Page 90 of Don't Be in Love

One day, I’m going to have a husband.

Why was I forgetting that Sabrina and Mia were going to outgrow this apartment one day and build homes? Build families.

If that’s what she viewed as her Dream Life, then that’s what I wanted for her. But part of me couldn’t help but think where I was supposed to fit into her life.

It was selfish. They should be happy. I wanted them to be happy.

I sat on my bed feeling numb. The memorabilia hanging from my walls overwhelmed me.

For years, I had this idealistic image of what a perfect life would be: a job that consumed me in the best way possible, and a home that was forever mine. Not a place I’d have to move out of one day or a house I’d get comfortable in only for it to be taken away. Just a home for me.

But having friends warped that.

Now all I could picture was being alone without them. Utterly alone.

Alone in a home I paid for with the job I worked hard for in college to qualify for, which required restless nights in high school to achieve. The home I dreamed of filling with my souvenirs and successes.

Brina and Mia were my only family. But they’d also be busy building their own families.

I couldn’t even begin to think of Dorian or James in the same circumstances or else I’d succumb to the rolling in my stomach and vomit.

He left these things because they reminded him of us, my mother had said as she stared into Dad’s bureau drawers, filled with his clothes and sawdust.He didn’t want us, so he left his belongings to become things.

Ever since then, I packed my things like a squirrel in the winter to protect my life and my joy and prove to myself I hadmemories worth keeping, only to feel like they were all slipping away now.

I stared at the frames filled with film photos and postcards above my desk. Then my lamp strung with keychains and my bureau attacked with handwritten notes.

They were always comforting. Pieces of my life I could hug tightly to remember I had so much to be grateful for. That I had experienced so much of the life my parents never had in their twenties.

But the items loomed over me now.

They were a reminder that, one day, all of my things would be just that: things. They wouldn’t be handed down to a child or displayed in a museum. The items stuffed with my joy and the happiest times of my life would be things that no one wanted, in a bureau with excess sawdust.

I was a reflection of the things I carried. So what did that mean if the things I collected were destined to be tossed away?

Was I just a collection of the things no one wanted?

31

Don’t Get Attached — Adelaide

Christmas music played in the living room and the cinnamon candle (that had been burning long enough to make me dizzy) slinked down the hallway as Mia and Sabrina packed to go home to their families for the holidays.

The longest time we’ve spent apart since June, but it’d be good. I needed to remember how much I enjoyed being alone. With shifts at the bookstore every day and issues ofThe New Yorkerto catch up on, I was hopeful.

My only Christmas wish was for Dorian to stop popping up in my head like a never ending montage that a romance director would definitely make use of.

Oh, and to land a job for the summer, of course. A close second.

Sitting on a pile of blankets in the hallway between Mia and Brina’s doorways, I scrolled through job listings in London, hunting for one that paid anything and would hire an international post-grad student.

“Which number are we on?” Mia shouted from her room.

“Twenty,” I groaned.

“You’ve applied to twenty jobs just today?” Sabrina gawked—from her room. I only heard their muffled voices as they sifted through clothes to pack.

“I want to curl up and die. It feels like I’m trying to win the lottery. But in this circumstance, I actually have the winning ticket, and no one is willing to even bother looking at it, let alone giving me the cash.”