We Were Never Here, page 10
Adrienne was fixing me with the kindest, most intense listening face.
“Last week, she had a similar thing happen to her. While we were on vacation together. And now I want to be strong for her, but…”
“Wow, Emily. Seeing her go through that must be pretty triggering.”
I bit my lip. With enough time and Kristen’s support, I’d sealed off the horrific Sebastian incident with a satisfying thump, like closing the lid of a coffin or a book’s heavy back cover. I’d gotten back to my life and doubled down on my friendship with Kristen. But to suddenly reconceive of that once-in-a-lifetime nightmare as not so one-time-only…now Sebastian was back in the corner of my vision, and the feel of his cool, dry skin was mingling in my mind with Paolo’s hairy flesh.
Paolo—they might be unearthing him this very minute.
“Did you report the attack?”
“We didn’t, no.” A beat. “Neither one.”
Adrienne nodded. “What’s often hard for survivors is that there’s no closure. The perpetrator gets off scot-free, and you’re left knowing he’s still out there.”
Alarm bells, red flashing lights: Sebastian wasn’t roaming the streets, unpunished—Paolo, neither. Could she tell I was holding back? Was she testing me? Why the hell are you here, Emily?
“What’s going on? I see the wheels turning.” Adrienne tapped her temple.
“I’m…really nervous, honestly,” I said. “I’m not even sure how therapy is supposed to work.” Lord, I was an idiot. I’d had some vague, half-baked idea that Adrienne could teach me to control my anxiety over being caught—some magical technique for containing the fear. And that sorcery would allow me to act normal around Aaron, to deserve his affection, to be likable—lovable. I’d smooth things over with Kristen, too, and from there on out it would be nothing but flowers and rainbows, a life as beautiful as a cruise-line commercial. But it was like Kristen had said: Therapy doesn’t work like that. Now I was dancing around the real issues, wasting Adrienne’s time and making myself look dodgy.
“Tell me about this friend—the one you want to show up for.”
I ran Adrienne through the basics.
“What’s interesting to me is that when people are experiencing trauma, they tend to go inward,” she said. “They’re not thinking selflessly because they’re just trying to survive. And yet you want to work on being a better friend to Kristen. Why do you think that is?”
Crap—she could see right through me. “Well, Kristen’s done so much for me. I feel like I should—I mean, I want to become less of a taker and more of a giver. I want to step up.”
“Has Kristen said she wishes you were doing more?”
“Not exactly,” I said. Kristen seemed…weirdly fine. Did she really not need me like I’d needed her? I’d sent her a certificate for a massage at a Sydney spa, then an Uber Eats gift card with a note about getting herself some comfort food, but her thank-yous were upbeat and a bit gobsmacked: Aw, you didn’t need to do this!
“What’s going on with the rest of your support system?” Adrienne asked. “Family, other friends? A partner?”
“I’m not close with my family,” I admitted. “Just Kristen—she’s like my sister. And I don’t have a huge gaggle of friends; I’d rather have one ride-or-die than, y’know, a million acquaintances. But also, I just started seeing someone. It’s…super new, but yeah. He’s great.” I hooked my ankle over my knee and blinked at the tiny lotus flower there. It felt like eons ago that Kristen and I had gotten these.
“Can you tell me about him?”
I relaxed, told her how we’d met, how Aaron only put me on edge because he seemed too good to be true. How he was the first guy I’d really liked in five whole years, the first one I could see a future with. How different things felt with him, but how whenever we started to make out I froze up.
“Your face lights up when you talk about him,” Adrienne observed. “Even when you’re talking about putting walls up. It’s nice to see.”
I looked away, a closed-mouth smile tugging at my lips.
“You said he’s the first guy in five years—who was the last one?”
“Oh, I don’t think about him much.” I waved my hand. “His name was Colin, we met on OKCupid. At first I thought things were going really well—we had great chemistry, he was totally my type, all that. But then, after a few months, shortly after he met my friends, I realized he was kind of…possessive, maybe. He and Kristen butted heads. And, you know. Love me, love my people.”
Colin had flickered back into my consciousness a few months ago—a suggested friend on a new app I’d downloaded. While everyone else in my life had given me their vague, blanket approval of him at the time (“He seems great; glad to see you happy!”), Kristen had been the one to look closely and ask questions. One night she’d pointed out that his irritated response to my canceling plans “reeked of a personality disorder.”
“And then no one for five years,” Adrienne prompted.
“No one serious, no.”
“And does…” Her eyes flicked to the notepad in her lap. “Does Aaron know you survived a sexual assault last year?”
“Oh, like I said, I wasn’t…raped. He just—”
“It was sexual assault, Emily.” She let it hang in the air for a second. “If it was unwanted sexual contact, that’s sexual assault.”
Tears sprang into my eyes again. “I guess. But to answer your question, no, he doesn’t know about it. I don’t talk about it.”
Her eyebrows jolted. “Except with Kristen.”
This is Joan. She’s the best friend a girl could have.
“Of course,” I said, right as the clock hit 7:50.
* * *
—
Drishti Yoga had always been my happy place, a point of refuge.
But now I wasn’t sure.
It was a sunny, spacious spot with the scent of palo santo sugaring the air. In the front window, crystals and cacti had been artfully arranged, and I flicked my mat open on the studio’s smooth wood. Priya appeared as I was carrying a tower of blankets and blocks over from the wall, and the props tumbled to the floor as she gave me a one-armed hug.
Back in college, Kristen had introduced me to yoga—I had her to thank for that. I loved it: cued breaths so slow they stretched my lungs like weather balloons; the fierce concentration required for even the simplest asanas. After Cambodia, my yoga studio had been my church. I’d feel tears brim in the deep ache of Pigeon Pose or in Camel Pose’s brave unfurling, and in that moment I’d believe that maybe, maybe I could someday let it all go.
Could I really start the entire healing process…again?
Priya whipped off her sweatshirt to reveal a swath of rippling abs. “I invited my friend Tim, from Gethsemane,” she said, straightening her mat next to mine. She meant the church, not the garden. “Hope that’s okay.”
“Of course! Have I met him?” Priya attended a huge Episcopal church in Bay View, and all the Gethsemane folks I’d met at her parties seemed fun and artsy.
“I don’t think so. You’ll like him.” Priya was always inviting folks to things, mixing groups, happiest in a thrumming cocoon of other people. She strode to the front window to take a picture of the plant-and-rock vignette. I envied her effortless Instagram aesthetic, still lifes she elevated into art.
It had been a week since the incident in Chile, and it crept into my mind as I moved and flowed, my quads quivering. I imagined my fear of someone finding Paolo trickling out in my Ujjayi breath, my salty sweat. As my hamstrings finally, finally gave up their week of soreness in Staff Pose, I pictured Aaron sitting across from me, the two awful incidents hanging between us like a hologram. In Bow Pose, balancing on my belly, I felt something deep inside my abdomen tightening, taking form like a heat pack snapped into a solid. When we eased onto the floor and the class moved on, I lay still, waiting for my eyes to blink dry.
After Savasana, as we sat cross-legged, the instructor went off on a woo-woo tangent: You are divine consciousness that has chosen to become human, because consciousness needs form to evolve and explore. I cracked my eyes open and Priya and I exchanged a smile.
On the sidewalk after class, Priya said goodbye to Tim and then checked her phone. Her face lit up. “This is your friend, right?” She held up her screen and I squinted at the comments below her picture of Drishti’s window display. Kristen was an Instagram lurker, following others but never posting photos of her own, so it took me a moment to recognize her handle. So pretty—Emily was telling me about this place!, it read.
Guilt surged through me. I hadn’t contacted Kristen today—I’d been reaching out less, reasoning that she didn’t seem to need me, that she always brushed me off when I asked if she was okay. Our phone calls felt awkward and strained as I struggled to discuss anything other than Sebastian and Paolo…or Aaron, since I figured she didn’t want to hear me blathering on about my new relationship. Now, when something funny caught my attention, I sent it to Aaron, not Kristen. Which was shitty of me, right? Pulling away from her after she’d been there for me?
“That’s her!” I managed, looking away from Priya’s screen. How weird. The rock in my belly from class re-formed, sharper than ever.
* * *
—
But I didn’t hear from Kristen that night, either. A naggy part of me kept whipping myself—bad Emily, you’re avoiding your best friend—but in the evening Aaron and I caught an indie horror movie at the Oriental, his arm slung around me in the cinema’s red-velvet core. We spazzed out at the jump scares and he kissed my cheek when the credits rolled, and though we didn’t spend the night together, during the date any thoughts of Kristen were a distant flicker.
It was the longest silent spell Kristen and I had ever had, and when I woke on Sunday—her Monday, on to the next work week—without a text, I felt a strange push-pull: relief plus guilt, respite plus shame. I pictured Kristen in her own bedroom on the bottom of the world, realizing—accepting—that I couldn’t put her back together.
What’s more, I began to think we really might get away with what we’d done. There’d been nary a mention of a missing backpacker in the news. My nightmare was five thousand miles away on a desolate slash of mountain, and the only person who knew about it was almost twice as far from me, and the wall I’d been building between us was growing firm. Aaron and I were in a relationship now and I was putting the past behind me. I still loved Kristen, and maybe someday she’d forgive me, but I couldn’t count on it. Didn’t deserve it.
Because my strongest feeling, the one hanging like a dome over all the others, was an intense desire not to speak with, reach out to, or even think of Kristen. It would be one thing if we could freaking talk about what we needed to talk about. But she’d barred the topic from our phone calls, citing security concerns, and anyway, she didn’t seem to need me, she wasn’t crumbling like snow the way I was after Phnom Penh. In fact, she was acting like it never happened. I thought dully that I should try harder, be a better friend, but I was like a person standing at the shore of Lake Michigan at the New Year’s Day polar plunge. As much as I wanted to want it, I stayed rooted to the sand.
It was hard enough to keep up our friendship overseas; there was a seventeen-hour time difference, different schedules and seasons, lives of our own. Other friendships had ended—or at least taken a step back—over much, much less.
I brushed my teeth and pulled a comb through my hair. Acceptance was seeping into my lungs, little vapors. It had finally gotten through to Kristen that I wouldn’t bow out of my life in Milwaukee to backpack with her. Aaron texted right then, and I let the fantasy unwind: Maybe this time next year I’d be planning a getaway with him. Or even a solo trip—if the yoga teacher was correct, wasn’t it my duty as a human being with eyes and legs and a beat-beat-beating heart to experience things, to explore? All the hand-wringing about women tempting fate by going on adventures, how it was our responsibility to protect ourselves…wasn’t it simply a way to keep women’s lives small? To keep us cowering at home, controlled, contained? Perhaps I’d visit somewhere less exotic but just as incredible—a train voyage around central Europe, say, or a road trip to a national park out west.
I froze at the melodic chime of my front door. I glanced down the hallway at the light slanting in from the windows, and the doorbell rang again.
I slipped down the hall and pulled the door open a few inches, then went rigid. My ears crackled and shock whooshed through me. It was a blustery day and wind jolted between my front door and the world outside.
“Emily Donovan.” Kristen took the door in her hand and opened it the rest of the way. She smiled wide. “Surprise.”
CHAPTER 14
A dream—this had to be another dream, like the sunrise-on-Lake-Michigan one, defying the laws of physics, of linear time. Kristen was in Sydney this very minute, glaring at her annoying boss, buying autumnal vegetables, pulling sweaters from her closet for the impending winter. Her world was so unlike mine. She couldn’t be on my front porch in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
“I’ve missed you!” Her suitcase thumped to the concrete as she pulled me into a hug. I wrapped my arms around her too and was surprised to find her solid. The hug filled me with warmth and I squeezed our hearts together, breathed into her neck. Kristen is here.
“What are you…how are you here?” I said into her jacket.
She giggled. “How do you think? Sixteen-hour flight to L.A., four-hour flight to Chicago, bus to Milwaukee, Uber from the station.” She let me go and grabbed her bag. “So, needless to say, I’m exhausted. You gonna let me in?”
I opened my mouth and then closed it, instead giving my head an incredulous shake. I held the door wide and she pushed past me.
“You should see your face right now! Picture a compilation video of the world’s greatest surprise-party reactions. You’re like a GIF.” She squeezed my shoulder as she passed.
“Kristen, are you okay? Are you having flashbacks or anything? I’m so glad to see your face.” I gave her another hug, more urgently this time.
“Honestly, I’m doing great! Especially now that I’m reunited with my bestie.” She paused in the entryway. “Was this gallery wall up last time I was here?”
I stared at her: Does not compute. Was I still asleep? The last time Kristen was in town was…two Christmases ago? “I guess you haven’t seen it. Where are you staying?”
“I’ll stay at my grandparents’, don’t worry.” They lived in Brookfield, a suburb twenty minutes inland.
“Did you want to stay here?”
“Hmm, as tempting as your miniature sofa and leaky air mattress are…”
I followed her into the kitchen. “Well, let me know if you change your mind. I know your grandparents are…difficult.”
“Thanks! Yeah, we’ll see.” She helped herself to a glass of water.
“How long will you be in town?” I smiled and tried again: “How long do I get with you?”
“I’ll tell you the whole story once my brain turns on. Ugh, I’m so happy to be home. Spring is so nice here—after a real winter, not like Australia.”
I gawped at her for a moment. “I can’t believe it, Kristen! You’re like a mirage.” I wiped my palm across the air in front of me.
“I know.” She giggled. “And you probably have a ton going on and I don’t want you to clear your schedule for me or anything. I just really wanted to surprise you. There are so few genuine surprises in life these days, you know?”
I blinked at her. Was she serious? I considered two dead bodies quite surprising. The kind of shock that made me hope the rest of my days would unfold without my encountering the unexpected. Still, my chest gushed with how glad I was to see her.
“Real talk, Kristen. I was in a bad place after Cambodia last year. How are you doing?”
She gazed out the window. “I think I’m better at compartmentalizing than you. Since I went through some shit growing up.”
I nodded. Her parents, dead in a house fire—orphaning her like Bruce Wayne. Pity and guilt mingled and rose through my throat. “God, I’m so happy to see you, Kristen. All I’ve wanted this last week is to have you here, to be able to talk about everything you went through.”
“Aww, babe! Hey, do you have any coffee?”
“I can make some.” I stood and yanked a spoon from a drawer. Our rhythm was all off, Kristen batting away my attempts at real talk like a ninja. I pitched a few scoops of coffee into the machine. “I can’t believe you spent all that time on planes again just a week later. I’m not sure I ever want to travel again.”
“Well, sixteen-hour flights are the norm for me these days.”
I focused on clicking the carafe into place. My movements felt choreographed, like stage directions: She clatters around, making coffee. “You don’t have to be okay, you know,” I said. “What happened in Cambodia, it—it ripped me open, it left me confused and scared and raw. I couldn’t…well, I don’t have to tell you what a mess I was.”
She watched me, nodding sympathetically. This was all wrong; she shouldn’t have to comfort me. She was here, right in front of me—the exact thing I’d been wishing for since I got home. But I didn’t feel better. With a pang, I wondered if the distance between Kristen and me had been a blessing: a long and narrow but viable path toward healing. Now I felt myself sliding the opposite way like someone dragged by the heels.
“But you got through it,” she said. “And I will too. Especially now that we’re together again.” She smiled wide and then stifled a yawn.
