Page 65 of Someone Like Me
“You listen to me, you shitbag. We are nothing alike, you and I.” She is hissing. Actually hissing. “I’m hard on Evie, but I’m always looking after her. I’d never put her in harm’s way—”
I’m shaking my head before she’s even finishes. “I’d never let anything hurt her,” I swear, the words coming from a place so deep inside me it hurts.
She just raises a hateful brow. “Oh really? What would your brother have to say about that?”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
EVIE
I tiptoe out of the nursery with one thought in mind: Little Aaron Mayfield has his days and nights confused. The kid sleeps like the dead all afternoon.
But with me here today, Janine took the opportunity to get her first haircut in months. Thank goodness. She needs a little time to herself. I told her to get a mani-pedi while she’s at it.
And now I have the house to myself. Well, me and Gemini have the house to ourselves. He’s been following me around nonstop for the last three days. At first, he kept standing by the front door, clearly wondering when we were going home. And, yeah, that left me with a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes more than once.
Because I don’t know how to feel. Or maybe it’s just that I feel too many things.
I miss my home. I miss feeling at home. It’s only been a few days, and so far this little arrangement I have with Janine and James couldn’t be better, but I still feel like a guest. I’m trying not to take up too much space, and when they’re both home, I don’t want my presence to make them feel awkward, so I’ve been spending a lot of time in the guest room.
And that doesn’t feel like home either.
It’s nice, of course. A little Laura Ashley for my taste, but nice. I feel weird about leaving dirty clothes on the floor or taking a nap in the afternoon, even though I’m pulling a baby shift every night, and after the third night, it’s not so easy.
So now that Aaron’s down and Janine is gone for a while, I take the advantage of the quiet and sit in meditation in Janine’s sunlit front room.
I’ll admit, this is my favorite room in Janine’s house. The floors are a ruddy glazed brick, and while it’s cool under my bare feet, the wide bay window and its view of the live oak in Janine’s front yard keep the room from feeling cold. Sunlight filters through the leaves, giving the room a greenish hue, and the pale blue of the walls seems to drink it in.
I sit on Janine’s white loveseat facing the window and tuck my feet into a lotus pose. I lay my hands, palm-up, atop my knees, symbolically releasing anything I don’t need and accepting what the universe has to offer me, and I close my eyes.
The sound of Gem’s toenails across the brick lets me know he’s come to find me, and I hear him walk in a quick circle before lying down on the little tight weave jute rug in front of me. He gives a huff of acceptance. He knows if I’m sitting like this, nothing exciting is going to happen for a while.
Following my breath as it travels through my nose and down my throat, I try to anchor into the present. The sounds of the house around me play a different music than the one I am used to. The light behind my eyelids is brighter. The cushion beneath me both foreign and firm. I accept all these differences.
I accept that I don’t know what I’m doing or where I am going.
And as soon as I accept this, I let myself feel the current of fear that has swept through me from the moment I knew I had to leave home.
The fear is there. Right in my middle. Like a ball of tar. Dark. Sticky. Opaque. And as much as I’d like to pull away from it, deny it exists, I focus on the feeling, my breath shaking out of me as I do.
What am I afraid of?
The grounded part of my mind, the endless observer, poses this question, and without hesitation, I see a kaleidoscope of answers. Mom, Dad, and Tori. All disappointed in me. All disapproving of what I’ve done. I see my leaving as not only an exodus from the house, but as a diaspora of my family, the separation and dissolution my own fault.
I don’t question how realistic or rational this fear is. It just is. Its presence in me makes it real enough. This is what I must deal with.
More fears come. The weariness of my welcome here with Janine and her husband. The erosion of their goodwill and friendliness. The awkward distance that comes of a friendship that has been asked to bear too much. And beyond that, the gaping mystery of what next?
A shabby apartment. Light brown stains in ceiling tiles overhead. German cockroaches creeping under dingy baseboards. Three different locks on the one door.
Loneliness.
I breathe in and explore this new arrival. I can’t find the darkness at its center. But it doesn’t feel deep. It feels… shallow. Ephemeral.
Because contrasted with the fear of loneliness is the certainty of an antidote.
At the sound of Drew Moroux’s voice, I open my eyes.
Meditation can bring on a host of sensations. Phantom touch. An Aurora Borealis behind the eyelids. Even the feeling of levitating in mid air.
