Adela performing devoted girlfriend with no visible seams while doing items 1 and 2.
I read the list back.
Then I add:
She doesn't know I know any of this.
I look at number five for a long time.
That's the thing about information. It's only leverage if the other person doesn't know you have it. My father taught me that when I was twelve years old, and I have never once forgotten it. You don't spend what you have until you know exactly what it's worth and exactly what you want in return.
I know what I want.
I want everything back exactly where it was.
No — that's not quite right.
I want everything back exactly where it was, and I want every person who touched what was mine while I was gone to understand precisely what that cost them.
I close the notes app.
I walk to my closet and pull out clothes that aren't hospital-issue for the first time in weeks — dark jeans, a clean shirt, a jacket that fits the way it's supposed to fit. I dress slowly, checking each movement against what my body will allow. The shoulder holds.The ribs pull slightly when I reach for the jacket, but not enough to matter.
I check my reflection.
I look like myself.
Not the diminished, careful version that Adela held hands with in a hospital bed. Not the pale, quiet, grateful-to-be-alive performance I've been giving for an audience of nurses and my father and a girlfriend who I'm now certain has been performing right back at me.
Just myself.
I pick up my phone one more time and pull up Adela's contact.
I type,Dinner this weekend. My dad's place. Just us.
I watch the three dots appear almost immediately.
She was waiting for this.
That tells me something, too.
Her response comes through.
Adela:I'd love that. Just tell me when.
I look at those six words and feel something that other people would probably call satisfaction, but I call something closer to the quiet before a very specific kind of storm.
I type back,Saturday. Seven o'clock.
Then I add — because I know her. I know exactly what it does to her, because I have been studying her for two years, the way you study something you intend to keep:
I've missed you. More than you know.
