Life is full of near misses.
But ours was the most heart-breaking of them all.
Day 368
I haven’t messaged Gavin in a few days. For two people who used to speak every single day, it feels bigger than it sounds.
Space, I tell myself. Space for me to heal. Space for him to do whatever it is he needs to do.
Without me.
It hurts . . . to realize that he isn’t reaching for me once I’ve pulled away. That he isn’t wondering and hoping and realizing that I’m so far from him.
Disappointment is like a cloud that follows me at the thought of him letting me go. There’s still so much magic here, even if we both have lost sight of it right now.
I often entertained the idea of going to Pakistan. I’d look up flights and imagine surprising him and being embraced by his family.
And while I knew the entire idea of it was ridiculous, it soothed a broken part of me.
Missing Gavin wasn’t something I was prepared to take on.
I always figured during our last few weeks that it would be hard, sure. But not as hard as smelling him on my pillowcases and turning in my sleep to reach for him.
Not as hard as looking at his toothbrush and hearing songs we used to listen to together.
The problem with having him so immersed in my life was that now that he was gone, all of these holes were here. Holes I’d never had a hard time filling before.
My sister doesn’t realize I’m so far inside myself that I can barely make out her attempts at conversation.
Sabrina’s incessant chatting is only met with little punctuations from me; grunts or sounds that encourage her to continue.
“Remember Jordan?”
I stop my perusing through the racks at Saks, the sound of the hangers sliding no longer creating a pattern of sound and shoot Sabrina a look of confusion.
What the hell?
“Jordan who I was dating before Gavin, Jordan?” Part of me itches at the thought of him.
“Is there any other Jordan?” She’s holding a floral top to her chest in the mirror and I rip it from her grasp. The collarless button-down look makes me want to gag.
“Fuck that, I will never let you wear this hideous thing. Also, random. Why?”
Sabrina takes the top back from me and shoves it on a random rack. Part of me cringes at the action, knowing that someone will have the annoying task of finding it and putting it back where it belongs.
“One, I can pull it off. Don’t ever doubt me.” She yanks me away from the pleather leggings I was looking at. “Two, no way in hell.”
I sigh as she takes me by the shoulders and turns me so I’m facing to my left. I open my mouth but before I can ask her what the hell has gotten into her, she speaks.
“Three, isn’t that him?” she whispers in my ear. I scan the area and zero in on him. He’s perusing through the clothes, not touching anything, his eyes just landing on items here and there. As if he isn’t here to shop, which is strange, considering.
I’d guess he could feel our eyes on him because he looks up. Those dark eyes widen a bit, his thick eyebrows lifting.
I always loved his eyebrows. But I never loved his capacity for condescension or the fact that he was always too busy to give me the attention and passion I craved.
He lifts a hand and waves and Sabrina gives me a push. I look back at her in confusion, wondering if she remembers how awful he was in the end. Or the middle. Or the beginning.
“He’s already seen us,” she hisses. “Show him how much better off you are without him.”
I want to laugh because that is so obviously not the case. I’m not in the mood for this charade but she’s right. He’s already seen me.
I take a few steps forward and he meets me where I stop.
“Hey,” he offers, opening his arms.
I end up lifting my hand, evading an awkward hug. He shakes my hand with a soft chuckle.
“Still hard, after all this time?”
I want to roll my eyes.
At least one of us is, I think to myself smugly.
Things hadn’t always gone smoothly in the bedroom with us.
I’m about to find an excuse to do anything other than catch up with a man who thinks he still has an effect on me when someone walks up behind him.
She stops at his back with this massive smile, kindness in her eyes.
“Hi,” she says, and I wonder what the hell this is.
“Denise, this is Kim. Kim, meet Denise.”
She opens her mouth and closes it before offering another smile, smaller this time, eyes a little less kind.
“Hello.” When she steps around him, I can see items in her hand.
I glance at them without thought and pause, even as she adjusts them to offer her hand.
Baby clothes.
Little gender-neutral pastel onesies. How very fucking Jordan of them.
I look back at Sabrina, who’s come up right behind me and placed her hand on my shoulder.
Sabrina shakes Kim’s hand and introduces herself.
“I’m Sabrina. You must be his latest victim.”
Kim frowns and glances at Jordan with an awkward laugh.
When Jordan looks at me, it’s an uncomfortable glance before looking at the floor and back at Kim.
The more I look at this woman, with her straight black hair and Asian features, the more I see it. There’s a small bump beneath her shirt.
He hadn’t had any issues in the bedroom with her.
“I know it’s so easy to get caught up but just blink if you’d like us to help you get away from him.” Sabrina’s hand on my shoulder massages absentmindedly as she offers little jabs.
And I just stand there like a mute fool.
“Okay, that’s enough,” Jordan says as he reaches for Kim’s hand.
I wonder if his mother dislikes her the way she did me.
They make a beautiful couple, with Jordan’s dark skin complementing her lighter complexion.
She isn’t as pale as I am. She isn’t as messed up as I am.
She isn’t me.
And while I decided a long time ago that I wasn’t supposed to end up with Jordan, it still hurt to see a dream I once had being lived out by someone else.
Sabrina says a few more words and pulls me away with a smile and a wave.
“Nice seeing you, Denise,” Jordan says as I head away.
“We’re sure,” Sabrina replies, still smiling, and we walk away.
We make it outside and I double over, clutching my stomach. A moment later, I sink down on my haunches, my world spinning.
Hot, angry tears spring from my eyes.
“No, Denise. We’re not doing this here.”
She tries to lift me, but I snatch my hand away and fall back on my butt.
“You don’t want that. Come on.” She’s pleading with me at this point.
I shake my head, so inside myself that I can’t see the world around me.
But couldn’t she see?
I take a deep breath and wipe my face, wondering how it got so hot so quickly.
“He’d wanted children. With me,” I say. My face crumples again. “But it wasn’t happening. So, I kind of just . . . dismissed it. Decided that it wasn’t for me.”
No one wants to be the one to blame. No one wakes up in the morning saying, I want to be the reason my own dreams can’t come true. And while I hadn’t felt ready, it was still something I’d wanted one day.
Something I still want one day.
“You got pregnant, baby. It’ll happen.”
“Don’t!” I pull my hands away again as she tries to grab me. “I didn’t even want the baby.”
It’s my first time saying it out loud. I hiccup over a sob, because I know I don’t make sense to her but it all makes sense to me.
“I didn’t want it and then it went away and . . .” How can a person bear so much weight? Weight the world can’t see but it still breaks your body down.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she whispers and squats down to hold me.
“Then whose fault was it?”
My God, all these scars threatened to rip open until I wasn nothing but my soul and a mess of the inner makings of me.
“No one’s. It just wasn’t supposed to happen.”
It was commonly said and something the weak held onto; the idea that life was a mass of karma and kismet. I wasn’t buying.
But I was over being a mess in this moment, so I try to pull myself together.
My hands shake as I wipe at my eyes. Sabrina pulls me up and this time I move with her, holding onto her.
“She stared at me like he’d talked shit about me,” I mumble, my voice shaky.
“Oh, I recognized the look and swooped my happy ass right in there,” she says, tilting her chin up like the dignified bully she is.
“They look good together,” I tell her as we walk away from the shopping center. I have no idea where we’re headed but Sabrina seems to not give a shit, just placing one foot in front of the other.
“I forgot what a douche nozzle he is.”
My phone vibrates in my purse and I pause to grab it.
When I see Gavin’s name on my screen, I stop walking entirely.
Gavin: I’m coming home. Fahmida’s husband had a heart attack.
The rest of the message goes unread as my phone slips from my fingers and clatters to the cement. Sabrina picks it up from the ground and tries to see what has me so shocked, but the screen is black from the impact.
“What? What is it? Did that asshole text you?” She looks back at the mall, ready to rush back in and kill him.
“Wrong asshole,” I say quietly, my eyes faraway.
“Gavin?” I nod, and she presses me for more. “Well?”
“He’s coming home,” I whisper.
“Fuck,” Sabrina says.
Fuck indeed.