We threw away the old couch and replaced it with something brand-new and bright from Ikea.
The first new couch for both of us.
I’d be lying if I said we both didn’t tear up a little bit.
It wasn’t that it cost much at all—in fact, we’d lucked out and found it on sale—but both of us had grown up surrounded by such darkness.
That new couch felt like a breath of fresh air.
We even picked up a few things for the nursery, a tiny room off of Luce’s that was just big enough for a crib and changing table. It didn’t have a window, but it looked pretty cute after we put a soft shade of yellow paint on the walls and freshened up the old white trim and door.
But even on the nights I collapsed into bed, exhausted and painted with every color under the rainbow, still, the memory of his hands discovering the contours of my body clung to the edges of my thoughts.
Some nights, I woke breathing in the aroma of incense and leather, convinced he was in the room with me.
Convinced he’d come back.
His arms embracing me, bodies dancing and sweaty, hands crawling between my thighs and begging for release.
And make no mistake about it, I hated that I missed him.
Hated that he still had control over me, even all these months later.
I spun myself into a frenzy, resenting him and lusting after him, chasing his memory and then running from it. Coming to terms with letting him go, though that’d been my plan all along, even if the tragedy at St. Mike’s hadn’t happened.
Still, I’d become so desperate to escape the memories of our time in this place that I’d begun fantasizing about leaving. More than a few times I’d Googled organizations that accepted volunteers in faraway places—worlds with struggling economies or recovering from war or famine. Determined to aim high, for a few weeks I even floated the idea of working at a school for girls in Africa. Surely, they needed teachers at those schools Oprah was opening. I wasn’t exactly a teacher by trade, but I’d be the best damn teaching assistant they’d ever seen.
I only had to get myself there.
But taking money out of the precious emergency fund Luce and I had worked to build felt like the most selfish move I could make, and what was I complaining about anyway? I had a great job. The truth was, I was underqualified, but something in the one-on-one interview had convinced them I was the right girl. And I wanted to make them proud, which did not include leaving exactly four months after being hired because I was justmissingsomething.
And it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out it wasn’t even what I was missing, but what I was craving.
An escape from the heartbreak.
His heartbreak.
His leaving.
A faint voice whispered in the quiet moments that chasing Bastien was weak, disrespectful of the calling he’d chosen. But the longer time wore on, the wider the crack in my heart grew, cleaving me open and leaving me raw and exposed. That was the thing about heartbreak—left untended, it bloomed like a black dahlia, crushing out the sunlight with all its darkness.
Something Bastien had said once in Mass clung to the edges of my psyche, fighting for dominance with my logical mind.
Love is war for some; it’s only in fighting for it that we can be sure we truly love something.
