Chapter 7

It started with a message.

Lookmhee was at the bookstore on a Tuesday afternoon, reorganizing the poetry section — which had been, in her opinion, incorrectly arranged by the previous person who had touched it, alphabetically by author name when it should have been arranged by feeling, by the texture of the language, by what a person would need on a given kind of day — when her phone buzzed in her apron pocket.

She pulled it out without looking, expecting the group chat. Freen had been sending pictures of clouds all morning because she had decided that a particular cloud looked like TK and was documenting it as evidence. TK had not responded to any of them. Becky had sent three separate polls about what to have for dinner. Engfa had reminded everyone twice about a building maintenance notice.

It was not the group chat.

The name on the screen was one she had not seen in eight months. Her chest did the specific thing it did when something unexpected happened — a tightening, a brief pause, like a record skipping.

Meena.

She stared at the name for a moment. Then she looked back at the poetry shelf. Then she looked at the name again.

She put the phone back in her pocket and finished reorganizing the shelf. She put Neruda next to Mary Oliver because they both understood longing, and she put Ocean Vuong at eye level because he deserved to be the first thing a person saw, and she stood back and looked at it and thought: good. That’s better.

Then she took her break, sat in the back room on the small chair beside the kettle, and read the message.

Hi. I know it’s been a while. I’m going to be in the city next week for work. I wasn’t sure if I should say anything but it felt weird not to. I hope you’re doing well. — Meena

Lookmhee read it three times.

Then she made herself a cup of tea, drank it, and thought about what Meena being in the city meant and whether it had to mean anything at all and why her hands had gone slightly cold even though the back room was perfectly warm.

The answer to the last question she knew. She had loved Meena, once, in the way you loved the first person who really saw you — completely and a little recklessly, without the knowledge of what it would cost. The ending had not been dramatic. It had been slow and honest and sad, the kind of ending where both people were right and both people were hurt and no one was the villain, which was somehow harder than if someone had been.

Eight months. She had moved to a new city. She had a new job, a new apartment, new people who were becoming something that felt increasingly like home.

She did not need Meena being in the city to mean anything.

She put the phone in her pocket and went back to the shelf.

✦ ✦ ✦

She did not tell anyone for three days.

She told herself this was because there was nothing to tell. Meena had sent a message. Lookmhee had not replied yet. That was the whole story. It was not a situation. It was a text.

On the third day, Freen knocked on her door at eight in the morning with leftover rice and the particular expression she wore when she had noticed something and was trying to decide whether to say it.

Freen had two modes: saying everything immediately, and noticing something and sitting on it for days until she couldn’t anymore. The second mode was rarer but, in Lookmhee’s experience so far, more accurate.

“You’ve been quiet,” Freen said, settling on the floor with her rice. She had invited herself in without Lookmhee needing to ask, which was just how Freen was. “In the chat. You usually respond to my cloud pictures.”

“I’ve been busy,” Lookmhee said.

“You’re always busy and you always respond.” Freen looked at her with open, careful eyes. “Is something wrong?”

Lookmhee looked at her. At her warm, uncomplicated face — Freen who said what she meant and meant everything she said and had not once in their short friendship made Lookmhee feel like a burden for having feelings.

“My ex sent me a message,” she said. “She’s going to be in the city next week.”

Freen’s eyes went wide. “Your ex.”

“Her name is Meena. We broke up eight months ago.”

“And she’s coming here.” Freen put down her rice very carefully, the way she did when she was taking something seriously. “How do you feel about that?”

“I don’t know,” Lookmhee said honestly. “I think — mostly fine? But also — ” she stopped.

“Also the thing where someone from your old life shows up and suddenly you’re not completely sure which version of yourself you are anymore,” Freen said.

Lookmhee looked at her. “That’s very specific.”

“It happened to me once.” Freen picked her rice back up. “It’s a normal thing to feel. It doesn’t mean you still have feelings for her.”

“I don’t,” Lookmhee said. And she meant it — she was fairly certain she meant it. What she felt was not longing exactly. More like the particular vertigo of a name from the past appearing in a present that had been, until three days ago, feeling quite stable.

“Are you going to see her?” Freen asked.

“I haven’t decided.”

Freen nodded slowly. She ate her rice. She thought for a moment with the expression of someone running through options.

“You should tell the group,” she said finally.

“It’s not a big deal—”

“I know. But you should tell them anyway.” She looked at Lookmhee simply. “That’s what they’re for.”

✦ ✦ ✦

She told them at dinner that Friday.

Not dramatically — she didn’t make an announcement, didn’t sit everyone down. She just mentioned it, in the middle of a conversation about other things, the way you mentioned things to people you trusted.

“My ex is going to be in the city next week,” she said.

The table went quiet in the specific way it did when all five of the others were processing something at the same time.

Becky spoke first, because Becky always spoke first. “What kind of ex?”

“Becky!” Engfa said.

“It’s a relevant question. There are different categories—”

“The important kind,” Lookmhee said. “We were together for a year. She ended it — well, we both ended it, really. It just was her idea first.”

Another brief silence.

“Do you want to see her?” Engfa asked. Calm, practical, the question that mattered.

“I don’t know,” Lookmhee said. “Probably? Maybe? It would feel strange not to, now that she’s told me she’s coming. But also—” she paused, looking for the right words. “I’ve been doing well here. I feel like a different person than I was eight months ago. And I don’t know if seeing her will — disturb that. Remind me of who I was before I came here.”

“Who you were before you came here was also you,” Sonya said.

Everyone looked at her. She was sitting across the table from Lookmhee, looking at her plate, and her voice had been level and even but there was something underneath it that Lookmhee heard even if she couldn’t name it.

“I know,” Lookmhee said carefully.

“I’m just saying,” Sonya looked up briefly. “Leaving a place doesn’t cancel out what happened there.”

“I wasn’t trying to cancel it,” Lookmhee said.

“I know,” Sonya said. And something moved across her face — something quick and complicated that she put away before it could be read. She looked back at her plate.

Becky looked between them with her sharp eyes. She said nothing, which was remarkable, and opened her mouth to change the subject, which was even more remarkable.

“Okay,” Becky said. “New plan. What if you don’t go alone.”

“She doesn’t need a chaperone,” TK said.

“Not a chaperone. Support. Moral support. Emotional reinforcement.” Becky gestured broadly. “One of us could come with you. As your — ” she tilted her head— “girlfriend.”

Lookmhee stared at her. “What?”

“Fake girlfriend,” Becky said, with the air of someone presenting an extremely reasonable solution. “So you don’t have to show up alone. So she sees that you’re doing well. So you have — backup.”

“That’s the plot of a movie,” TK said.

“Many movies,” Sonya said. “And it never works.”

“That’s because those are movies,” Becky said. “In real life, with the right execution—”

“Who would even do that?” Lookmhee asked.

There was a pause.

Everyone looked at Sonya.

Lookmhee did not look at Sonya.

She looked at the table.

“Absolutely not,” said Sonya.

“You live across the hall,” Becky said. “It’s convenient. And you’re — ” she waved a hand— “you. You’re convincing.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you’re serious and composed and people believe things you say because you say them like they’re facts.” Becky pointed at her. “You would be an excellent fake girlfriend.”

“This is not a decision I’m willing to make,” Sonya said.

“Lookmhee, back me up,” Becky said.

“I’m not — ” Lookmhee started. “I didn’t ask for any of this, I was just telling you—”

“Do you want to see your ex alone?” Becky asked.

A pause.

“No,” Lookmhee admitted quietly.

“There,” Becky said. She sat back. “Sonya.”

Sonya looked at Lookmhee. Lookmhee looked back at her, and the expression on Sonya’s face was the one that was hard to read — layered, complicated, working through something quickly and privately.

“I’ll think about it,” Sonya said.

Which was not a no.

Everyone at the table noticed that it was not a no, and the way they noticed it — Freen pressing her lips together to keep from smiling, TK looking at the ceiling, Engfa looking at her bowl with great composure — told Lookmhee that she had walked into something that was, from the outside, much more obvious than it felt from the inside.

✦ ✦ ✦

She was halfway through washing her cup that night when there was a knock at the door.

She already knew who it was. She didn’t know how she knew — something about the knock, maybe, two precise sounds, even and unhurried.

She opened the door.

Sonya was standing in the hallway in a sweater she clearly wore at home, her hair not as neat as it usually was, holding nothing. She looked at Lookmhee for a moment without saying anything, which was more unsettling than if she had said something immediately.

“You don’t have to,” Lookmhee said. “What Becky was saying — it was just Becky. You don’t have to do anything.”

“I know I don’t have to,” Sonya said. “That’s not why I’m here.”

“Then why—”

“When is she coming?” Sonya asked.

Lookmhee blinked. “Thursday.”

Sonya nodded. “Where are you meeting her?”

“I haven’t — I haven’t agreed to meet her yet.”

“But if you do.”

“I don’t know. Somewhere public. A coffee shop maybe.”

Sonya was quiet for a moment. She was looking at Lookmhee with that steady, assessing look that Lookmhee had seen her turn on problems — the look of someone identifying what needed to happen and working out how to make it happen.

“You said you didn’t want to go alone,” Sonya said.

“I know what I said.”

“And you don’t actually want to run into your ex looking like—” Sonya paused, and something shifted in her expression, “— like someone who has been fine on their own. You want her to see that you’ve been more than fine.”

The accuracy of this was uncomfortable. Lookmhee looked away. “That’s not—”

“It’s okay that it’s true,” Sonya said simply. “It’s a reasonable thing to want.”

Lookmhee looked at her.

“I’ll go with you,” Sonya said. “If you want. Not because Becky suggested it. Because—” she stopped for a moment, the briefest pause, like she was selecting her words with particular care, “—because you’re my friend and you shouldn’t have to walk into something difficult alone when you have people who can be there.”

The word friend sat in the air between them. Clear and definite and — something else, something underneath it, that Lookmhee filed away carefully and did not examine.

“Okay,” she said.

Sonya nodded once. “Okay.”

“You know this means Becky is going to be unbearable,” Lookmhee said.

“Becky is already unbearable,” Sonya said. “This changes nothing.”

Lookmhee laughed. Sonya looked at her for a moment with an expression that came and went too fast to catch. Then she said goodnight and went back to 4C.

Lookmhee closed her door. She stood in her apartment for a moment, in the quiet, with the string of lights on and the city humming outside and the book Sonya had lent her still on her shelf.

She picked up her phone. She typed a reply to Meena’s message.

Hi. Good to hear from you. I’m doing well — really well, actually. If you want to meet for coffee while you’re here, I’m around Thursday afternoon.

She put her phone down.

She picked up her notebook and sat on her bed and looked at the thin strip of park through the window for a long time before she wrote a single word.

The word she wrote was: okay.

Just that. Just one word on a new page.

It was enough for tonight.

✦ ✦ ✦