Pieces of Eight Read online

  And I was glad for that, because I didn’t think I could survive another love like the love I had for Six.

  Before I knew what I was doing, my steps had led me to the Wharf. I mostly avoided the Wharf, unless I was feeling the need to ache for him, the need to feel his presence. I felt, for so long, that he lived in my bones. But years of separation made me think that while my mind couldn’t forget him, my bones and my blood were leaving the memory behind. My muscles ached for the weight of him on top of me, for his hand in mine, fingers laced as if the gaps between my own were made perfectly with Six’s hands in mind, for his arms around me. If I squeezed my lids shut hard enough, I could nearly imagine it.

  In the Wharf, I saw Six everywhere. I ran past the restaurant of our first job together, before doubling back and looking in, watching the wait staff serve customers who seemed startled by the sweaty woman staring into the window.

  I closed my eyes and backed myself up against the cool brick. I clenched a fist when my hand recalled the weight of his as he’d pulled me from the restaurant, the first job of many he’d bring me along for.

  He’d held my hand long after he’d needed to. Long after the mask had fallen and he’d forgotten to pretend to be Jonathan.

  Something sharp slid under my ribs and pressed its point into my heart with that thought. My breath stilled, holding in my lungs, because I feared, deeply, that if I moved even a millimeter, I’d lose the feeling, even if only in memory.

  In all my thirty-six years, not once had I felt what Six made me feel. In the three years since him, I hadn’t held hands with anyone, afraid their flesh would burn Six’s imprint from mine.

  No one saves us but ourselves. The words on my wrist covered six horizontal scars. My fingertips traced the letters and then dragged over a few of the lines.

  But Six had saved me. Many times. And when it had been his turn to ache, I’d left him drowning in his sea of grief.

  A breeze blew through, removing with it Six’s ghost, reminding me that that was all he was to me. A ghost who had loved me once.

  11

  After fielding a call from the gallery manager, I showered off the sweat that lived between the Lycra and my skin, soapy fingers rubbing in all the places that sweat had pooled.

  My fingers rubbed behind my knees and then up my thighs, over the innermost area of my thigh where scars had been born from pain.

  After my shower, I ate a bowl of cereal, not caring that it was four in the afternoon, not an hour most people ate a meal. I texted Jacob to let him know I was okay, since I’d skipped another night at the Dry Run. Because I totally was. So what if I had scored six lines into my loaves that morning? Who cared that I’d gone down to the Fisherman’s Wharf? I hadn’t hurt myself. My memories were ghosts of lives I’d hurt, and I needed to occasionally indulge in the reminder. Like everything else in my life, my healing was divergent, needing my heart to hurt to remind myself not to hurt my skin again.

  And giving in to the memories today hadn’t hurt me. They’d reminded me of the Six I’d known that Christmas, when he’d called me a sea creature but somehow had made it a compliment. That was a Six I’d made happy. I needed that reminder.

  When I walked into work at two in the morning, I nearly missed the note on the freezer as I pulled out the dry yeast.

  A woman named Victoria called for you. She thought this was your personal number. –MARCO

  Marco always signed his name in capital letters, as if his name couldn’t be trivialized with proper style.

  I hadn’t given Victoria my personal number because I’d worried. Giving her my personal number opened me up to being found by Six. I needn’t have worried, as he found me anyway.

  When Six and I split, I’d moved out of our house. Changed my number. I started everything fresh. I needed the separation from him, a clean cut.

  But just a few days after seeing him again, I found my heart thrumming in my chest as I read the note over and over again. At the bottom of the note, Marco had written the ten digits that belonged to Victoria.

  I crumpled the note up and tossed it in the trash as I began working through the list Marco had left. But my eyes kept straying to the note, over and over again, until I found myself snatching it off the top and opening it up, smoothing it flat.

  On break, I pulled out my phone and called her.

  “This is Victoria.” Her voice was cultured, smooth. I envied her for a moment, for answering an unknown number without concern for who may be on the other end of the line.

  “Hi, uh,” I looked around the back room in the kitchen, already regretting calling her. “Mira. It’s Mira.”

  “Oh!” Her voice had been calm and professional when she’d answered. But now it was light and airy as familiarity settled into her words. “I’m so thrilled you returned my call.”

  “Yeah.”

  There was a pause on the other end of the phone, and I nearly hung up, wishing I’d left the note crumpled in the trash.

  “I’d love to come to your work tomorrow,” she finally said. “You know, to talk about catering?”

  Right, because why would she want to talk to me for anything else? Before I could reply, I heard his voice coming through, muffled. Whatever detachment I’d felt fizzled away. “I’m not sure it’s a good idea.”

  “Oh no, really? You seemed so persistent when we met.”

  Had I? I didn’t think I had, but she was convinced. “Well,” I began. “I have a showing in a couple weeks, and I’m just not sure I can take one more thing on my plate.”

  “A showing?”

  I paused, realizing I hadn’t told her much about me when we’d met. I hadn’t thought to. “Yes. Paintings and such.”

  “Oh! I love art.”

  Of course she did, I thought.

  “Where is the gallery?”

  “It’s…” I was already waving my hand in the air, wanting to backpedal the fuck out of this situation. “A co-op. Trust me, it’s not your thing.”

  “Not my thing? I don’t believe it. Where is it? When is it? I’m sure William would love to go, too.”

  Ho, ho, I thought, with mild glee. I am sure William would not love to go, actually. “I just mean that it’s small, it’s not like, you know, high-class shit.”

  “Oh, come on. Art is subjective, isn’t it?”

  She thought I was saying my art was not high-class shit. But I wasn’t saying that. My art could very well be trash, subjectively, but the fact that she’d thought to go there made me bite down on my lip. “The venue is a co-op, independently run by a bunch of artists who take turns having showings. It’s not a big deal.”

  “What is this co-op art place called?” She said ‘co-op’ like it was a dirty word, plagued by vagrants.

  She was fucking persistent. “It doesn’t really matter,” I told her, because I didn’t want her or Six in my gallery, looking at the things I’d painted often with him in mind.

  “Well, can we meet tomorrow morning? When do you get off work?”

  Hadn’t I already said no? “Can’t. I’ve got an appointment at the gallery tomorrow, right after my shift ends. But Marco will be here, he can help you. He’s the owner anyway.” My answers were clipped, hoping that this would lead to an end in conversation.

  “I’ll just wait until you’re available,” she said. “Or you can come by my apartment.” She rattled off an address before I could prepare my mind to forget it. Instead, the numbers seared into my head and the more I tried not to think about it, the more it stuck with me. “This is your cell, right? I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  Not if I block your number.

  After hanging up, I left the room, feeling a hundred pounds heavier. Marco showed me a work order for three dozen cupcakes and talked to me about the specific icing style the purchaser had requested before blurting out, “Who’s Victoria?”

  “My ex’s fiancée.” And then I remembered I wasn’t talking to a friend, I was talking to my boss. “Uh…”

  “Why w
as she calling?” His eyes watched me closely, waiting for me to slip up and tell him the truth, as if it was something I couldn’t admit to.

  “Because she needs a caterer for her wedding.”

  “Oh, good.” Marco was all about the green. His eyes practically shone with it. “Is she coming in to talk about it?”

  “Not if I can help it,” I said, and breezed past him to grab the things from the fridge.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I don’t want to fucking cater my ex’s wedding.” I slammed the fridge and knew instantly that I shouldn’t, by the way he approached me.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” he began, and I braced myself for his asshole side. I knew that tone. “Are you the owner of this restaurant? Do you decide who gets our business and who doesn’t?” At my silence, he held up his hand flat, prohibiting me from speaking anyway. “That’s right. You don’t. If she needs a caterer, we’ll be happy to see what we can do for her. Don’t tell me that you actually turned business away.”

  “It’s complicated, Marco! Would you want to cater your ex’s wedding to someone else?”

  “Sure. She’s my ex for a reason. It shouldn’t matter who she’s marrying. A job is a fucking job, Mira.”

  Chastised, I kept silent until he left the room. Marco didn’t need or want to know that this wasn’t a simple cut-and-dried ex-boyfriend situation. I’d had dozens of exes; but none of them could match Six’s level of importance to me. Six was my one and my only.

  As I walked home from work that day, I got the text that made me wish I could melt away into the gutters.

  Mirabela, we’re in San Francisco. Let me know how to find you, or I’ll figure something else out.

  Cold prickled my palms, sent goosebumps fluttering up my arms. I wasn’t even sure how my hands had the strength with all the numbness to hold my phone still. I couldn’t tell her to go to Brooke’s house. I didn’t want her mere presence to cross that threshold. I didn’t want to subject Brooke and especially Norah to the coldness that was my mother.

  I took a steadying breath and sank to the ground outside Brooke’s house, briefly contemplating dropping my phone into the sewer. I could conveniently lose it. That’d be no problem.

  Except the second part of her text made me believe she’d stop at nothing to find me. Like an ex who couldn’t obey a restraining order, though I didn’t have one of those against her—not in a formal way, just in a don’t come within one hundred yards of me or I’ll have to deck you kind of way. She could find out where I lived based on my driver’s license. She could find out my place of employment, I was sure. The only place I could think to meet her was at the co-op gallery. It was nearly completely neutral, apart from the fact that a dozen of my paintings hung on the wall. Maybe she’d see them and realize her daughter wasn’t such a royal fuck up after all.

  I texted her the address and the time tomorrow that I’d be there and set my phone face down on the concrete.

  But it buzzed immediately and my instinct was to pick it up and check. But this one was from Marco.

  No personal business here, Mira. You know better. Don’t come to work tomorrow, come the day after.

  Now, I really wanted to throw my fucking phone. I contemplated sending him a “fuck you” without actually saying those words, but another text came through—from someone else.

  Don’t cater my wedding.

  Six. I had no plans to cater his wedding, but the message was enough to make my fingers fly across the screen. To that text, I did reply, “Fuck you.”

  I went downstairs to the kitchen, craving a bottle of ice cold vodka but sensibly settling on a glass of water, room temperature.

  “You’re still up?” Brooke asked, coming up behind me and grabbing a glass for herself.

  “I am.” I drained the glass and wiped the back of my hand across my mouth.

  “We didn’t see you much today.” Brooke looked at me sideways as she filled her cup. Turning, she scrutinized my face. “You okay? Marco called in Beck to replace you tomorrow. Sick? We’ve got ibuprofen in the medicine cabinet.”

  “No,” I said, “I mean, yes, I’m okay. Not sick. Just taking personal time.”

  “Hm. You don’t do that much.”

  Because time off means time to get into shenanigans I shouldn’t. “It’s the gallery and everything,” I told her. It wasn’t totally a lie, but obviously Marco hadn’t told her about the personal shit I was dealing with. I thought of the stack of secrets I was piling behind my blank expressions: running into Six, having a glass of champagne, Six’s fiancée calling the restaurant to have her wedding catered, and my mother’s visit. The secrets had built up so high that revealing any of them meant inevitably revealing the rest, in one tumbling block. “How’s AJ?” I asked as a distraction.

  “Oh, good. We’re going to his parents this weekend with Norah, so she can meet them.”

  “Sounds fun.”

  Brooke rolled her eyes. “I know it doesn’t sound fun to you, but I really like AJ. He’s a good one.”

  She’d noticed my sarcasm then. It was a knee-jerk reaction. Like I said, AJ was a nice guy. He wore sweater vests and loafers even though he was thirty-four—which was different.

  The first time we’d gone to the movies with him, he clapped at the end credits. I’d laughed, thinking he was fucking around. But no, he’d been serious. Then he regaled us with the synopsis on the way home, even though we’d all seen the The Croods.

  He ate mayo sandwiches, he flossed his teeth everywhere he went, and his dance style ranged from dad at a barbecue to single guy at a club—often with moves from both ranges combined during the same song. He was an old soul, Brooke told me, and while his personality was a little out there—and I should know ‘out there’ personalities—he was a good dude, good enough to make me not threaten to filet his balls if he fucked with Brooke, like I had one of her earlier dates.

  “I know, he’s a nice guy. He’s just… you know, kind of funny.”

  “Funny ha-ha or funny like you want to laugh at him?”

  I scrunched up my nose. “Both?”

  She rolled her eyes again. “Yes, well, I like to think of him as quirky. You’re quirky,” she pointed out.

  “Yes, but he also sang Up to the Mountain to Griffin for the first four weeks after meeting him and when I finally asked him why, he told me it was because he thought that I named her after Patty Griffin and he wanted to impress me. Instead of, you know, actually asking me.”

  Brooke laughed, remembering how awkwardly we’d all just watched, exchanging glances as he sang the Martin Luther King, Jr. inspired song to my dog who just stared at him. And it wasn’t just once. It was every single time he came over, he’d break out into song like he’d just walked onto a Broadway musical, arms spread wide and head thrown back.

  “I guess it was cute that he tried to impress me,” I added, “but he didn’t need to by repeatedly showing off his vocal chops.”

  “At least he tried?” She poured a second glass of water and stared down into it for a moment. “I really like him, Mira. I love him. I know he’s a little odd, but he is good. Down to the bottom, good.”

  I thought about that. What made a person good? Was it who they were inside, regardless of how they came across to others? Or, could a person with rotten insides who offered grace and understanding on the outside be good? It seemed unfathomable that someone could be good on the inside and outside, that someone could avoid being tainted by a haunting past. Brooke had had an abusive fiancé, Jacob was a recovering addict, my mom was a fucking mess. Maybe AJ was who people talked about when they called someone the salt of the earth.

  Six had been the same.

  If Brooke wasn’t still with me in the kitchen, I would’ve dropped my head to the counter, for not making it through one fucking conversation without thinking about him. But then, I remembered that Six had lied, Six had stolen, Six was often unkind to people who served no purpose to him. Maybe he wasn’t as perfect as I’d
always thought.

  12

  The following morning, I awoke early and washed away the restlessness from the night before. My mother texted me as I ate breakfast.

  We’ll see you in an hour.

  I pushed away the bowl of cereal. I didn’t need it anymore, not when my stomach was flooded with anxiety. Swallowing, I started to type out a response before realizing it wasn’t necessary. It’d been a more than a decade since I’d last seen her. Would seeing her bring it all back? Trigger my childhood? Jacob may have wanted me to reconcile, but Jacob didn’t have a Lala. I did.

  I needed to make an appointment with Dr. Brewer soon.

  I dressed in plain clothes, not wanting to overdo it for my mother. I didn’t want to be her best friend. Truthfully, I didn’t even want to be an acquaintance. If we could both be zapped by those memory erasers from the Men in Black movies, we’d all be better off.

  The gallery was quiet when I let myself in thirty minutes later and flipped the switch on all the lights. One by one, they lit up from the front to the back, a row of lights displaying all the empty space that would soon be filled by, hopefully, dozens of bodies. The bare walls, waiting for my paintings.

  I reached over the front desk and checked the schedule, noting that no one else would be coming in for the day. There had been a showing over the weekend, and the place was primed and ready for the paintings by other co-op participants to be hung back on the wall until my showing. Showings happened twice a month on Fridays and Saturdays, but Fridays were the preview day; Saturdays were when the art was actually for sale, when refreshments and time with the artist was expected.

  Heaving a breath, I tried to imagine the space filled with my artwork. A dozen butterflies blew up my belly and I pressed a hand to it to calm them. I wasn’t sure if they were due to my mom’s impending visit or the showing in two weeks, but either way nerves settled on me like a second skin.

  In the back were stacks of paintings waiting to be re-hung, so I grabbed them. It wasn’t my job—it was the responsibility of the person who had the last showing, but I needed something to do. Not working at the bakery meant there was a buildup of restless energy waiting to be set loose.