic curled around us, and Nicole hummed with every mouthful. Ten seconds later, my stomach hissed in protest. "Can I taste it?"

Nicole pulled out a second spoon from under the placemat.

From the first spoonful, the warmth of the rice porridge soaked into my bones. It was care in a bowl, and the tears that surged up almost choked me.

"Ellie?" Her voice was as cozy and comforting as the stew.

No, I was tired of crying. "I like the ginger and the citrus in this," I managed.

She smiled. "Exactly. It's got to have the calamansi lime juice in it to make everything else sing. But Nanay swears it's all about the chicken."

I got my own bowl, and we ate in silence for a little while.

"Now that I've fed you," she said once I'd put my spoon down, "can we talk about what you're going to do?"

"Yeah." I pushed the bowl away. "I need to set boundaries with Tad and Diane."

"Honestly, both of them can fuck themselves. They've been using you as their dress-up doll for years."

I rubbed my eyes. "I don't know why it took me so long to see it."

"Because it started out fine," she said. "They were both mentoring you. But it also meant they were putting you in a little box, and when you tried to leave that box, they shoved you back inside it."

Exactly what Kieran's family had done to him.

"But there's another big thing. I'm sorry I wasn't paying closer attention." She took a deep breath. "Are you in love with Kieran?"

I buried my face in my hands. "I can look back and say yes. But he was so adamant that casual relationships were his thing, so I wouldn't let myself think about him seriously, and I didn't recognize it." The words bubbled up and overflowed as I let myself say everything in my heart. "Love was never about freedom for me. It's always been about taking care of other people. Being what they need. I thought what I had with Kieran was a vacation from reality."

Nicole reached out and rubbed my back. "It shouldn't be a vacation from reality to be genuinely happy, lady." She sighed. "Look, you're my best friend, but you're not the expert on love."

I looked up at her confused and a little offended. "I'm sorry, wasn't I married for years?"

"Yup, to the second man you'd ever dated. I know you and Max had this crazy instant connection, but most relationships, romantic and platonic, aren't just one moment and, bang, you're all the way in. They're a process."

I sat forward in my chair, listening closely. "Like cooking."

Nicole played with her spoon as she thought. "Yeah. Like, you and Max were this perfect peach you found at the farmers' market. It was all sweet and lush and easy."

"Because I was happy to do whatever he wanted," I said, finally seeing it clearly. He'd been so loving, but how easy would it have been to love someone who'd never said no? How easy had I found it to just give in, never voicing my needs, my wants? It had kept me safe.

Kieran had wanted to set me free, and I'd panicked.

"And he was gone before you got to the hard pit in the middle," Nicole said, then held up her spoon. "You and Kieran might be more like arroz caldo. It's all about time and effort, gently bringing everything together."

"But the results are more than what you started with," I said quietly. All those months in the kitchen working together, all the laughing and the debating and the kisses, fake and genuine. We'd been building something, until we'd hammered the foundation at its weakest point and brought everything crashing down.

"Yeah," Nicole said softly.

I rubbed my temples. "He was offering me everything, and I pushed it away because I was a coward. I made him feel like he'd never be good enough. No wonder he lashed out at me."

"Telling you your life sucks was a horrible thing for him to say, though. You hit each other where it'd hurt the most. But you have what it takes to heal each other, too."

I snorted. "Since when did you become Dear Prudence?"

"I don't do romance, but that doesn't mean I can't see what makes people tick. Do things make more sense now?" she asked carefully.

I rubbed my face, trying to drive away the exhaustion I felt. "As much as they ever will." I tried to get in touch with the willpower I'd buried for two decades. "I need to call Tad."

"Do you want me to go outside?"

I was trying to be brave, but I wasn't nearly there yet. "No, stay, please. I need moral support."

I dialed his number and put him on speakerphone. Nicole grabbed my hand and squeezed it.

"Good morning, Ellie," Tad said. "How are you doing?"

"I'm not great." I inhaled a very, very deep breath, as if oxygen would give me courage to do the right thing. "I'm calling because I need to withdraw from Whatever You Want ."

I could hear his confused blink through the phone. "Wait, you want to withdraw now ? Gabi just sent me the first pass. We have so much to do."

"I understand." Nicole squeezed my hand hard, and I said less tentatively, "But I thought about what you said, and my priorities have changed. I need to look after myself, which means leaving the project."

Tad paused. "Even though that means your name will be removed from the cover and you'll need to pay back your fee?"

"Correct."

"I'm very disappointed in you, Ellie," he said sternly. "This is a real let-down."

"I'm sorry," Nicole shook her head, but I put my finger up, "you feel that way." Nicole nodded. "But this is my decision. I need to focus on my life outside of work."

"Well, all I can say is that actions have consequences. I may be less quick to think of you for the next great project," Tad said.

How snide. He wasn't used to me refusing, and he didn't like it one bit. "Yes, they do," I said, anger freeing my tongue. "If I stay on this project, I will be the unhappiest I have ever been. It says a lot about our relationship that you care more about my compliance than my well-being."

A moment of silence. "Ellie, that's not true," he said, his voice defensive. "I do care about you as a person."

The words to reassure him that I'd be OK tried to push forward, but I wasn't going to make him feel better to my detriment. "I haven't felt cared for in a long time." I made myself sound businesslike. "I'll set up the payment today. You'll have my money back tomorrow. Goodbye, Tad."

Nicole put her hand up when I ended the call and I slapped it in a resounding high-five. "That was badass," she said. "I'm so proud of you. I wish we had champagne, but I'll have to make you coffee instead."

She hopped up and filled the teakettle with water, then put it on to boil and turned to face me, her arms folded. "Now, tell me again why it's so important that you buy your own place?"

Flippant words came to me first. Because I was a grown-up, because I was tired of living in other people's places. Then the pragmatic words: that I'd have a bigger space, that I could rent out the apartment as a studio. But I pushed all of those aside and said the truth instead. "My life has been so uncertain for so long. Owning my own house would make me feel safe for the first time in forever."

"But safety doesn't have to be about four walls." She smiled. "You can be your own home, Ellie. You can believe in yourself, and go out into the world knowing that whatever happens, you'll stand strong. Life has thrown so much bullshit at you, and you've kept on going."

"I'm the Energizer Bunny?"

"More like the Terminator."

I cracked up, and Nicole said through her laughter, "It's a superpower, babe. You've underestimated yourself."

Or I'd let other people tell me how valuable I was. I needed to stop doing that. "OK, next thing. I need to move. I still don't want to live with strangers, though."

She tilted her head. "You could live with me. My lease is up in January."

I stared at her. "Really?"

She threw up her hands. "Of course. I never asked you before because you were so invested in staying here. Now, I have an idea. How much money have you saved up?"

I opened my budget spreadsheet and showed her the thousands of dollars I'd put into the bank.

She whistled. "You should teach a budgeting class."

For a second, I felt my twelve-year-old self's embarrassment at grocery shopping with a whiny six-year-old and a fistful of coupons. "I wish I didn't know how to do this."

She nudged me. "Survivor. Be proud."

That's right. I knew what I had to do to keep going. "Go me for saving so much money."

"So why don't you spend it on yourself?"

I shook my head hard. "No, I want to save some. I effectively told Tad to screw himself. I'm going to need it."

"Well, save some, spend some." Nicole waggled her fingers in the air, and grinned like she was a mischievous fairy about to grant a wish. "Come on, what does your little heart desire?"

Kieran. The one thing money couldn't buy.

When was the last time I was happy all on my own? Free and light and easy? I closed my eyes and tasted salty frites, buttery pastry. "I want to go back to France for a few weeks," I said after a long pause. Go back to all my old haunts in Lyon and see new places, too. Provence, the Mediterranean, maybe over to the Alps.

She rubbed her hands together. "That's what I like to hear. I can block out some free time in spring."

I blinked. Of course a good life wasn't just about being happy on my own. I could be happy with someone else, partners in crime. "You want to come?" I asked shyly.

She nodded eagerly. "Of course. I want to see Lyon for myself. Who knows, maybe there's a book in it for us. What else?"

I rested my head on my hand. "Not as fun, but necessary. I need to go back to therapy." The apocalyptic meltdown of the last week wasn't going to fix itself. I clearly still had more demons to fight.

"Look at you, doing the work," Nicole said.

Thinking about it made me tired, so I just hmm ed in response.

She patted my back and stood up. "Great start." She checked her watch. "I'm going to go meet up with Jay, but my phone will be in my pocket."

"Aren't things still bad with you two?"

She slipped her jacket on and untucked her sheet of black hair from the collar. "We're figuring it out. It's not easy, but we're talking."

As she stood up and slung her bag over her shoulder, she asked, "When was the last time you looked at Nourish, line by line?"

My eyes flicked to my laptop. "I've glanced at it every once in a while, but it's been a year, maybe?"

"You know what I saw when I read through that notebook?"

"What?"

"You've always been so good at doing for other people. Remembering what they like, finding big and little ways to please them. But there's only hints of you."

I sighed. "Kieran said the same thing."

She half-smiled and shook her head. "I knew he wasn't a dummy. You're amazing, Ellie. You should tell your story."

She opened the door, and I said, "What you said earlier. That I make it hard for people to do nice things for me."

"Oh, that was bitchy. I'm sorry, lady."

"But it's true."

She came back, tugged me close, and kissed my forehead. "Yeah. You're defensive and stubborn as fuck. I won't stop trying, though. You're worth it. Bye, babe."

That was Nicole, serving up the brutal truth as casually as if it were a Big Mac.

I'd been such a coward with Kieran this whole time, except for that one heady moment back in July when I'd taken the running jump into the unknown and asked to come over.

I needed to make that leap for him now, but from a greater height.

I opened the dossier I'd written about him nine months ago and ran my pen down the screen until a name jumped out at me. After a swift Google for her address and a hunt for my fanciest stationery, I sat down and wrote in my best cursive:

Dear Mrs. Hutton …

T HE NEXT AFTERNOON , after I'd walked to the mailbox and handled my admin, I fired up my printer, pushed all the furniture back against the walls, and rolled up the rug. When Floyd investigated, I bribed him with treats and catnip and he curled up on the bed instead.

One section at a time, I laid out the proposal for Nourish . Sheet after sheet in neat rows until it made one huge white rectangle, dotted with smiling faces and plates heaped with food.

I knelt down and studied them. On the surface, all the recipes were good. But a lot of it wasn't me. Or it was me trying to make other people happy, so that they would think I was wonderful.

I started to divide the pages into two piles. I hated hard-boiled eggs, even though I'd made deviled ones for my mom, so that recipe was gone. The fettuccine Alfredo that Hank had asked for five birthday dinners in a row, but that I could only eat doused in hot sauce, gone.

And in all honesty, I wasn't as obsessed with chocolate as Max had been. If the Guittard chips were down, I'd happily never eat a flourless chocolate cake again. Gone.

I put aside some recipes to retest. I was a better cook now than I'd been before Max died. More creative. Not as cautious. Maybe there was a little more chaos in me than I realized.

When I finally looked up at the clock, it was after eight. My knees felt like they'd never straighten again.

I tapped together the rejected pages and carried the stack outside. I stacked logs and kindling in the fire pit the way Ben had taught me, crushed some of the paper, and crammed it into the gaps. When the fire burned strong, I fed it the remaining sheets one by one, words and pictures turning brilliant white, then dark.

When the last page was gone, I sat down on one of the rickety plastic chairs and stared into the roaring flames. I wasn't going to think about how the colors reminded me of Kieran's hair. I was going to think about phoenixes. I was going to think about what could be reborn.

"Can I join you?" Ben hovered outside the firelight, two open bottles of lager in one hand, his box of crackers in the other. He held them out, looking shy. "It's not much, but…"

"That's great, Aba. I was thirsty."

He handed me a beer and the crackers, then eased himself down. "Oy. We need to get better chairs. L' chaim."

"L' chaim." We tapped bottles, then sipped and crunched. I saw why he liked this combination so much, the salty-sweet crackers with the bite of lager.

"I don't know why I haven't lit a fire out here in so long," he finally said. "There are so many things I haven't done, since he died." After more silence, he said, "I owe you an apology."

My eyes caught his, huge and black in the firelight. "Aba, it wasn't just you."

He put his hand up. "Let me say this. Please."

I heard Nicole in my head and closed my mouth.

"I didn't understand how hard Diane was leaning on you. It's ridiculous. I know something about mental health, but I was blind. I let you down."

"It's fine," I said too fast. Wait. No. Stop. "No, it was really bad."

He sat forward, hands clasped around his beer bottle. "Can you tell me your side?"

I described the start of the late-night visits a year after Max's death, when everyone else had started to move on. The circular conversations that always, always ended in tears. "She's so unhappy, Ben. She needs real help."

"She will see someone. I promise you." He grabbed a stick and poked at the fire. After a moment, he said, "I want you to know that having you here stopped it from being any worse. I think the three of us would have drowned if we'd been on our own that first year, but together we stayed afloat. But just being afloat isn't good enough anymore. Especially not for you. We need to let you live your own life."

I stared into the fire, the beer bottle dangling from one hand. "I don't know what my own life would look like." I hadn't realized that the truth could feel so heavy.

"You never will if you stay. The world isn't going to come to you."

Kieran's face, twisted and angry and so, so hurt, wouldn't leave me. "What if no one ever loves me again?" I asked in a small voice, feeling lost in the dark woods. "What if I'm alone?"

He took my hand and squeezed it surprisingly hard. "You know what I thought when Max brought you home for that first dinner?"

My mouth turned up. "‘She's so young'?"

He snorted. "OK, some of that. You were just nineteen, for God's sake." His voice became earnest. "But I also thought, ‘There you are. My daughter.' That's why I asked you to call me Aba so fast. I saw your sweet face, saw you just as you were, and I knew ."

My sinuses ached and my eyes closed and I was going to cry. Again.

He reached out and patted my cheek, his eyes wet. "I've never thought differently in the last twelve years. You are magical."

Magical. Kieran had said that, too. I'd only let myself see the desire in his eyes, but there had been amazement there, too. Like I was beyond anything he'd ever wished for, ever dreamed.

"The joy and pride I feel when I watch you create good work, and care for your bandit cat, and laugh with Nicole and Kieran? It's boundless, sweetheart. Boundless. And if you ordered pizza every time we visited you, I would still love you with all my heart."

"I love you, too, Aba." I sniffled.

He leaned over to hug me, and I burrowed into his still-broad chest and his familiar papery smell.

"I'm going to move," I said when he let me go.

His head snapped up. "To where? Kieran's?"

I shook my head hard. "No. I messed that up." I put my hand up when his mouth opened. "I'm not ready to talk about it with you."

"Your life is your own, of course." He sighed. "Then the move?"

"I'll rent somewhere with Nicole. Not until January, though." I turned and looked at him. "I'm sorry I'm leaving."

He grabbed my chin lightly. "Don't be absurd. If you need help with anything, absolutely anything, tell me." His grin was Max's, wide and confident. "I mean, I'll hire movers instead of lifting boxes; a spring chicken I am not. But I'll help you as long as I'm breathing. Let me."

I exhaled in relief, and the concrete that had filled my chest since I'd blown everything up with Kieran cracked open.