Chapter Text

day 1

Gale’s fingers skim the doorknob and then drop back down to his side. This is his third attempt to open the door before him. He tells himself there won’t be a fourth attempt. That the next time he touches the door will be to actually open it. The door will be pushed open and he will walk through the threshold into the room beyond, take a seat at the circle, smile politely as people introduce themselves, and listen to the stories and lessons the support group has to offer.

Okay, he thinks, open the door.

His fingers glance off the knob again and drop back down to his side.

At that precise moment, the door opens and a woman blinks up at him.

In the back of his mind, Gale knows something like this is inevitable. He would find a way to embarrass himself before he even enters the community room of the library where the support groups like to meet, before he meets anyone or says anything. Of course, he would stand in front of the door for several minutes digging deep for the courage to enter the room before the decision is made for him. The woman looks up at him and gives him a small, apologetic smile as she takes a step back, holding the door open, inviting him in.

“Sorry, I didn’t realize you were just outside,” she says. Her voice is breathy, as if she’s been moving and has just now come to a standstill.

“Oh, no, please don’t apologize,” he says quickly. “I’ve just been standing here blocking the door. I should apologize.”

She glances behind her, at the support group sitting in a loose circle, the group leader at the end furthest from the door, holding a stack of books in his hand. Gale is struck by her profile, her long nose, her dark hair falling onto her forehead from the rough ponytail she has it up in, a smattering of freckles strewn across her cheeks and over the bridge of her nose. He looks away when she turns back to him, down to his shoes.

“I’ll get out of your way,” she says.

He sidesteps her and enters the room. A sense of dread douses him as if he’s stepped into a rain shower. He pauses just past her, frozen in place. In his chest he can feel the dread mingle with the deep and ever present ache he still hasn’t learned to live with.

He feels her eyes on him. He keeps moving, toward the group, and takes the seat closest to the door.

After a few moments, the woman comes back and sits across from him, beside the group leader. There is something stiff about the way she’s sitting. Her body is leaning forward, as if she’s about to run off. He relaxes his own body as he watches her relax hers, mirroring her.

The group leader is a young man, definitely younger than Gale, with one cloudy eye and his hair in dark twists. “Let’s start by going around the room. I’ll begin. My name is Wyll. I’m here to support by listening. And I’m hoping to find solidarity in our struggles.”

The woman is next. She holds her hands together tightly on her lap. Another lock of hair has fallen from her ponytail, sitting against her neck. “My name is, um. Anara. I’m recovering from an accident that affected some of my memories. I’m here to, uh. I’m not sure why I’m here,” she mumbles.

“That’s alright, Anara,” Wyll says gently. “You’re here and that’s enough for now.”

Around the room they go, one by one, introducing themselves, and as soon as they say their names, Gale feels them all melt into a puddle together, except for Anara, whose name sits in the back of his mind like it’s written on a sticky note and placed on the surface of his brain.

Gale’s turn. He feels the group’s eyes on him. He hasn’t been around this many people since before the accident. He straightens up and then slides back down into a slouch on the slippery plastic chair. His chest twinges in warning.

“I’m Gale,” he says. “Nice to meet everyone.”

“Thanks for coming, Gale,” Wyll says with an easy smile.

They start small, with guided meditations. About halfway through, he starts to feel warm. He opens his eyes and finds one other person unable to focus, the woman across the circle from him. Anara. She meets his eyes and gives him a cautious smile. He tries to smile back. The warmth flashing over his skin gets just a little worse.

He lingers by the window as the others mingle and slowly trickle out of the room at the end of the first meeting. He isn’t sure if he wants to come back, although the presence of other bodies in a room is comforting in a small way, a change from the solitude he’s become used to. Solitude he’s been using as a shield from the world. He rubs his chest absently.

“Hi.” Anara materializes beside him.

He jumps. “Shit! Sorry. You startled me.”

“Sorry,” she says quickly. “Wow, we just can’t stop apologizing to each other.”

A laugh breaks out of him. It feels good, the thing in his chest loosening. “Gale,” he says, putting his hand out.

Her hand slips into his. It’s soft and small, and her grip is loose and uncertain. He gives her hand a shake and lets go quickly.

“Anara,” she says. “I think.”

He doesn’t want to pry, waiting for her to reveal more. After a moment, she goes on, “I’m pretty sure my name is Anara.”

“Do you have other options?” he asks.

“Not really. I woke up on the beach with this name in my head and not much else.”

“Oh.” Gale is filled with a sudden, inexplicable fear at her plight. “That’s awful. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay. You can’t exactly miss what you can’t even remember. I’m going through some therapy now and someone at the hospital recommended this group.”

“And what do you think, do you like it so far?” he asks.

She shrugs. She’s wearing a light T shirt, and just where the sleeves end he can see more freckles. A sun lover, he thinks. His own skin must be downright sallow by now from his self imposed confinement.

“It’s nice being around others,” she says vaguely.

“I feel the same,” he says. “I… don’t get out much. Because of my condition.”

“Are you sick?” she asks bluntly.

He wonders how much he should reveal. Turns his story over in his mind, this way and that, reading it from her perspective. She waits patiently. Her eyes cut through him, a soft brown, with dark circles around them. She looks tired. So is he. Tired of keeping things. Tired of being alone in this.

“I’m dying,” he says. “Well. Most likely dying. Bad heart,” he adds, and then, because he can’t stop himself from speaking, as if all the words he hasn’t said in the past year are pooling in his mouth waiting to be expelled, he continues, “A bad heart made worse by a terrible car accident. No one is entirely certain of how much time I have exactly, but suffice to say I am a man without a future.”

She nods slowly. He wonders if he’s just scared her away.

“And I’m a woman without a past,” she says. “You can’t say it’s not an interesting match.”

He laughs again, the rumble in his chest soothing to the aching thing behind his rib cage.

“Can you drink coffee?” she asks.

His heart skips a beat. A dangerous feeling. “No,” he says. “But I can have some herbal tea.”

She purses her lips. “I’m not sure the coffee place I go to has anything without caffeine. I… don’t know a lot of places.”

He consults his mental map of the area. “I know a place nearby. If it’s still open.”

“Can we go now?” she asks.

The answer is yes, immediately yes, he craves normalcy and would love to drink something hot and comforting with a beautiful woman. But the solitude he’s been forced into gives him a moment’s pause. He thinks back to his quiet apartment, his bookshelves, Tara curled on the couch into a fluffy ball, his chunky knit socks, all softening the loneliness and grief that threatens to flatten him. There is some part of him that wants to fade away in the apartment surrounded by his things and also crushed by them. He focuses on Anara, on her face, the constellation of freckles dotting her skin. He can do this. He can.

“Let’s go,” he says, and he leads the way out of the community room at the library.

.

Anara looks like she belongs here in this next generation, young and hip coffee shop. He can’t remember exactly when he last came here, some time before the recent renovations took it from an older, more dusty place to this minimalist, mostly white space with too many plants crawling up along the walls and spilling out onto the floor. He orders a chamomile tea with lavender. Anara orders a latte with a chocolate drizzle. She chooses their seating, a table for two on the patio. Evening is falling around them, the sun an orange smudge on the horizon. She takes a sip of her drink and closes her eyes.

“How do you know this place?” she asks.

He glances behind her, at the silhouette of the university cutting through the sunset. “I used to teach there,” he says, gesturing toward the cluster of buildings he used to call home.

“A professor,” she says, raising her eyebrows. “So you would come here between your classes?”

“Yes. It used to be different. New owners, I suppose. New, young owners.”

“You don’t like change?” She tilts her head, hair falling over her face, as if she’s trying to read him.

“I don’t mind it. Just… just not so much change when I’m not really around to see it happen. Then it just feels as though things are changing too much. Or that I’m missing too much. Far too much.”

He takes a sip of his tea to stop himself from rambling and focuses on the warmth flowing down his throat and settling in his stomach.

“Something about this area is familiar to me.” Her tone is wistful, sad. “The coffee. The open spaces, the students walking around. I think maybe I was a student here, but I’ve already checked with the university. I wasn’t. Doesn’t stop me from hanging around here.”

“Do you remember anything?” he asks.

“Some things.” She sips her coffee. Her lips are a deeper pink from the heat of her drink. Gale looks away, down at his tea. “It’s like a fog rolled in and covered everything. I had to start all over. The government and hospitals help to a point. But I’m just piecing it together while I work and pay bills and wait for it to all come back to me one day.”

Waiting. Watching. He feels a deep connection to her in this moment, the way she holds her cup with the tips of her fingers, as if she can’t exactly remember how to hold it, and the way he has been to this cafe a hundred times but can’t seem to remember exactly how to sit in front of someone on some facsimile of a date. A woman without a past. A man without a future. The steam from his drink rises slowly into the air, where it dissipates in the ephemeral present and is instantly replaced by another thin stream.

“I understand,” he tells her earnestly.

She smiles. His heart vibrates in his chest.

“I think you do,” she says.

.

She walks him back to his car, in the parking lot behind the library. Night has fallen in earnest, darkness pooling around them, cut by streetlights and fireflies hovering over bushes and empty stretches of grass.

“Can I drive you home?” he asks.

She points to a building behind them, just across the parking lot. “I live right there. Top floor. Not much of a view but it’s something.”

“Okay,” he says. “I’ll see you off until you get into the building.”

“Okay,” she says.

A moment of silence stretches between them. Gale forgets all etiquette, all the rules of engagement he used to pride himself in knowing and understanding. Confinement to his apartment for a year, and the heartbreak that paralyzed him, seems to have sapped all his social grace.

She puts her hand out, and he takes it eagerly, their palms slipping against each other, fingers wrapping around each hand, her skin cool to the touch, his far too warm. A shiver runs down his spine at her touch. He focuses all his effort on suppressing it.

“See you at the next meeting?” she asks.

He had been considering skipping the next meeting. As he dawdled by the door earlier, he had told himself that he should just get through this one at his mother’s insistence and then bury himself back under a mountain of blankets on his bed in his apartment and never emerge. He swallows and tastes lavender on the back of his tongue. Anara’s eyes fall softly on his face. He likes it, likes being seen by her.

“See you at the next meeting,” he says.

She holds on for just a moment, her fingers giving his a small squeeze, and then she’s walking across the parking lot. Just before she opens the door to her building and disappears into the lobby, she turns and gives him a wave.

His heart beats erratically in his chest. Butterflies erupt in his stomach. He takes a breath to steady himself, suddenly overwhelmed with emotion he hasn’t felt in so long it’s as though he’s turning back into a human from petrified stone.

He waves back, glad for the distance between them so she doesn’t see the slight tremor in his hand.

.

He puts his hands on the steering wheel but doesn’t start his car. In the rear view mirror, he can see the door that she disappeared through, the portal that has whisked her away now closed and dark. His mind skips ahead to next week, next meeting, and his heart skips along too, imagining her, his fingers still echoing with the touch of her skin. His mind skips further ahead, to the bleak and unknown future, a moment in time at some point where he will suddenly and quickly drop dead. He forces himself back into the car by clenching his hands over the wheel until his knuckles turn white. Stay here, he thinks, but the future beckons, undeterred.

day 2

He’s early to the next meeting, exactly one week after the first. As his hand moves up to twist the doorknob, he feels that resistance build within him, the urge to turn and run away. He swallows it and opens the door. A few people are already there, milling about the coffee pot in the far corner. He beelines for the same chair he sat in last time. Takes a seat. Crosses his legs. Uncrosses them. Watches the door.

She arrives a few minutes later. Her eyes move across the room as she stands in the doorway, then fall on him. Their eyes meet. And Gale has an almost out of body experience, watching himself as though suddenly possessing a nearby stranger and seeing through their eyes.

Anara’s hair is in a loose and uneven braid that spills hair on either side of her face. She wears a shirt with a collar, and the first two buttons are undone, revealing her chest. Her cheeks are just a little pink and the color only deepens when she meets his eyes. A smile spreads across her face just as his stomach erupts in butterflies once again. He’s aware of his own tired smile, the wrinkles that appear by his eyes when he smiles, the gray in his hair, just above his ears. He wears a knit cardigan for extra comfort, and knows now it just makes him look like more of an old man. He knows there’s an air of melancholy about him that no amount of preening in front of a mirror can really fix.

She takes the empty seat beside him. “Hi,” she says.

“Hi,” he says back. “Nice seeing you again.”

“Oh, I’m glad you said that,” she says. “I’ve been wondering if I came on too strong last week.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. I don’t really know that many people. So when I meet someone I like, I might latch on too quickly. I’m working on it,” she adds hurriedly.

He wants to say it’s okay but his brain fixates on “someone I like” until it echoes around his skull like there’s nothing else in there but those three words, bouncing between the folds of his brain over and over.

“Oh,” he says, again. His chest suddenly feels tight. “Well, I didn’t feel that you came on strong. And I like you too.”

A few more people trickle into the room, followed by their group leader. Anara’s attention is temporarily diverted. He watches her watch the others find their seats. She sits on the edge of her seat, as if ready to bolt. Her boots are laced incorrectly. Her bag, which sits at her feet, is unzipped and he can see a few notebooks within. There is something chaotic about her, something wild and untamed. She reminds him of his students, back before his accident. Their hurry, their youth, their heavy hands and light hearts.

She looks at him suddenly, too quickly for him to avert his gaze, to pretend he hasn’t been watching her this entire time. But he doesn’t feel caught.

“Good,” she says, and wipes her brow with a ‘phew’.

.

Outside the library, the sun sits heavily on the edge of the horizon, casting everything in an ethereal orange glow. He soaks it in, feeling the last bit of warmth of the day begin to disappear. Behind him, Anara stands on the very edge of the sidewalk, her heels on the curb, the rest of her shoes hovering over the street. She tilts forward and back, playing some unknown game with herself.

“One of these days, I’ll say something back there,” she says.

Gale watches the glow of sunset soak into her skin, pulling out more freckles, softening all harsh lines until she looks as fresh as morning dew. “You don’t have to,” he tells her.

She sways forward, balancing her entire body on her heels, then sways back. “I know. But I feel like I need to justify being here.”

He nods slowly. The same has occurred to him, that he will eventually need to say something to the group about the nature of his accident, to confirm to everyone and himself that he’s supposed to be there, that he is as fucked up as the rest of them and isn’t some kind of misery tourist. A strange need but shared, apparently. He takes some comfort in that.

“Well,” he says. “Why don’t we practice on each other?”

She raises her eyebrows, swaying back on her heels again. He closes his eyes for a moment.

“Sorry, that sounded weird.”

“I know what you meant,” she says with a laugh that sounds breathy, as if it’s already fading away into the burgeoning night before it’s even fully made its way out of her mouth. “And that would be great. Coffee? Uh, I mean. Tea?”

He doesn’t bother trying not to seem too eager. “Yes, please. Lead the way.”

They fall in stride on the sidewalk, side by side. She talks first, her voice low as they pass others on the street, people leaving the office, students in university sweatshirts and backpacks. The normalcy of everyday life feels bittersweet to witness.

“One day, I woke up on the beach and that was the first day. There isn’t any paperwork to identify me. No license, no fingerprints, it’s like I popped out fully formed from the ocean itself. I work at a restaurant now, that bar on the corner of 5th and Elm, and have roommates. I think that part is pretty normal. Just feels completely hollow, like I’m building on nothing, building on air.”

He feels a slow drip of terror slide down his spine. “I don’t know if I’d be doing as well as you are now. You’re so strong.”

She gives him a sideways smile. His stomach is in knots. “You’d be surprised what you can survive if survival is your only option.”

Admiration blossoms in his chest, a strange feeling to experience alongside the constant ache. He touches his chest absently. “You’re right,” he says. “But survival is one thing. To me, an outsider, it appears as though you’re doing much better than simply surviving.”

He waits to say his part until they’re seated outside again with his mug of chamomile tea warming his palms and her latte with the chocolate drizzle warming hers. The last rays of sunlight shine behind him, falling over her face. A tiny shadow falls just under her bottom lip. He wants to touch it, wants to press his thumb to it, to pin it down. He holds his mug tighter and lets the heat from the tea startle him out of his thinking.

Where to start? After a year of confinement, self imposed exile, he thought he would have a lot to say, but now that he has his opportunity, the words are just out of reach.

“I was in an accident,” he says haltingly. “A car accident. The airbags didn’t deploy and my chest was struck by the steering wheel, hard enough to affect my heart. It’s on some unknown timer now, counting down. I’m on medication. Because of that, it’s considered somewhat manageable so I’m not eligible for a transplant or anything. It’s me and this broken heart, in it for the long haul. Hopefully.”

Her hand goes up to her own chest, as if to reassure herself. “Is that why you quit teaching?”

He takes a sip of his tea. The warmth centers him. “Technically, I’m on leave. I’m still employed, just can’t actually teach. The president of the university—” he takes another sip to buy him time, to make a decision on how much to say at this point. “—placed me on leave,” he finishes, feeling pathetic.

“Oh.” She stirs the chocolate into her coffee with a spoon, then tucks the spoon into her mouth to lick the leftover chocolate. He averts his gaze quickly, but not before seeing the bit of foam that clings to her lip, the way the tip of her tongue darts out to touch it, how it dissolves instantly, leaving behind the soft pink of her lips a shade deeper because of the heat. He holds his mug tighter.

“It isn’t all bad,” he says, aware that he’s rambling now and unable to stop. “I’ve had a lot more time to just be. Sleeping in. Reading more. Spending more time with my cat.”

“A cat,” she repeats eagerly.

“Yeah, Tara. My best friend. Do you have any pets?”

She interlocks her fingers around her coffee cup. Her grip is tight, as tight as his. “No. I want one, but… I think it would know. That I’m not all here. Is that weird to say?”

Gale hesitates, but his need to touch her is suddenly overpowering, and he moves one hand from his mug and reaches over the table to her. The tips of his fingers brush the backs of her knuckles. Heat flows freely from the contact point, through his already warm hand and up his arm, into his chest, into his bruised and battered heart. He moves his hand quickly.

“I just touched you,” he says. “You’re here.”

.

She walks him back to his car. As they walk along the street back to the library parking lot, their knuckles brush, so lightly that he thinks he might have imagined it. But the churning in his stomach, so severe he feels he might throw up, lets him know this isn’t his imagination.

He leans against the car door, not wanting to say goodnight just yet. Under the light of a nearby streetlight, the shadow appears again under her full bottom lip, and he can’t look away from it.

“Thanks for chatting with me,” she says.

He drags his eyes from her mouth and up her face, meeting her eyes. “The pleasure’s mine,” he says, trying to inject his sincerity into the words, to make them sound true as they are.

His mind races again, forward, ahead, into later today as he sits on the couch of his dark living room staring at the wall, filled with fear. Into later this week, counting his heartbeats. Into later, whatever later means, however long it means. She reaches toward him suddenly, her hand touching his hair, tucking a lock behind his ear, breaking his cyclical thoughts. He’s frozen in place, feeling her fingers brush the curve of his ear. Her hand is cold but her eyes feel so warm as they fall over him.

“Sorry,” she says, her hand dropping back down to her side. “I have such poor impulse control. You have beautiful hair.”

He doesn’t know what to say, just smiles at her like a fool.

“See you at the next meeting?” she asks.

He nods.

“Okay, goodnight.”

She walks away, to her apartment. He watches her go, until she gets to the door to her building, where she turns and gives him a wave. He waves back. The place on his ear where her skin touched his is hot, like he’s been scalded with an iron, or struck by lightning.