Coming Home To You

“What can I do for you?” she asked.

“Just come over.” It was all I could manage without crying.

Kate and I had met in the third grade, after one of the sadistic little boys in my class decided he liked the contents of my lunchbox more than his and attempted to lay claim to them. Fortunately for me, Kate’s innate sense of seeking justice for the underdog had kicked in early, and she came to my rescue. The freckle-faced little pipsqueak never even saw it coming. One minute, he was twisting my arm behind my back in an effort to persuade me of the merits of relinquishing my peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The next, he was flat on his back with a bloody nose and one hum-dinger of a black eye.

The mean right hook was a move she’d learned from one of her five older brothers, while her self-appointed role of school-ground superhero seemed an attempt to mirror the values that her parents had been trying to teach her. I’d always known she would pursue that fierce passion and channel it to do something important with her life; but, on that day, she was my guardian angel.

Over the next two decades, Kate and I took our cafeteria meeting and cemented our bond to become closer than the sisters we’d each always dreamed of having. My house became her house, her house became mine. Had we been able to occupy the exact same space at the exact same time, we would have been one person, and sometimes I think our parents forgot which kid belonged where.

We differed in so many ways that our friendship might have given other people pause. Not only in personality, but also in physicality. While I was small-boned and athletic, Kate was tall and regal, even as a child. My light brown curls were in direct opposition to the thick blonde mane that cascaded down her back like hair in an expensive shampoo commercial, my large green eyes like foliage to be watered in the wash of her impossibly bright blue ones. I maintained an “athletic” build, never managing to fill out my bras, while Kate could rock a 34C like nobody’s business.

When boys entered the picture, none was allowed access to the inner realm unless approved by the uninterested party and a rigorous battery of tests was passed. After high school, we moved in together and pursued our respective futures at local colleges instead of flitting off to far-flung universities that would strain both our finances and our relationship. Despite the fact that we knew life might eventually send us off in different directions, we were determined to walk the road side by side as long as we possibly could.

The year after graduation proved to be the beginning of our diverging paths. Kate enthusiastically signed on with Oxfam, while I fell into a job at an area accounting firm. She was active while I was complacent. She had a passion while I had a job, and I would have been lying if I said there wasn’t part of me that was more than just a little bit jealous that she knew what she wanted from life and wasn’t afraid to go after it.

Kate was everything I wanted to be when I grew up.

Just without the running off to third world, impoverished, and war-torn countries part.

I was a little too fond of indoor plumbing and other modern conveniences.

Kate had loved Paul the minute she met him, nicknaming him “Six” and telling everyone he was the sixth brother she’d never known she always wanted. Her work with Oxfam and various other programs kept her traveling, so she didn’t have much opportunity to spend time with us; but the time we did share, no one seemed out of place or ill at ease. Everyone fit together as seamlessly and easily as though they had known each other for years instead of the brief period that it truly had been. Even Paul’s best friend Sam had met with her approval, and I’d briefly entertained the thought that the two of them might one day end up together, making us all one big happy family. A relationship like that, though, would have needed more of a foundation than merely the week-long visit she’d had with us during the two years Paul and I had been together.

Despite the miles and the time apart, though, Kate and I had kept our friendship as strong as possible, never allowing contact to lapse—even when we had to resort to book-length letters sent through the slowly moving channels of regular mail. Paul’s death had been a devastating shock to Kate, as well, since the two of them had become close through their own exchange of letters.

And now, she was finally coming home.

Chapter 2

I woke the next morning to the sound of my alarm clock, a wretched, wrenching, jarring sound that seemed to be a cross between a school bell and a fire alarm. It was the first of my five alarms to go off, each set at three-minute intervals so that oversleeping was made nearly impossible.

I opened my eyes to glare at the glowing digital numbers and smacked the snooze button.

It was Saturday, not that it really made that much difference to me anymore. Saturdays were just another day to survive like all the rest.

I rolled out of bed, barely managing to escape landing in an ungraceful heap on the floor, all tangled up in my sheets. I hadn’t slept well last night, though that hardly proved different from any other night. There was a decided difference in things, though—I felt different. I felt tired of it.

I shuffled into the bathroom to grab my morning handful of vitamins and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I looked like death.

“Good morning, beautiful,” I said sarcastically to the unrecognizable face I saw staring back at me. I looked haggard. My skin was dull, my eyes were puffy, and I was desperately in need of a haircut. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d had one. What had happened to the woman Paul had fallen in love with? I wondered if maybe she had died with him.

I felt as though she had.

I felt as though I was an empty shell, completely unsure of what to do and who I was anymore.

I was still standing in front of the mirror, staring at my reflection but not really seeing anything, when the buzzer sounded. I was startled out of my near-catatonic state and propelled myself out of the bathroom, away from the image of the pathetic woman in the mirror.

“Yes?” I asked into the little white intercom box by my front door.

“It’s Kate,” it crackled back at me.

Two seconds later, she was at my door, crushing my bones as she hugged me.

“Let me look at you,” she said, taking my hands in hers and stepping back. “You look terrible, Zoë,” she clucked, shaking her head.

It was an understatement, to say the least.

“You wouldn’t exactly win any beauty contests, either,” I shot back, taking in her disheveled appearance.

And she wouldn’t have. Her blonde hair carried several days’ worth of wear and tear, pulled into a messy ponytail at the nape of her neck. Her normally bright, lively blue eyes were dulled by exhaustion, rimmed with dark smudges of mascara.

“Darn,” she laughed back, “and I even went to the trouble of buying mascara at the airport so I could look all gorgeous for my grand entrance. Girl, don’t get me started on how much they charge for a tube of Great Lash.”

“Next time, get the waterproof kind,” I advised soberly as I reached into one of the large red ceramic vases flanking the doorway and retrieved a fistful of Kleenex.

“Wow,” Kate laughed as she took a proffered tissue from me. “What else do you have in there?”

“Oh, you know, just the usual. Tissues, chocolate. Tequila.”

Her eyes widened. “Really?”

“No!” I burbled, wiping my nose.

I realized it was the first time I’d been able to laugh since Paul died. It felt good, though somehow strange after all these months without it.

But I felt guilty, too.

“Just tissues. I have them all over the place in case I need them. And I seem to need them a lot,” I said, my eyes welling up again.

Kate smiled sadly at me. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

Two words that meant so many things.

I nodded back, feeling my face start to crumple into a full-blown sob. I didn’t want to do this, didn’t want to cry any more over it. But here she was, finally—my best friend, my confidante, my sister from another mister.

“Can I tell you something, Zoë?” Kate asked.

We sat in the living room, me in my pajamas, a freshly showered Kate wrapped in one of my spare bathrobes. Having each devoured a large bowl of cereal, we were now drinking coffee in what seemed to be a futile effort to inject a little more energy into our tired bodies.

I took a long sip of coffee, eyeing her speculatively.

“Anything, Kate. You know that.”

She bit her lip and looked deep into her coffee cup, hesitant and trying to piece her words together carefully.

Even my best friend was tiptoeing around me now.

“Kate,” I said quietly. “Please don’t humor me. You’re the last person on earth who’s supposed to humor me. Don’t treat me like a damaged girl who has to be handled as though she’s made of glass. I’m so sick of that.”

She nodded, looking squarely at me.

“I think you need to move,” she said finally.

It hung in the air, heavy and dense like a fog, so quiet was the room when she spoke.

It was the last thing I had expected her to say.

I blinked at her.

“What?” I asked.

“I think you need to move,” she said again, reaching out to put her half-empty cup of coffee on the table next to her.

“Why?” I was still so surprised that I was only able to form one-word questions.

Why on earth would she think I needed to lose anything else?

“This apartment may be in your name, Zoë, but it was practically yours and Paul’s. This is the building you both lived in, this is the apartment where the two of you spent most of your time. And now, Paul is gone, and you just exist here. You need to find a new place to claim as yours, Zoë. Paul would want that.” She was looking at me now with pleading eyes, concern etched on her face as plainly as if it had been written there in ink.

I didn’t know what to say or even what to feel. Part of me thought she might be right, but the larger part of me wanted to lash out at her for wanting to take more away from me than what I’d already lost.

This was the last thing I had, one of the last ways I felt connected to Paul.

Was I really supposed to give that up?

And did she really think it was that simple? Could she really be so naïve as to think it was that easily solved? Was it possible that she could be that callous?

I just stared at her dumbly, thousands of things shooting though my mind, thousands of feelings running through me. It was almost like being electrocuted.

One of those rapid-fire feelings must have stopped long enough to take hold, because I was shaking my head wildly before I’d even registered that I was doing it.

I shot up from my place on the couch, moving as though it was on fire.

I felt as though it was on fire.

“Zoë,” Kate started, looking up at me as I stood there, motionless in front of the couch.

“No,” I protested. “No, Kate.” I shook my head. “Don’t tell me what Paul would have wanted.” I felt almost angry now.

She was my best friend, so how could she say something so thoughtless? She had no idea what Paul would or wouldn’t have wanted.

No one did. And no one would. How dare she try to tell me something and use Paul as a mechanizing method? He wasn’t something to be used as leverage.

Why the hell would she say something like that?

“Don’t be angry with me for saying it, Zoë. I know it’s not something that’s easy to hear, but I think this place might be keeping you trapped in your grief. You need to get out of here so that you can start to move on, start a healing process. It would be healthier for you.” She was speaking very quietly, no longer looking at me.

I felt my eyes widen.

“Don’t you dare come back here after a year away and spout psychological mumbo-jumbo at me, Kate. Don’t you dare. You can’t do that. You can’t just waltz back in and act like nothing’s changed, like you have all the answers to solve everyone’s problems. I know Paul’s gone, and I’m supposed to get on with my life. Has it crossed your mind at all that maybe it’s not quite so simple?” The pitch of my voice was increasing as I spoke, and I was on the verge of angry tears.

It was quite a change.

Angry tears felt very different from grief tears. They felt hot and good and…cleansing.

“I knew it. I knew you would be angry at me,” she said. “Admit it—you’re angry at me for not being here for you.”

She waited a beat for me to do something, to respond somehow.

“Come on, Zoë. I know you are. You have to be, and you have every right to be. I wasn’t here for you when you needed someone the most, and now I’m coming back and telling you to uproot yourself from the last place you feel somewhat stable. But this,” she spread her arms to gesture at the room, “this is not stable.”

She got up from the couch and moved toward me. She took my face in her hands and locked her eyes with mine.

“You lost something irreplaceable, and I have no idea how you feel. I’m not going to stand here and tell you that I do, because I have absolutely no clue. I hope I never have to feel what you’ve felt for the past nine months, and I wish I could erase it all so you never had to go through any of this. But I can’t. All I can do is say that I’m sorry, and I love you, and I want what’s best for you.”

Her sad eyes were piercing mine, searching for some hint that she was getting through to me.

“This can only destroy you if you let it, Zoë. Please don’t let it.” She looked on the verge of tears. “Please,” she said again.

I felt gripped by fear.

Where would I go if I didn’t live here?

I pulled away from her and turned to look out the window.

My window.

The window I rimmed in Christmas lights every year.

The window I always looked through to see if Paul’s truck was in its spot.

I didn’t think I could survive the process of finding somewhere new, sorting through all of the things in my apartment—all of the memories—and boxing them up.

Not yet. I wasn’t ready for that yet. Honestly, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be ready for that.

“I’d tell you to move in with me, but I don’t even have a place. I’m staying with my parents until it’s time for—” She stopped abruptly.

“Time for what, Kate?” I asked, whirling around to look at her.

I felt a knot form in my stomach at the sight of her pained expression, and I knew I wasn’t going to like what she had to say.

“I really didn’t want to have to tell you this yet. I wanted to have some time with you, to talk and catch up, let things settle. But I guess I’m going to have to say it now,” she sighed. “I’m taking a job in Atlanta next month. There’s a company up there that works closely with relief efforts in third world countries, and they’ve tapped me to be their director of research.”

It was something she’d always wanted to do, what she’d worked for as long as I could remember. But right now any happiness I felt for her was overshadowed by the feeling of absolute abandonment.

It was like a sucker-punch.

“What? A month?” I knew my voice was registering my displeasure, but I couldn’t help it.

She had just gotten here, and now she was telling me that she was leaving? How was I supposed to react to that? What had happened to being there for each other?

“I know, it’s very soon, but they needed me right away. They’re trying to get moving on some really big projects, and the research that I do is pivotal to their being able to get the funds they need.”

She looked excited, then seemed to remember that it meant leaving me.

Again.

I closed my eyes to keep the room from spinning out of control.

“I want to be happy for you, Kate. I really do,” I whispered, my eyes still closed. “But I can’t.” I felt the sting of tears that I didn’t want, felt my nose burn. “I feel so alone. And even though you’re here now, you’re not.”

There was nothing she could say to that, because she knew that it was true.

Chapter 3

It was late afternoon, a time seemingly shared by all citizens of the universe in their primal need for caffeine, and a typical Sunday in the city was no exception. The coffee house down the street from my apartment was packed to bursting, its clientele running the gamut from coffee house junkies to those whose relationship with coffee was a mere dalliance.

I would have fallen into the category of junkie, though my need was not so much to feed a caffeine addiction as it was for a haven.

Buzzing Beans had opened six months ago, three months after I’d lost Paul. It had become a place I could go without fear of remembering some conversation we’d had there or regular appearances together that made these people realize that I was only half of a pair.

Here, there was no Paul and Zoë.

There was simply Zoë, the sad looking woman with curly brown hair who came in practically every day and always ordered the same thing.

Zoë, who always seemed as though she only vaguely remembered what happy used to feel like.

Here, within the walls of Buzzing Beans, I had found a second home. Ray, proud owner and head bean-pusher, had even become a brotherly presence in my life. He watched over me without ever prying for details I wasn’t ready to give, offering me his own brand of comfort with each cup of coffee he served. My drink was always ready for me by the time I walked up to the register, and Ray always refused payment. Suffice it to say, his tip jar reaped the benefits.

I took Kate there that afternoon in an attempt to escape my apartment and the tension I felt so thickly gathered there. Since her arrival on my doorstep the day before, she’d spent practically every moment glued to my side, with the exception of a quick trip back to her parents’ house to drop off all her things and visit for a few hours. I knew that this was just her initial knee-jerk reaction to having been gone so long and her fear that I really was as fragile as everyone seemed to think.

I would have thought my best friend knew me better than that, that she would have had confidence enough in my survival skills to know that I would eventually get through this a much stronger, self-reliant woman.

But not even I had that confidence.

How could I, when I felt so broken?

In moments of clarity, I could recognize the fact that I had allowed myself to slip into a deep depression, that I needed to find some way out of it. But I had no idea how, other than spilling my guts in a therapist’s office for an hour every week or shoveling pills down my throat. Neither option was something I really wanted to have to explore.

“Hey, Zoë, who’s the pretty lady?” Ray asked, bouncing up on his toes as he stood behind the counter.

“Nice greeting,” I replied with a light edge of scolding. “This is my best friend, Kate. Kate, this is Ray.”

“Nice to meet you, Ray,” she said, offering him a sweet smile. “Zoë’s been singing your praises all day. And I can’t thank you enough for watching out for her while I was away.”

Kate’s smile, I noticed, seemed to grow even wider as she spoke. I hadn’t really been giving him nearly as many accolades as she was implying. True, I’d told her how great he’d been to me over the past few months and that he had become a self-appointed watchdog of sorts, but…

I flushed with embarrassment, hoping Ray wasn’t getting the wrong impression.

“No problem,” Ray replied, waving away Kate’s thanks. “I’ve heard a lot about you, too, Kate. It’s nice to finally have a face to put with the name, and hopefully I’ll see more of you before you leave…” He trailed off, looking at me.

“So, um, Ray,” Kate began, clearing her throat. “What’s good here?”

“Good?” he repeated, shaking his head in mock disgust. “We don’t do good here. Good is for sub-par, nameless-faceless-on-every-street-corner-in-the-world coffee shops.” He paused for dramatic effect. And possibly to catch his breath. “We do excellent.”

The rest of the exchange was a blur of drowned-out words and movements, an event I was only physically part of. It was the same way I lived most moments of my life lately, like being underwater in a pool and looking up at the people standing at the edge of it. You can hear talking and see images, but nothing makes complete sense.

“Zoë, did you hear that?”

I blinked rapidly, breaking through the surface of the water.

“What? I’m sorry,” I said, thinking I must have looked a complete idiot. I shook my head. “No, I missed what you said.”

Kate looked at me for a long moment, trying to get a read on me.

“Ray says he has a buddy who’s going to be out of the country for the next nine months and needs a house-sitter while he’s away.” Her eyes widened with excitement. “Isn’t that interesting?” she prompted.

Apparently, it was much more interesting to her than it was to me. Or I was just completely missing something here. How on earth was this relevant to me?

She continued, looking intently at me for some sign of comprehension. She was going to be sorely disappointed, though, because I wasn’t getting it even enough to fake that I was getting it.

“You know—take care of the place, live there with only utilities to pay. Of course, his stuff will basically all still be there. The whole point of this is that he doesn’t want to have to deal with the hassle of renters, but he also doesn’t want to have to worry about the house sitting vacant for so long.”

I was still looking at her quite blankly.

Clearly, I must still be missing something.

Ray apparently picked up on my confusion and took pity on me. He stroked his closely clipped, chestnut-colored beard and leaned conspiratorially close.

“I think she thinks you should consider doing him a favor and taking the worry of the house off his hands,” he whispered loudly.

I raised an eyebrow and looked from Ray to Kate and back again to Ray.

“You two are both nuts,” I said, shaking my head in disbelief. “Insane. This guy’s never met me. How would me being in his house be ‘doing him a favor?’” I asked, making air quotes with my fingers.

Ray straightened and pulled his most serious face. It was almost comical.

“Neil and I have been friends since we were ten, and he takes my opinion of people very seriously. If I told him I found someone I thought would be a perfect person to have staying in his house, believe me—he wouldn’t think twice about letting you stay there. He’s got plenty of other worries right now just trying to get all of his stuff together to go. Taking this off his shoulders would be a big relief to him.” He smiled at me. “Besides, then I’d be able to keep a closer eye on you after Kate here leaves to go live up in Hot-lanta.”

I turned to Kate and gave her my best withering look.

“What’s this, you know him for five minutes and already you’ve got him brainwashed to be on your side?”

My death stare moved to Ray.

“What happened to loyalty?” I asked, feigning disgust and shaking my head.

I felt inexplicably as if I might be staring in the face of an unexpected opportunity, and there was an undercurrent of excitement running through me. But it had been so long since I’d felt anything of the sort that it was almost a foreign sensation.

Unidentifiable, confusing.

A little bit scary, even.

Ray shot me a wounded look.

“I am loyal to a fault. To. A. Fault,” he said solemnly. “In fact, Loyalty is my middle name. I just happen to think that Kate here is absolutely right, and you need to move.”

His head moved up and down in a slow nod, his dark hair flopping into his eyes.