Yesenia giggles. “‘Heffa.’ I like when you talk Texas to me…and for your information, I don’t go around telling my business to anybody here. It’s crawling with big-mouthed beckies who’re using this gig as a resume filler and for TikTok story time content. And the only thing Jodie knows about football is that a bunch of grown men tackle each other with tights on. To her, you’re just anotherpoor, poorblack girl who needs emergency saving on a weekend in between museum visits with her yuppie husband and three kids. As far as she knows, I did all of my paperwork.”
My tender side throbs through my silk shirt as she rambles. The heat makes me lean to the side in the hard chair and press my hand against my ribs.
I smile at the picture of her one-year-old sitting next to her empty Starbucks cup. “How was Paco’s thirteenth day of daycare on Friday?”
She chuckles, wiping her lips with a napkin. “You make me feel like a bad mom. Who the hell keeps count after the second day?”
“I count every day because I count silly things.”
Like the exact hours and minutes it takes AJ to get from Jersey to our front door, and the number of times he can swing his fist before his breathing grows shallow. They’re all stupid, silly things.
“Just because you can’t remember what day it is, doesn’t mean you aren’t a perfect mama,” I add.
Her almond eyes soften.
I’ve never met Paco or sat at their dining room table while Yesenia cooked us dinner, but in my head I have. Somehow I know what her tiny apartment smells like, and I know what Paco sounds like when he’s excited, even though his mama and I have never existed outside of the train or her little shoebox of a cubicle.
“He likes this daycare better,” she mutters. “It’s worth the extra hundred dollars a month, and I don’t have to worry about Ramiro popping up anymore. So, thank you.”
I nod as if I understand what she means about not having to worry about her ex anymore, but I haven’t even made it far enough out of the city to utter those words.
I bumped into Yesenia on the train two months ago. I ran right into her chest after I stuck my arm through the doors to stop them from closing. Her Starbucks cup had tilted back and her coffee splattered right onto her sundress just as the doors sang that quintessential chime behind us.
“Aye, watch where the fuck you going,” she grumbled, frowning at the big brown stain I left across her chest.
Well, I didn’t purposely leave the stain. It was an accident. Breathing in the musty subway air after not inhaling it for so many days made me walk around with my nose in the air so much so that I stopped paying attention to the people around me.
Yesenia had looked me up and down as I stumbled inside the subway car in my Tom Fords, and her lip twitched like she wanted to curse me out until I smiled at her while pushing up my sunglasses. Afterward, she pressed her free hand onto her awful, faded pink polyester dress that had been washed too many times and pursed her lips. They didn’t relax until she narrowed hereyes at my body as if she saw each bruise I hid underneath my denim shorts and tank top.
“I have a Tide pen and some hand sanitizer,” I said, smiling and wrapping my hand around the grab pole as the train took off. “We can get it out before the next stop.I know a trick.”
It took three stops to convince her I wasn’t some “loony bitch with a Canal Street Chanel” (her words, not mine) and five train rides during her morning commute to figure out we’d fallen in love with the same type of man.
“So… how’syourfirst day going? How do you feel?” she asks, staring into my eyes for the first time since I walked into Manhattan Safe Harbor dressed in my best business casual getup because I’ve been living in Aritzia sweatsuits for the past two weeks.
“My first day of what?” I reply.
“Of the rest of your life, or whatever that corny saying is.”
Oh.
I jumped up at one this morning, gasping for air because our plan felt like carefully choreographed chaos. Six hours later, I “woke up” and answered AJ’s first check-in call before he went to have breakfast with the team. Two hours after that, I sat my phone on our kitchen island, left our apartment, and barreled down into the nearest subway entrance with nothing but a promise from Jodie that I had a same-day ticket waiting for me at United’s check-in counter. I didn’t have time to breathe, let alone “feel.”
“Am I supposed to feel anything?” I ask.
“It’s your brain.” She taps her temple. “These stupid, stupid brains are so complex that they make us think we need another person’s permission to live…or feel. It’s funny how easy it happens. One minute, the motherfucker is giving you everything you never knew you needed, and the next he’s squeezing everyounce of life and emotion out of you, and you’re too in love to even realize it.”
She sounds a lot like Aunt Faye—except for the casual use of “motherfucker.” That’s probably why I kept wandering onto the same train to “run into her.”
“Yeah, until one day your spirit wakes up,” I mutter, making her eyes perk as she nods.
“Righttttt,” she drawls. “And then your stupid brain tries to follow, but God, it takes so much time. But anyway…”
She smirks, then glances behind me before pushing her purse toward the middle of her cluttered desk. “What’s the plan when you get to Colorado? Jodie said the shelter there can only hold you for thirty days because they’re so overwhelmed.”
I slide my Chanel Flap from my shoulder and hand it to her. “I called Jodie on my way out this morning and told her I didn’t want to go to Colorado anymore. I figured she texted you.”
“Wait…what?” She frowns, pulling the bag from my fingers.
