Lost in Love (3 page)

“So,” Frank says. He folds his hands together and rests them on the desk. “What's up?”

“There's a camper who . . . I mean, I'm not completely sure, but . . . I think she's being abused.”

“Do you have hard evidence of abuse?”

“No.”

“Then what makes you suspect this is an issue?”

I tell Frank about the way Momo's been acting. The things she's said that sound like red flags. The way she jumped a mile and ran away from the table when that metal tub fell. How she was so worried about showing her dirty shirt to her mom. It's difficult to look him in the eye as I'm talking. A torrent of embarrassment from my own past makes it hard to articulate what I want to say. I can't help but recognize a part of myself in Momo. I know I shouldn't be embarrassed about what happened to me. It wasn't my fault. But talking about Momo is bringing up all of those ashamed feelings I buried at the bottom of my emotional suitcase a long time ago.

Memories of the neighbor who molested me when I was eleven come rushing back. I kept it secret for a long time. He threatened to do the same thing to my little sister if I told anyone. But I finally told my friend and then my dad found out. My dad ran that monster right out of town. I made a deal with myself to forget what happened and move on. By the time I started high school in a different town, no one around me knew about it except my family. I wanted to rewrite my life. I wanted to be a better version of myself, the one I always knew I could be. It turns out that reinventing yourself is hard when you want to lock up painful emotions and throw away the key.

“Have you spoken to her mother?” Frank asks.

“No.”

“Good. Let's keep it that way. Parents prefer to deal with these situations directly with me.”

“But if a camper is being abused by their parents, wouldn't they just deny it?”

“You'd be surprised. I've heard it all. Some parents have no problem describing the methods they choose to discipline their kids, even when they sound inappropriate.”

I wait to hear some examples. Frank doesn't offer any.

“So, um . . . what are you going to do?” I ask.

“I'll call Momo's mother. Get to the bottom of this.”

“How will you do that exactly?”

“We won't know specifics until I make contact.”

I wait for more information. Frank doesn't offer any.

Is it just me, or is this guy brushing me off? Why can't Frank be a stereotypical hippie camp director who's all about singing around the campfire and making s'mores? That guy would be racing to call Momo's mom.

“Anything else?” he asks. He actually has the nerve to look at the clock over the door behind me.

“No.” Isn't suspected abuse enough?

“Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I'll let you know when I hear back.” Frank stands, shuffling papers together to make a messy pile. Several other messy piles sigh in exasperation. “Are you walking out?”

“Um . . . I have to go by my locker.”

“See you tomorrow, then.”

“Have a good night.”

“Oh, I will.” He scurries off like he can't wait to get home, change into sweats, and hit the La-Z-Boy.

People like Frank don't seem to be motivated by anything. They go to work only because they have to and count down the days to the weekend. How is that enough for them? Aren't they constantly feeling the lack of deeper meaning in their lives?

My goal in life is to help make the world a better place in any small ways I can. That's why I can't wait to be a social worker. I want to work with underprivileged kids in the toughest areas of New York City. Kids like Momo need people in their lives who truly care about them. But being in New York isn't all about my career. I've always known that this city is my true home. This is where I was meant to be. Moving here was the ultimate way to reinvent myself. I can be the best version of myself in the best city. No one ever has to know about the damaged parts of me.

When I moved to New York City, I wasn't only running from my past. I was running toward my future.

I WAS LANGUISHING ON THE
couch for the fourth consecutive day when Darcy declared an end to my pity party. She said it was time to pick myself up and dust myself off. I had called out sick again yesterday, and the office was closed today for Fourth of July. The couch was all mine and there was no way I was moving. Until Darcy made me move.

Darcy and Rosanna had been leaving me alone. They knew I needed space and that binge-watching was the only activity I could tolerate. But when Darcy threatened to physically remove me from the couch, she wasn't playing. She came home this afternoon, turned off the TV, and demanded that I march myself into the shower. She was probably just jealous that her couch was having an affair. Darcy led me toward the bathroom when it became clear
that marching was not about to happen. I caught Rosanna in my peripheral vision peeling the sheets, pillows, and fuzzy throw off the couch.

Standing in the shower under the hot water might be making me feel better. It's hard to tell. Everything unrelated to Austin feels blurry. And even the unrelated stuff ends up being related by the time I get finished thinking about it. Like the soap I'm using. One minute I'm lathering up, inhaling the calming scent of lavender, washing away the past four days of the worst emotional trauma I have ever known. The next minute I'm remembering how Austin used this same bar of soap just four days ago, came back into my room, and joked that he smelled girly.

I want to throw out this bar of soap and the other bars of lavender soap in the bathroom cabinet. I want to destroy every bar of lavender soap in the world. But that would be a slippery slope. It's not like I can get rid of every single thing that reminds me of him. There wouldn't be anything left.

My arms get tired when I'm rinsing out my hair. I have to rest them, waiting for the ache to subside, before I finish rinsing the shampoo out. Forget conditioner. What would be the point? It's not like I'm going anywhere. I stand still and let the water wash the suds away. I try visualizing Austin's lies rinsing away with the soap and shampoo, a foamy froth of deception swirling down the drain. But a fresh wave of nausea washes over me with the water as I
remember each betrayal, my tears mixing in. How he said he loved me more than he's ever loved anyone. How he said he was the happiest he's ever been when we were together. How being with me made him want to be a better man.

Except he wasn't a better man. He was a man who was married the whole time.

Freshly showered and dressed in a clean cami and leggings, I go back out to the living room. Darcy and Rosanna have taken over the couch. Probably to prevent me from wasting any more of my life on it.

“Feeling better?” Rosanna asks me.

I sit on the puffy armchair. It feels weird to sit upright after reclining for so long.

“A little,” I say.

“Do you want to watch the fireworks in Tribeca tonight?” Darcy says.

“Who's going?”

Rosanna and Darcy exchange a look.

“Logan and Donovan are meeting up with us,” Rosanna admits. “But then D and I are leaving for Miami before the fireworks. He's letting Darcy and Logan up to his roof so they can stay and watch them. He says the view is incredible.”

“Enjoy.”

“You don't want to come?”

Every year I look forward to the Fourth of July. Where else do you get a front-row seat to the best fireworks in the
country? Everyone else watches the fireworks on TV while New Yorkers get to see them live. But there is no way I'm watching the fireworks this year. Not after that ginormous non-coincidence with Austin. We were talking about the Fourth of July a week ago and how much we love the fireworks. Then he drove me to New Jersey so I could see the Manhattan skyline from his side of the water. That's when we saw a short practice run for tonight's fireworks over the Hudson River. Right after we were talking about them. At the time I thought the non-coincidence was a sign that we were meant to be together. But I guess that non-coincidence happened for a reason I don't understand.

“I can't watch the fireworks,” I say.

“Why not?” Darcy asks.

“Remember that ginormous fireworks non-coincidence with Austin?”

“Oh yeah.”

“So I'm not really feeling up to it.” I'm also not really feeling up to being around two happy couples. “I'm staying in.”

“Um . . . that's not happening.”

“Why not?”

“I called—”

The door buzzes, cutting Darcy off. My heart jumps into my throat. “Who's here?” I ask Darcy.

“It's for you,” she says.

“It's not Austin,” Rosanna quickly adds.

My heart recedes back to where it belongs. I go over to the intercom and press the talk button. “Hello?”

“Hey, Sadie,” says a familiar girl's voice. “It's me.”

I buzz her up.

“Hope you don't mind that I asked her to come over,” Darcy says.

“No, it's cool. How did you get her number?”

“Your phone. Excuse the invasion of privacy. Desperate times call for desperate measures.”

When I open the door, I'm happy to see Brooke. Just seeing that she looks the same after so much has changed—wavy brown hair, brown eyes, skinny, tough, two inches taller than me—is oddly comforting. Brooke is my best friend from high school. She understands about soul mates better than anyone else I know. But I didn't tell her about breaking up with Austin. Even the thought of talking about it made me want to throw up.

“Hey,” I say, relieved that I was forced to take a shower and change.

Brooke folds me into a tight hug. “Why didn't you tell me?” she says against my wet hair.

“I didn't tell anyone except Rosanna and Darcy. But only because they live here.”

“The comatose body on the couch was pretty hard to miss,” Darcy quips.

“Thanks again for calling me,” Brooke tells her. “I wish you would have called me sooner.”

“We wouldn't have been able to get her out of the apartment before. She's ready now.”

“Ready for what?” I wonder.

“We're going out, just the two of us,” Brooke says. “To Kitchenette. For cupcakes.”

This makes sense. Brooke is a fellow cupcake addict. She is a big believer in the power of a cupcake to mitigate boy drama.

Brooke talks to Darcy and Rosanna while I go to my room to get ready. Leaving the apartment feels like something I used to do a million years ago. I stand in front of my dresser, figuring out what to wear. The girl looking back at me in the mirror is a girl I don't entirely recognize. She looks shell-shocked, a survivor of serious destruction. Sparkly eye shadow and mascara aren't helping. I run a comb through my wet hair. That's one thing I love about summer. You can go out with wet hair and it doesn't matter. People think you just came from the pool.

Brooke and I take the subway to Kitchenette. She sits next to me in silence the whole ride down. We've never been quiet together for this long before. She can tell that I don't feel like talking yet. But when I do, I know Brooke will listen without judgment. That's the kind of true friend she is.

The first thing I realize at Kitchenette is that they're out of my favorite cupcake. The vanilla rainbow sprinkles ones are always in the same place in the dessert case. There's a
big gap where rainbow sprinkles should be.

“Of course,” I grumble at the gap.

“But they have peanut butter chocolate,” Brooke points out. She knows why I'm grumbly.

We settle in at a table with our cupcakes and coffee. I still don't feel like talking even though we're totally at home here. There's a little girl with her mom at the next table. The girl is about three years old. She's eating a cupcake while her mom yaps away on her phone. Doesn't her mom realize this time is fleeting? That her little girl will be grown up before she knows it? If I were that girl's mom, I would be fully focused on her. Or if I were that girl's big sister.

I had a chance to be a big sister. That chance was taken away from me. Those two guys arguing on the subway . . . one of them pushing the other, who shoved my pregnant mom so hard she fell. . . . The scene replays against my resistance for the billionth time.

My stomach twists in knots. Any hint of an appetite is gone.

Brooke is concerned. Typically I would be on my second cupcake by now.

“I made you something,” Brooke says. She reaches into her bag on the chair next to her and pulls out a bright yellow origami flower. Flowing script in orange glitter pen spirals on each flower petal.

“A warm fuzzy?” I ask. My throat gets tight. Brooke
was so cynical when I met her. She scoffed at the first warm fuzzy I gave her, assuming I had some ulterior motive. Now she not only gets warm fuzzies, she made one for me.

“I learned from the best,” Brooke says.

My eyes well up with tears. It takes every bit of energy I have not to start bawling in the middle of Kitchenette.

“Thank you,” I manage to say. “And thanks for getting me out of the apartment. Sorry to be such a drag.”

“No apologies allowed. Austin is the one who should be apologizing.”

“He did. I didn't want to hear it.”

“I'm so sorry things turned out this way.”

“He was cheating with me the whole time,” I say miserably. “I was the other woman. But I swear it felt like we were meant to be together.” How can I explain the epic love I thought we had? How can I make her understand how it felt to be with him? To touch him? To kiss him? “What if I never find that kind of love again?”

“You will,” Brooke insists. “You're the most positive person I know. You'll get back to your optimistic place. And it will be even better next time because the person you're meant to be with won't be married.”

I really want to believe Brooke. I want to believe that time will heal. That one day I'll be over this. But there are some things you just never get over. Brooke doesn't know about my sister. Maybe she wouldn't think I'm so positive if she knew about the loss and fear under my optimism.
I feel like a fraud. Brooke thinks she knows me. But she only knows the shiny happy parts of me. The bright parts I show the world while I hide the darkness.

“I just feel so unhinged,” I say. “It's hard to explain. It's like . . . I can't trust anyone the way I thought I could. Like I can't even trust reality as I know it. Because what do I really know? Nothing is guaranteed. Bad things happen to good people. Anything can fall apart when you least expect it.”

“But there's the Knowing. Sometimes deep down you do know.”

The Knowing is what Brooke calls this feeling of absolute certainty she sometimes has. The Knowing is rare, but when it happens, Brooke never questions it. It's a gut instinct guiding her with unshakable clarity. Even when the Knowing sounds crazy, about something that seems totally illogical or impossible, it is always right.

I had the Knowing about Austin. I knew he was my soul mate. And the scary truth? Even after everything that happened . . . I still do. If we had met another time when we were both available, we would be together. The timing wasn't right for us. And the lying wasn't right for me.

But it doesn't matter. There's no way I can forgive him.

My eternal optimist side still knows that following my heart is the right thing to do. That's how I will eventually end up where I belong with the person I'm meant to be with. Brooke wouldn't even be here if she hadn't followed
her heart. She moved here senior year even though that meant she'd have to live with her dad. She had a Knowing it was the right thing for her. Coming to New York has shown her so many possibilities. Possibilities she never even imagined before she moved here.

Brooke's story gives me hope. Just being with her is helping me start to heal. It will be a long time until I feel like myself again. But right now, my best friend is helping me find my way home.