“Some days I don’t know if I do it well,” he admits. “You see people at rock bottom. You try to help them climb out. Some of them make it. Some of them don’t.”
“What about the ones who don’t?”
“You learn to live with it.” He looks at me, and there’s something raw in his expression. Honest. “You do what you can. You show up. You bring flour. You fix curtain rods. You make sure they haven’t set the apartment on fire. You hope that counts.”
“Is it? Enough?”
“Sometimes.” He takes another fry. “Sometimes they surprise you. They build lives you didn’t think were possible. They find ways to be okay that you never expected.”
“And sometimes they don’t.”
“And sometimes they don’t,” he agrees. “But you keep showing up anyway. Because that’s the job. And because.” He stops. Looks away.
“Because what?”
“Because sometimes someone’s worth the mess. Even if they don’t know it yet.”
My brain spins a wheel of responses and lands on static. My uterus spins a wheel and lands on ‘marry him immediately.’ My common sense has left the building and is filing for early retirement.
I retaliate. Grab one of his fries like I’m not internally monologuing about his mouth and all the ways I want to ruin him. My heart is doing jumping jacks in lingerie.
We finish eating. Walk back to my apartment in the fading light. He waits while I unlock the door, that same patient presence he always has.
“Call me if you need anything,” he says. “Even if it’s just to emotionally process someone’s cursed digestive tract.”
Sir. Iwill.You’re going to regret that offer.
“What if I need someone to explain why anyone would need fourteen colonoscopies?”
“Then I’ll do some research and get back to you.”
I laugh again. Easier this time.
“Thanks, Saul. For dinner. For the blanket. For...” I gesture vaguely at everything. “For the food-based emotional manipulation.”
“Anytime.” He hesitates. Something passing across his face that I can’t quite read. “You’re going to be okay, Stevie. I know it doesn’t feel like it yet. But you’re going to figure this out.”
He says it like he believes it. Like he believes in me.
“Goodnight,” I manage.
“Goodnight.”
He leaves and I lock the door behind him.
The apartment feels different. Not empty. Just... sinisterly stable.
I stand in the middle of it afraid if I breathe too deeply the government-issued beige might colonize my lungs and turn me into a woman who owns a Roomba.
I drape the teal blanket over the couch and step back to look at it. Bright against the beige. Like someone tossed a grenade of color into a Pottery Barn catalog.
I stare at the kitchen. Everything’s full. Flour. Sugar. Brown and white. My anxiety baking rations are stocked like Saul’s preparing me for war with Pillsbury.
Tomorrow, I could bake. Something new. Something Beth would make. Maybe almond blondies. Something light. Controlled. Not cookies with buried obsession in every bite.
The thought doesn’t make me want to scream.
And that’s when it hits me.
