The Break(17)

I can’t see June’s face, only the back of her dark blond head, but she’s hurrying toward him. I can’t exactly tell, but Sean looks full of fear for her, or is it anger? We’re too far away for me to be sure what it is I really see on his face. And then the strangest thing happens: June sinks into his embrace.

My stomach goes cold. Sean puts his lips into her hair, against her neck like a lover would. And then they walk away into the swell of the city, out of my sight.

I have no idea what to make of it.





PART II





SEVEN


June. Five months ago. June 3rd.


I’m standing outside a bar called Welcome to the Johnsons waiting for Sean Cassidy, hopefully my soon-to-be roommate, and soaking up the feeling of people watching me. I don’t know what went wrong to make me like this. I guess I’m hoping if everyone is busy noticing how beautiful and full of light I am, then maybe they won’t see my gaping dark holes.

Sean stumbles down the front steps, and I smile just enough to let him know he’s the only one I have my eye on. He meets my gaze and I feel a zing straight through me, a shot of something cool and crisp that wakes me up: the sense that something exciting and good might happen at any moment. There’s this memory I have of my dad holding my freckled hand as I stepped into a plastic baby pool. A gasp came from deep inside me when my leg slipped into the freezing hose water, and my God, I loved that feeling: the shock that gripped my shoulders and shook me back to life. I still need it: the zip over my skin, the thing that reminds me I’m alive. But I’m twenty-two now and I need more than cold water.

Sean hurries across the hot pavement to where I’ve been waiting for him next to a parking sign and a rusted bicycle with a basket holding bread. I wonder where this is going to go, and the wondering is such a lovely feeling.

“That guy was such a dick,” Sean says to me. He’s talking about the bartender.

“Yeah,” I say, though he wasn’t, not really. He was just thirty-something and aloof, probably because we’re barely old enough to be in a bar and still look like kids to him. “Let’s go,” I say, because Sean is just standing there on the sidewalk perusing the city like it’s a film set and he’s the director.

“Yeah,” he says, still standing there, “we should go.” We’re buzzed, but not drunk enough to make an easy decision that we won’t think twice about until tomorrow. Neither of us wants to suggest another drink, but going to Sean’s apartment means something else entirely, so we kind of just stand there and let New York swirl around us like a cloud of perfume.

A woman perched on top of a milk crate waves a sign with a politician’s face on it and yells at us to vote. Her purple acrylic nails are like wine stains against the white paperboard. Her tiny terrier looks miserable lying there next to a water bowl.

“Do you think she’s all right?” I whisper to Sean. I’ve only been in New York for a few weeks. My barometer for other people’s mental health isn’t fine-tuned yet, but I have the creeping suspicion that the longer I’m here, the better it’ll get.

Sean ignores my question. “It’s too muggy for eight o’clock,” he says with a scowl on his face. I don’t think he has any idea where this is going.

“We’re too drunk for eight o’clock,” I say with a laugh, and then I link my arm through his so he gets the right idea. But his scowl doesn’t budge. I’ve never really met anyone who gets so bothered by such small things. It makes me wonder what he’d do in a real crisis.

“Sean,” I say, the word drawn out like I’m trying to flirt, though that’s not quite it. It’s more like I’m trying to win him over, like there’s a prize to be had. I remember in high school feeling like I had to win the whole thing, like I had to make the boys want me and the girls want to be me. It always surprises me when people call that kind of behavior shallow. To me it feels deeper than a pit of snakes.

“It’s only June,” Sean says, like this heat is a harbinger of worse things.

“My month,” I say with a smile as we start walking. I still love all thirty days of June just like I did when I was little. It’s always been my lucky month: the month good things happen to me. Even my mom was more affectionate than usual on the first few days of June, opening my bedroom door and letting in streams of golden light from the hallway. She’d say, Happy June, my sweet Junebug, and on the good mornings, she’d bend to kiss my cheek. On the mediocre ones she’d leave a glass of tea for me on my bedside table, always something decaf like chamomile or peppermint, and even now the scent makes me think of mornings on the cusp of dreams and tangled sheets. On bad mornings, when her demons were circling and she wanted to be anywhere else but in the house with Jed and me, she’d come in without even a whisper, opening my shades with the screech of metal rings against the curtain rod. Or she’d stay in bed, and my father would get us ready for school.

“Should we go somewhere else?” Sean asks me.

We stop at a traffic light. Swarms of New Yorkers cross the street from the other direction and traipse along the sidewalk, close enough that we can catch snippets of their conversations. Everyone is too close here, and I love it. No one can ignore you, because they’re right there in your space, sharing your sidewalk square, making eye contact to decide which person is going to slow down and crush themselves against a metal pole so the other person can pass first through a makeshift construction tunnel.