“I understand,” I say.
“Could you tell him that for me?” she asks.
I hesitate to say yes. “Maybe you should write it down.”
She disappears into a room for a moment, then returns, extending a folded piece of paper toward me. “Give it to him whenever he’s ready.”
The beauty of our arrangement is that I won’t know Liem after today. Still, I can tell he’s not emotionally prepared to handle whatever she wrote down. I tuck the paper into my back pocket.
“It was nice to meet you, Bri,” she says with a sad smile. “I mean it.”
“It was nice to meet you too.” I hate how that’s true.
For some reason, we both step forward into a hug. A natural reaction for two emotionally available women to have after sharing amoment. The embrace is over before I can question it.
I leave her with a wave, then start my struggle of getting the suitcases down the stairs. At the bottom, I stop, unzip the carry-on, and find the green socks again. I pull out the ring box and flip it open.
My jaw drops. It’sbig, but it’s generic as hell. A round solitaire on a plain, gold band. Quick and thoughtless. Coming from anyone else, I’d assume it was aHere, damnring. Maybe everything Natalie said was true.
I fold the note into a smaller square, tuck it into the lid of thebox, and return the ring to its original location. If he ever opens it to lament again, he’ll see what she would have said had he proposed. No what-if.
Back outside, I’m grateful for the fresh air, even with the heat that comes with it. Until now, I’ve felt trapped in yesterday’s shadow. Helping Liem, talking to Natalie, has pushed me back into the light and helped me see that what I truly want is to regain my independence and create the lifeIwant forme.
Liem spots me and stands from the neighboring stairs, his expression full of hope. “What did she say?”
He doesn’t care about his suitcases or getting the ring back. He wants the two things he can’t have: Natalie and closure. “Nothing she hasn’t said already.”
His brow furrows. “Nothing at all?”
I grasp his waist gently, as if to keep him from running from my words. “Liem . . . the story hasn’t changed, and it’s not going to. We can either accept what happened and try to move forward, or we can stay right here and keep torturing ourselves.”
He looks away, blinking back tears. I give his sides a light squeeze for emphasis.
“It’s over,” I remind him.
His teeth gnaw at his lip when he nods, still avoiding my gaze as if it will hide the fact that he’s crying. “It’s over.”
The shakiness of his voice brings empathetic tears to my eyes. I give in to my instincts and pull him into a hug. Resting my cheek on his chest, I can hear the stressed quickness of his heartbeat and feel his shaky breaths.
“We have the same suitcases,” I say to distract him, acting as if it’s not one of the most common hard-shell brands.
“Really?”
“Yes. We have impeccable taste when it comes to inanimateobjects only, I fear.”
A weak laugh pushes past his tears. Finally, he hugs me back, both arms wrapped around my shoulders, his cheek resting on top of my head. We fit together well, both in our misery and in our questionable posture. Slowly but surely, his heart rate calms.
I let him go, finding a grin beneath his reddened eyes. That’s an improvement. “Are you ready to go?” I ask.
“Yeah. Let’s get out of here.”
~
Back at the hotel, my good deed done, Liem and I wash the day away over aresponsibleamount of wine from the restaurant downstairs. After Liem books his flight, we relax in the most mindless way possible, exchanging funny videos from social media—finding that we have liked many of the same ones—making ourselves laugh until we are in tears for agoodreason, up until the waiter alerts us of last call.
“It’s that late?” Liem says with the same surprise as me. “Damn it.”
“You should probably get some rest before your flight.”
