It was my fifth day straight lounging on Jude’s couch. I was sure that if I moved away from it for too long, it’d lose my impression and I would never get comfortable again.

I’d burned through all the shows I’d saved up on Jude’s Netflix queue while I’d been gone, and I hadn’t checked my email once in the week since I’d left the U.K.

Jude gave me food when he was around, and his girlfriend, Trista, kept me company, silently, once in a while. But it was the second time in four months that I felt like I’d lost direction of my own life. Like my compass was spinning, unable to find the magnet to make it stop. I knew I’d figure it out eventually, but having my heart tossed into a blender was admittedly making me the most pitiful person at the moment.

But on that fifth day, Jude dragged me out and put me in his car and drove me to a dance studio that had private rooms for rent.

I sat in the car and stared up at the building blankly.

“Come on, Mila-moo. You need to get back at it. You’re turning into sludge just sitting on my couch all the time.”

“I don’t feel like dancing.”

“I don’t feel like watching you sitting on my couch, day in and day out. Get in there and dance. For an hour. I’ll run to the grocery store and when I come back, we can go home. But I’m not going to let my sister turn into a zombie.”

I looked at him, feeling the weight of my pain then, like it was wrapping itself around me, tighter and tighter. Ames had looked at me like I was unwanted. A nuisance.

“Mila,” Jude said, softer this time. “I know you’re hurting. But you aren’t a wallower. You’re a doer. I’m going to make you hike with us this weekend too. So, you might as well remind your muscles what it feels like to move so you’re ready.”

“I don’t want to go hiking. And I don’t want to dance.” I propped my elbow up on the edge of the window. “I just want to go back to your couch.”

“I’m not going to let you. I’m going to bully you into doing this one thing for yourself. Go in there for an hour. I don’t even care if you dance. But put on the music and just listen to it, okay? For me?”

“Why do you have to pull the ‘for me’ card?” I groaned, and grabbed my bag before climbing out of the car. “One hour,” I reminded him.

“One hour,” he confirmed, and reached over to close the door.

I stared up at the all glass-fronted building, and felt like falling apart on the sidewalk. I didn’t want to dance. I didn’t want to move. I just wanted to exist, until I was back to my normal self. But because Jude had asked, I went into the building, my oversized CU Boulder sweatshirt slipping off one shoulder in a way that wasn’t stylish but sloppy.

Jude apparently had already paid for my use of the space, because the woman didn’t take any money from me. She walked me down the hallway, past classes and individual lessons and one or two solo dancers until we were in the very last room. She showed me where the bathroom was and then closed the door behind me, leaving me alone in the space.

I walked to the windows first, which had a view of a green park beyond the parking lot. Leaves were falling from the trees, now that fall was officially in Colorado. It looked so different than the view I’d become accustomed to. Gone were the gray skies that I missed, the tall buildings lining the river. Gone was Big Ben. I traced the window trim and closed my eyes. I missed Ames so much. The way we’d connected, how my skin had hungered for his. The drop in my stomach every time he smiled at me.

I pulled in a deep breath and then connected my phone to the Bluetooth speaker in the room. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, I scrolled through my list of songs until I found something mellow to stretch to. I had no plans to actually dance, but I couldn’t deny that getting a deep stretch in my unused muscles felt refreshing after sitting on a couch for the better part of a week.

After twenty minutes of stretching, I turned to an older song I’d developed a dance routine to. It was a slower beat, lots of feet sliding across the floor, body spinning and arms moving through the air like the wind.

I was so wrapped up in the song that I didn’t realize an hour had passed until my phone rang through the Bluetooth speaker. And that’s when I realized it’d been closer to two hours.

I slung my sweater back on and trudged out to Jude’s car.

“Feel better?”

I grunted in response.

A week later, our parents came to visit. It was their first time visiting Jude’s new house, so they decided to make the visit last all day. My mother and I had never addressed our argument in London, and I had no desire to. But as fate would have it, she and I were thrown together inside, to assemble the salads for the barbecue Jude had planned.

We didn’t speak, except to sneak around one another for a utensil or a vegetable. As I hulled the strawberries, she seemed to be unable to take it anymore.

“What are you making?”

“Strawberry poppy seed salad.”

She made a noise in the back of her throat. “You loved that salad when you were younger.”

I stopped hulling for a moment, surprised she’d remembered and surprised she’d bring it up.

“How are you doing?” she asked in a rare moment of her actually showing in an interest in such trivial things.

“Fine.” I dropped strawberry after strawberry on the cutting board before grabbing a large chopping knife. “How are you?” I asked.

“I’m okay. Seeing a new therapist.”

I didn’t have a reaction to that. My mom saw therapists like she saw movies. A different one every couple of weeks. “That’s great.” It was said without feeling and I winced, knowing she’d hear it in my voice too.

After trying to slice through a strawberry and effectively smooshing it from the dull blade, I grabbed the knife sharpener and started sliding the knife across it.

“He’s older. His youngest was diagnosed terminal cancer when he was five. I think that makes him more empathetic.”

I waited for it. This wasn’t the first time I’d heard my mother say such a thing. She gravitated to therapists who had experience with having sick children, and used that as a way to explain away her lack of support for me. I washed the knife under the faucet as I waited.

“His older kids had to fend for themselves for about four years, until his son died.” She wasn’t looking at me as she stirred a mayonnaise mixture in a bowl. “And he was surprised that they didn’t need him anymore. It made him lash out a little.”

She paused mixing and I moved the knife to the cutting board to begin chopping the strawberries again. “Okay.”

“Of his three living kids, he only has a relationship with one of them. I…” in my periphery I saw her turn toward me. “I think that maybe I haven’t always been fair to you.”

It hurt her to say it, I could tell, from the way her voice sounded warbled and unsure. I channeled Jude in listening to her, because I wanted to tell her, “Oh, you think?” but knew that wouldn’t accomplish anything productive.

“When we found out about Jude’s heart, we were so worried about him that we stopped worrying about you.” She braced her hands on the countertop, but I kept cutting, not wanting to turn to her. Not yet.

“And it’s no wonder you lashed out, rebelled the way you did.”

That caused me to roll my eyes. To my mom, sneaking out once when I was sixteen was akin to taking up a heroin habit on the scale of levels of rebellion.

“I just wanted you to know that I’m sorry if I ever made you feel slighted. I know we don’t understand each other, and we never will, I suspect. But you’ll always be my daughter, and I don’t want to fight with you.”

As far as apologies went, it wasn’t a terrible one. We wouldn’t be holding hands and singing Kumbaya around Jude’s fire pit that night, but it was better than nothing.

“I don’t want to fight with you either, Mom.” I placed the knife down and turned. “But I want you to respect my decisions, especially when they’re not hurting you, Dad, or Jude. You don’t have to understand them, or me, but you don’t need to tell me how live when I’ve managed more or less on my own for the last ten years.”

I watched her swallow, and knew this conversation was almost unbearably difficult for her. “I’ll try.”

It was a start.