Page 78 of Licks

When I first learned August was leaving tomorrow afternoon, I’d willed our seconds to slow down. I’d wanted to stretch our breaths, elongate our words, extend our kisses into forever. Hold his hand and argue with him during the pauses in between. Stare at him to stamp his handsome profile on my brain.

Now everything moved too slowly: my fingers as they traced my mother’s cursive writing, my breaths nearing a catatonic state, my eyelids that couldn’t remember how to blink.

I’d read about this before, how anxiety and stress could produce numbness. I’d researched the effects for my job, to better cope with prospective adoptive parents. The insight allowed me to choose better words when preparing them for the grueling process, had helped me find ways to ease the sting when applications were denied. I’d never experienced this kind of deadening shock firsthand.

I was experiencing it now.

Nine years ago, I crushed August. Because of it, he kept information from me. My father had died. I’d never meet him. I could have siblings. I pushed August away.

Now I was underwater again, my body moving in languid frames.

Blink.

Blink.

Exhale.

Lift head.

Blink…blink.

I’d driven here on autopilot, wasn’t sure how long I’d been parked on this suburban street. It was pleasant enough, trees shading the lawns, some manicured with colorful gardens, others overgrown. One had a basketball net in the driveway; another was littered with Tonka trucks.

The home to my right was nondescript. Gray siding. Red door. Purple potted flowers sat on the concrete step just outside. I didn’t have plants in my apartment. I’d bought one after signing my lease. Then I killed it, over or under watering the darn thing. I had a hopeless black thumb.

I didn’t know the name of the purple flowers taunting me with their prettiness. Whoever had tended them wasn’t a plant killer like me. That person had a green thumb. That person had lived in that house with my father, had maybe given birth to my half-siblings.

Or maybe my father had coaxed those blooms into beauty.

Or his kid had.

Or a stupid gardener unrelated to me had, and the fact that I was still sitting here in this car rereading my mother’s letter as if it would give me the courage to knock on that red door and meet the people who could alter my life had absolutely zero to do with plant growing aptitude.

Inhale.

Blink.

Exhale.

Blink.

Repeat.

I looked down and reread my mother’s letter for the umpteenth time.

Dear August,

I am dying. As a dying woman, I have a request. Below is the name of Gwen’s father. She has always wanted to know who he is. I ask that you be the one to tell her, be there for her when she finds him.

Remember what I told you on Gwen’s nineteenth birthday.

I couldn’t imagine what she’d told him the night of my WTF, but it was the words “be there for her” that snagged my attention. They were an indecipherable code, because my mother had written as though she’d cared what happened to me. As though my mental state had concerned her.

Yet this was the same woman who’d looked me in the eye, and had said, “I never wanted kids.”

That nugget had been offered when I’d caught her staring at a blank TV screen. I’d asked if I could watch Friends, and she’d spat those hateful words. No provocation. She hadn’t been drinking. Pure hatred aimed at me…because I’d come from a man she’d despised, or because he hadn’t wanted me, or I’d stolen her freedom. Having a child at seventeen wasn’t anyone’s life goal.

Whatever the reason, that cutting comment had drawn blood, a wound that hadn’t cauterized. She’d gotten up from the sofa afterward, had walked to the door and left. Hadn’t even closed it behind her. Like she’d been in a trance, locked in her past.