The phone rings three times before her voicemail picks up.
I call her again, bending to pick up the crumpled lined paper inside the bin. This time my call goes straight to voicemail.
My hands shake as I unfold the paper as if it contains the answers I’m looking for. It’s probably nothing—a grocery list or supplies for the nursery—so I can’t quite understand what compels me to smooth it out and read the title at the top written in her familiar clear-cursive slant.Ten Things I Wish About You.
My eyes dart down the list, but the words seem to swim on the page, refusing to register—something about phone calls and being best friends.
I can’t process this right now. Not when all I want to do is search for her in every room and closet in the apartment, hoping this is just her torturing me for leaving so spontaneously.
I admit that springing my departure on her right after we’d made love was a little underhanded. I thought she’d be in a better mood to handle the news if I’d shown her how much I loved her, but maybe that wasn’t right.
Okay, it definitely wasn’t right. But she wouldn’t leave because of that, would she?
No. We’d talked after that; several times over the last three weeks, save for the past few days that I was on set in a remote location.
But I’d told her I’d be reachable soon; I told her I’d talk to her as soon as filming was over. And I made sure that if there was an emergency, she had the landline number for the makeshift production office. Someone would have tracked me down if she needed me sooner.
So, why wouldn’t she wait?
My mind filters through our recent conversations—mainly Nisha telling me that her morning sickness was getting worse by the day, that she could barely keep anything down. Unfortunately, with my insane schedule and the time difference,it was hard for us to have lengthy conversations. But I’d tried to be there for her emotionally the best I could, hadn’t I?
Our last time together, she’d admitted how lonely she felt here. She wasn’t happy with how many projects I’d taken on, but I thought she understood that this was the “growing phase”.
Actors waited their entire lives for the roles I was getting. I was still early in my career, and rejecting opportunities at this time would kill the momentum we’d worked so hard for me to build. I thought she knew that. I thought she believed in it . . . believed in me.
Crumbling the piece of paper again, I stuff it into my pocket and slam the back of my head against the wall in her closet, questions running rampant inside my mind.
“Fuck!”
My eyes prick as my brain works, trying to comprehend what’s happening.
This morning I got back to the mainland in Thailand and turned on my phone as soon as I had reception. My stomach dropped when I heard the panicked voicemail she left three days ago.
I tried calling her, to no avail, before packing my things and getting the hell out of there to get to her. Her broken words echoed inside my head the entire flight, and I fought to keep my thoughts from taking a dark turn. Because I knew that when I got to her, we would work it out.
Nothing was insurmountable when we were together.
It’s been that way since we were sixteen, since the week I moved in with Joe and Molly and met the most beautiful girl in school. At first, I thought my luck had peaked when they assigned me a locker next to hers. Then she actually talked to me, introduced me to her sister and her best friend, and encouraged me to join the theater class. Luck would have itthat we even ended up in the samedojang, learning taekwondo together.
Soon, she was unveiling little pieces of herself, telling me things she only told a few others. Because while the girl had befriended me, she was a quiet enigma, preferring to be the listener rather than the talker, the calm rather than the chaos.
I learned that her mom had died the year before, and Nisha used the mats in ourdojangto quiet some of the grief, practicing for hours on end. It was also because of her mom that her family was fluent in sign language, given her mom was deaf.
I learned the first thing she wanted to do when she turned eighteen was get her arm inked with vines of stars and flowers, that French toast was the answer for every meal, and that she had an inexplicable fear of helium balloons.
The last one dated back to when she and her twin had turned five. Apparently, she’d wandered into the dark hallway for the bedroom and found their birthday balloons floating near the ceiling. In her half-asleep mind, they’d turned into looming ghosts. Instead of making it to the bathroom, she’d peed her pants, and the fear embedded deep into her psyche.
Even now, Nisha couldn’t look at a helium balloon without trembling. And my wife—my fierce, indomitable wife—trembled at nothing.
With my thumb over another phone number, I rush out of the bathroom. I wait as the ring goes through to Sarina’s phone. When she doesn’t answer, I call Piper.
Again, no answer.
What the fuck?
Standing in the living room, I send off several text messages to Nisha, urging her to call me. But when I don’t receive her normal Read receipt after several minutes, I call her dad.
After Nisha and I moved to L.A., and Sarina married her pro-golfer husband, Suraj found a tech job that brought him from Boston to San Francisco to be closer to his daughters.
