She flips and turns away from me, giving me her back. “I’m not holding against you, Dom, but you won’t get off my case aboutdoing too much,” she says into the space of the room, “whenyouare the one who hadn’t been on vacation or let Frankie out of your sight forfive whole fucking years.”
I blink down at her. “What in the actual fuck?”
She shakes her head again, totally closed off now. “Can we drop it and just go to bed? I’mexhausted,” she says with a bite of sarcasm, “and I need to go to bed. Let me have thisone thingfor myself.”
I can’t read her tone. “We’re not going to bed angry like this?—”
“I’m not angry, Dom,” she says with finality. “I just want to go to sleep.”
I stare at her back, but she says nothing else. “I’m not comfortable with this, but fine. We’re talking about this in the morning.”
She gives me a grunt in return.
Fine, then. I get up and turn the lights off, climb into bed, and lay on my side. We’re only inches apart, but it’s a huge, yawning gap.
* * *
I sense something is wrong before I open my eyes.
I reach over and feel a cold bed. An empty bed.
I sit up and look towards the bathroom. The door is open, the lights are off.
I look around, and all of Lina’s things are gone. All of Lina is gone.
I sit there like an idiot for a few minutes, frozen and completely blindsided, staring at the door. Expecting her to just walk back through.
Because Lina isn’t dramatic like this. She doesn’t storm out of a room without having a mature conversation, like this is reality television. She doesn’t leave. She doesn’t bail.
Maybe she just needs some time.
So I get up, shower. Take my time. Keep my phone on the sink, on loud. I pick up the room a little bit, stretch the fitted sheet back over the corner of the mattress. I untie the soft fabric from the headboard, wondering if her wrists are okay and thinking I should have checked them.
After an hour or so, after compulsively checking my phone for the umpteenth time, I get up.
This anxiety and hurt, this hopelessness, feel familiar. Because I’ve done this before. Twice, in fact. And because I consider myself to be an expert, I know what needs to be done. I get my shit together, and I press forward. I do it for my daughter.
TWENTY-ONE
Lina
I’ve donea shit job at building New and Improved Real Life Lina, and I’m really fucking disappointed in myself.
Just two months ago, I told myself to do less. I got myself out of a relationship where I did it all. I was an assistant principal with less responsibility. I went on vacation for an entire week. I took an edible.
Today?
Dom gave me a harsh reminder of the truth. Of what I’ve refused to address. Of what’s really going on, and how I’ve failed myself. I’ve not only entered a new relationship, but have all butadopted a child. I’m theprincipalof anentire school. I don’t have an AP. I am quite literally doing it all. There is no more space for Lina, New and Improved or otherwise.
What is my fucking problem? Why do I keep doing this shit? Falling into the same trap over and over again?
I spend the rest of the day laying on the couch, resisting every urge I have to text Dom or go over to their apartment or open my work email or do anything but lie on this damn couch. Because I deserve just a few hours to myself, for myself. I force myself to watchBridgerton, but this season is not that great. The two main characters have the chemistry of a desk and its chair.
My phone rings, and my heart immediately leaps at the prospect of it being Dom, because of course he would be checking in on me after I left him like that, because that is peak patient and understanding Dom. Which kind of makes this whole thing difficult, because he is actually a Good Person, and I unfortunately have fallen in love with him and his daughter. But I just need a fucking second to myself right now.
It’s my mom, anyway. Who never calls me.
“Hey, Mai.”
