Window Shopping(67)

She opens the door of the changing room, dressed once again in the black turtleneck dress and tights she wore to work this morning. I watched her put them on over the rim of my coffee mug and now I think…are we breaking up? I just found her.

“Stella, slow down.”

“Now you want to slow down,” she says in a shaky burst, avoiding my eyes. Her movements are unnatural. Nervous. I’m realizing too late how serious this situation is with Nicole and somehow I’ve forfeited my right to help. She tries to go around me and I step into her path to block her without thinking. “I have to go. Let me go.”

I can’t. I’m in love with you.

It’s the exact wrong time to tell her. To say those words out loud. So I keep them locked up tight even though they’re fighting to get out. “I swear to God, Stella, if you’re going to see her…and that puts you in some kind of danger, I’ll go fucking ballistic.” My vision starts to turn gray. “The thought of you hurt—”

“Stop.” She closes her eyes momentarily. “Look, Aiden. You’ve been my hero since day one. We can pretend it’s not true, but it is. I was trapped under all this…debris and you pulled me out. Gave me a place to heal. But if I’m going to stay here, if I’m going to feel like I earned this second chance, I have to be my own hero. Okay? And you need to have faith that I can do it. That I can do anything.” She pauses. “Please? Because I don’t even believe it right now.”

“Of course I do,” I rasp, heat searing the sides of my throat. “I believe in you every day of the week. Set your watch on it.”

“Thank you.” She hesitates on the threshold of the dressing room, then goes up on her toes and kisses me on the cheek. “Bye, Aiden.”

My knees threaten to buckle.

Standing there while she walks away is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.

But I suspect wherever she’s headed, she’s about to face something even harder, so I suck it up and start praying like hell that she comes back to me.





16





Stella





I’m outside your building.

When I didn’t answer Nicole’s phone call in the dressing room, that is the text she sent. She must have gotten the address from my parents. I don’t know how else she would have known where I’m staying. Have my parents completely given up on me that they would send Nicole straight to my doorstep when they used to beg me to take a break from her? There’s a possibility that Nicole tricked the address out of them, maybe by saying we had concrete plans to meet. That it was understood and I’d agreed to it. Or maybe Nicole told them that she’s still in prison and just wanted to send me a letter.

However she found me, she’s here now.

She’s in New York.

After being away from Nicole for so long, the fact that she gives me a massive case of anxiety is a lot more obvious than it used to be when I saw her every day. Somehow this pulse-pounding, on edge, twisted stomach feeling became the norm. But it’s not normal now. I don’t want to feel like this. I don’t want to be sweating under my clothes wondering what’s going to happen. Or what she’ll say to target my insecurities. Friends shouldn’t do that. It’s not okay and I know that now.

My legs are made of gelatin on the walk from the subway.

The shadows of evening are beginning to cast themselves on the sidewalk. The Christmas Eve buzz is alive on every block of the city, though the crowd is thin in my neighborhood, locals having traveled home for the holidays. Someone walks out of a coffee shop to my left and Nat King Cole’s voice drifts out with them. Big red bells made of Styrofoam and tinsel hang from the streetlights, shifting in the cold wind.

Oh my God, I’m so cold.

Cold and hollow.

I miss Aiden, even though I only left him half an hour ago. I’m pretty sure I hurt him. Or pushed him away. Both. If that patient, understanding man is frustrated enough to suggest we add some space to our relationship, I have well and truly messed up. But I don’t know how to make it any better. Not right in this moment. I can’t just sever the past from the rest of me. It hangs from me like an errant limb. It’s always there. She’s always there.

I turn the corner at the end of my block and I see Nicole, huddled up against the side of the building, blowing warm air into her cupped palms. She must have gotten her hands on some bad hair dye in prison because her naturally light brown hair is almost orange, about two inches of her roots showing. She has it pulled up in a messy bun. Her jacket is thin, skin pale. She’s cold with nowhere to go. Serious problems. Immediate ones that I didn’t have to worry about—and that’s when the guilt begins to prod me. Responsibility for her. Suddenly I’m walking with sandbags strapped to my shoulders and ankles whereas this morning, I woke up so light.

I woke up with him. Happy. Safe. In the light.

Now I’m leaving that light. I’m standing in the cold nighttime and honestly, this is so much more familiar than a high rise with a view. But that familiarity makes the hair on my arms stand up straight, makes me shiver and pull my jacket tighter. There’s a beep on my phone and I pull it out of my pocket to see the bank notification that my direct deposit is available.

In another timeline, I’m buying the green dress right now. I’m browsing for matching accessories and shoes. Nothing too expensive, even though a window dresser makes a healthy salary. I was looking forward to having four figures in my bank account for the first time in my life. Why does it feel like none of that is real or possible now? Why does it feel like I shed that new skin when I walked out of that dressing room?