I keep my eyes trained on my shoes when he and Gabe emerge a few minutes later to get in their car and drive away, and then Monika finally lets me back into the bookstore to grab my things. I head towards the register with blurry eyes and eventually give up on trying to wipe away all the tears because there are simply too many of them to keep up with.
For all intents and purposes, this was a victory. I finally got them to accept my decision to keep my distance. They will be safe now, and their baby too. I know it in my bones. And yet, there is no pleasure in this moment. The triumph, if you could even call it that, is short-lived; quickly replaced by the chasm of emptiness that now stretches out before me.
Scott and Gabe were the only sources of light in my life, and I just extinguished them for good.
Wait.
Wait.
Wait.
The word repeats in my head, but even if I had the guts to say it out loud, they wouldn’t hear me, because they are gone.
They have finally left me alone, just like I asked them to.
The weight of my decision, of my curse, makes my legs give out just as I reach down to get my purse, and the ground rushes up to meet my face. By some miracle, my hands react at the last second to stop me from doing a faceplant into the hardwood floor, signaling that there is at least some survival instinct left in me despite how worthless my life is now that they are no longer a part of it.
Monika rushes over and kneels to throw both arms around me like she is shielding me from imminent danger.
Too late, I think bitterly.
I close my eyes to block out the sound of Monika’s sobs in my ears, because I am too weak to move. Her devastation reminds me that I will need to tell them that they should still see each other in person, even without me around. Monika doesn’t have any kids of her own, but I am certain that she will be a lot more helpful than I ever could be with their baby boy, and infinitely safer to have around too.
Even though I know it’s what’s best for everyone, the vision of them spending time together without me cuts like a knife, so I retreat further into myself in another show of surprising self-preservation and distract my brain by tasking it with repeating every reason that this decision is the right one.
At some point near the middle of my list of reasons, my legs go numb, and I am unwillingly brought back to awareness to shift myself from my knees to sitting cross-legged to relieve the pinsand needles that have settled into both of my feet. Monika moves with me, glued to my side. I know I’m being selfish by letting her comfort me when her sobs just recently stopped rocking both of our bodies, but she stays wrapped around me like a vise, so I couldn’t flip the script even if I had the strength to.
I do not deserve her, or this kindness. Especially since my bad luck has caused nothing but problems for her, including some expensive mistakes I’ve made in the store, and putting her in the middle of my family drama all these years.
The kindest thing I can do in this moment for Monika is to simply find the strength to stand, so that we can both leave, and I can continue to wallow in my own misfortune alone at my apartment, like I should have been doing all along. While my entire world just collapsed around me, the planet has continued to spin for the rest of its inhabitants, so Monika and I will both be expected to clock back in tomorrow to open the store.
At this time of night, there is no way we will be able to get coverage for anyone else to work our shifts, so we’ll both be right back here in a matter of hours. I force my eyes open and blink to clear my vision as the first small step to getting myself up off the floor, to see that we are sitting in near complete darkness, the sun having officially set a while ago.
I had to do it. . . I think to bolster myself and then move to the next small step to getting myself up off the floor, which is to uncross my legs.
Monika follows suit and murmurs unintelligible words of support.
If anything happened to the baby because of me. . . I add, as I put one hand on the floor to push myself up.
Monika murmurs again, but this time I can make out her words. She is telling me that she hears me. Which means that the words I thought I was saying in my head, I was actually saying out loud.
Now that my eyes have adjusted a bit more to the dark, I can see that Monika looks devastated, but that her eyes are dry. It wasn’t her who was sobbing uncontrollably this entire time.
It was me.
“Gabe’s family in New York . . .” I continue. “Tons of support . . .”
I finish the loop that consists of all my reasons, the ones I have clung to over the past year. Monika listens and confirms that she hears me but does not state her agreement with any of them. I manage to push myself up to my feet with the help of her steady hand, and I add this moment to the overwhelming amount of gratitude I feel for her, because supporting me right now is just one of the million ways that she has helped me ever since I came to work for her a little over seven years ago.
Monika has always had a soft spot for people like me. Like Chad. People who lack direction. People who are broken in some way. Which is why, eight years ago today, when my father died, my trajectory towards complete desolation also ended up being the path that led me towards her.
She was able to swoop in at just the right time to help save me from myself. Scott did the heavy lifting in the aftermath of our father’s death, when I had dropped out of college after becoming so incapacitated with guilt that he had to force me to take care of my most basic needs, like eating and showering regularly.
He had just started dating Gabe at the time, and while any other brand-new boyfriend may have fled, Gabe stepped up and cemented his place by Scott’s side as my second helper. The two of them cared for me with far more compassion than I deserved, but after six months, they both had to get back to their lives in New York: Gabe with real estate and Scott with his tech startup.
Cue Monika, the manager behind one of the many job postings that Scott pursued on my behalf. The two of them had a three-hour-long phone conversation about me, which resulted insecuring this job and someone to look out for me in California, despite Monika never having met me in person before.
While Scott and Gabe got me back on my feet, physically and financially, Monika is the one who stitched me back together. Her high expectations, despite the state I was in when we first met, are what pushed me those final steps to start living a normal life on my own again.
