Page 78 of Breakaway
"Some."
"Some is good." He pulls me closer. His hand finds mine against my chest. "Some is better than none."
I don't say anything. Mouse adjusts at my feet, her weight redistributing, her purring uninterrupted. The room smells like Wes now. Not just the pillow, not just the shirt he left here in October that I have not washed. The actual man. His skin, his soap, the morning version of him before the day starts.
"I made coffee last night," he says. "Before we went to bed. It's in the pot. It'll be cold but it's there."
"You made coffee at midnight."
"I made coffee at midnight." He presses his face into my hair. "Figured one of us would want it."
I close my eyes. The sentence from last night is still in my head. I can't do this anymore. It is quieter than it was yesterday. Not gone. Quieter.
"Wes?"
"Yeah."
"The name Ash left. The therapist."
His hand tightens on mine. "Yeah?"
"I'll call."
He doesn't say anything for a few seconds. Just his breathing against my neck, his thumb moving across my knuckles.
"Okay." He kisses the back of my neck. "You want me to be here for that?"
"Yeah."
"Then I'm here."
Mouse yawns at the foot of the bed, the sound enormous and theatrical, and I almost laugh. Almost. The almost is more than I've had in weeks.
I call the number on the piece of paper Avi left and she is able to fit me in the next day. Which is how I find myself sitting in my car in a lot on Juniper Street.
The drive took me through Midtown. At Tenth and Piedmont the crosswalk is painted in rainbow stripes, the colors faded from traffic and weather but still visible, still the full spectrum laid flat across the asphalt.
The office is on the second floor of a brick building between a yoga studio and an immigration lawyer. I sit in my car for three minutes before I go inside. The waiting room is small. Two chairs, a side table, a stack of magazines that nobody has touched. A print on the wall of a mountain landscape that I would say is below average.
The door opens. A woman with purple hair pulled back in a tight bun, bright glasses with rainbow frames that sit on a face that is already looking at me like I am a person and not a file.
"Luca? Come on in."
The office is warmer than the waiting room. Two deep green chairs and a gray couch, positioned toward the window. A painting above the desk, warm colors in a shape I cannot name. A box of tissues on the side table between the seats. A small plant in a ceramic pot on the windowsill, and I can tell from here that it is real because the soil is damp and one leaf has a brown edge where the sun has been too much for it.
I take the couch. She takes a chair. She settles, notebook on her knee, pen in her hand but not writing.
"Thank you for coming in. I know this is your first time here."
"Yeah. Thanks for fitting me in so quickly."
She waits. I don't give her anything else.
"So what brings you in today, Luca?"
"My teammates think I should be here."
"Okay. What do they think is going on?"
