In the Absence of You (28 page)

You stare at yourself.
It’s hard to do when your eyes water like it’s the last day they’ll ever water—it is.

You do it again, a rush—

All this life rushing through your veins, because life does its most now, wanting quantity when it can’t have quality—now, now it knows days, hours are done and last minutes and seconds whoosh out.

Click.

Click.

The door explodes. My third try was moot too—how—

What. Are the odds?

Of six bullets.

I gasp in air, knowing he’ll stop me. They’ll confiscate my gun, tuck me away somewhere, drug me up, unless I can—

Pull the trigger again.

EMIL

M
y mouth hangs detached.

The pain propagates, reaching every crevice of my chest. It flares up to my shoulders, speeds down to my stomach, until I have to fight to remain on my feet.

I want to crumble and moan, but my stare is glued to the doorway, this apparition—my eyes, they decide for the rest of me.

“You!” she screams, my love, my sweetheart, my bitchy girl. She screams so loudly my eyes flicker shut. “How
dare
you do this to me?”

I can’t speak. I don’t understand. She’s here—furious, a love absolute saturating her irises. She looks at me with all the passion of Zoe, with everything I’ve ever needed.

“You don’t care about me.” The air abandons me slowly.

“I love you like crazy, asshole!”

I sink to my knees, small huffs that should be laughter escaping me. My heaven. “I couldn’t live without you.” My fists clench in my lap. I’m on the floor, pitiful, but—

Dead is worse.

“What were you thinking?” That beautiful, sweet
all
of mine chokes out. “I saw ‘I’m Sorry.’ How could you do that to yourself? Ah…” She’s crying. My heart pounds for her crying.

“Zee.” The luxury of pronouncing her name to her face. With Zoe in my space, I’m relearning how to breathe. “I just needed you to know.”

“So you could leave me forever?” she asks, tears glistening on her face. “I’d come back to you.”

“When?” I shout. “I couldn’t wait any longer.”

“Now,” she whispers. “I wanted to stay away. It didn’t work very well.”

“Because you love me?”

“Yes, and damn you for this.” She grabs the revolver and wiggles it sideways in front of me. She shakes the two remaining bullets out into her hand. I can’t get enough of her furious, sad, lovely features, so I stare.

One of the two bullets in her hand isn’t a blank.

What if it had hit my heart before she came back for it?

“Watch,” Zoe says. I drink up the way she walks, tiptoeing on high heels to the trash bin so she can chuck the revolver into the garbage.

“You got something to say to me?” she asks, straightening and lifting her chin high. Steely eyes full of love and righteous wrath. She expects me to object.

“That I love you,” I hiss. “And love you. And love you more than life.”

There’s a sob inside my Zee. It erupts as she sinks down to me and lets me pull her into my lap. “You’re so thin, baby.” I kiss her tears, kiss her neck. “Don’t be so thin.”

“I didn’t like being without you.”

“Then why did you wait so long? Did you get my songs on the phone?” I ask, but now her shoulders are shaking.

“Yeah. You broke my heart over and over with them.”

“Good,” I say. “Never leave me like that again.”

“Never look at another woman,” my jealous girl whispers. “Never play with guns. Never try to kill yourself.”

“So many rules,” I hiss, sucking on lips that can’t compare.

Troy’s voice eases in and out of my awareness while I press Zoe against me on the floor. I inhale her, taste her, memorize what I’ll never be without again.

Troy calls Aishe. Shandor. Elias.

“Hi, Bo? Yeah. He’s okay. Zoe’s here. No, not kidding; he left her a song on the phone.” He puffs out air. “She’s switched his light back on.”

“Silly,” my bitchy
girl says, hair shorter and blonder, but still who I love. It’s late on Christmas Eve at a small diner in the Miracle Mile. “You should have told them you didn’t want whipped cream on the hotcakes. Waitress?” Zee’s pitch rises with the level of her bossiness. “Get us an extra plate, please, because he doesn’t like fake cream.”

“Ma’am, it’s not fake.”

“Oh bull. Actually, he’ll need a new plate with fresh hotcakes, hold the cream, because— Because—” Zoe swallows emotion, eyes ablaze with irritation. “Because he deserves it.”

I know my girl. She displaces her anger unrightfully; it makes sense that she’s mad at me and directs it at the waitress. I grin with unused muscles because grins come easily around Zee.

My body’s stunned with the one-eighty of my plans. Slowly, it catches on, waits to see if this surge of happiness is reliable.

Over coffee, Zoe tells me that Aishe kept calling her. Over coffee, she tells me Aishe sent her my New York performance and the article written by the
good
reporter. Over coffee, Aishe made Zee sit down last night and hear her out.

“I was on the phone with Aishe when you called in your last song,” Zoe murmurs, elbows on the table and hands on my cheeks. I can’t get enough. I’ll never get enough of her fingers on my face.

“Again, you didn’t pick up,” I say.

“Emil?”

“Baby.” I’ve got my eyes shut and my mouth in the palm of her hand where it should always be.

“Don’t ever sing that song again.”

AISHE

T
he last six months have flown by.
Shandor and I thrive with The Thalias, who typically stay in the same town and theater for a week at a time. It’s unheard of not to be restless over our slow-moving life. I always looked for the next town, the next adventure, on the run from the one feeling I thought I was destined for. I’ve never felt more settled.

The worry in Shandor’s eyes has eased. Until now, I’d thought the tense set of his shoulders, the abrupt crease of his neck were simply his way. But with my calm came Shandor’s calm, and now he smiles and finds humor in things he didn’t before.

It’s midsummer night in Sweden. We have two weeks off from The Thalias, and for the first time in half a decade, Shandor and I are in the midst of our family. My mother’s face bears wrinkles I don’t recall, but they pull upward when she speaks to me and the tears in her eyes are of happiness. My father has lit the bonfire between our campers in a remote area of a forest. Old Zindalo is still with the
kumpania
, chewing on his gums and smirking as he portions out subpar moonshine in plastic cups.

Kennick’s son has a wife of his own now, a sweet woman he clearly adores. On instinct, my mind goes to the plague, wondering if he has it too, but then I realize he might just be in love.

“My father tells me you see Chavali and him regularly?” he initiates our conversation tonight. His muddy blues flick to my parents, knowing Chavali and Kennick haven’t been forgiven.

“Yes, they’re happy. They send hugs and kisses,” I murmur, quiet for the sake of our clan. “One of these days…” I look around me at the love, the closeness we share, knowing no one would appreciate this more than Chavali.

“Yeah.” Kaven nods, tipping the cup of moonshine back and forth between his fingers. “I’m working on the elders.” Leaning in, he continues, sharing what we never talked about when we were younger. “Your sister is sweet, but she and I? There was nothing there. If
I
can forgive my father and Chavali, old Zindalo and the others should too.”

Flames lick high from the bonfire, promising brighter futures and illuminating the small maypole my aunt Physante has raised at the periphery of our group. It’s got the traditional flower wreaths braided into them as if we’re Swedish too.

I
oomph
when a little girl with long, brass-colored hair thuds down on my lap. Kaven’s smile widens, brushing a hand over her hair and straightening the hepatica, daisies, and bluebells forming a flower bandanna across her forehead.

“Auntie Aishe!” she giggles. “My mama will make you a wreath too!”

“That’s great,” I say to Kaven’s daughter. Her eyes are round doll’s eyes, the color of the bluebells in her locks. “You’re such a big girl already.” I tickle beneath her chin with a bright yellow buttercup.

“Uh-huh! I’m two.” She holds up three chubby fingers. “I never saw’d you! Why weren’t you in my house before?”

Kaven laughs softly. “She wants to say she’s three, so the three fingers are her compromise. You’ll be three in two months, won’t you, sweetheart?” he says, earning a quick bob of her head.

“Looky. You’ve eaten butter today,” I tell her. “You know how I know?”

“How?” Her doll’s eyes widen with interest.

“Because the buttercup showed it to me.” I stroke the silky skin beneath her chin with the flower again. “When you’ve eaten butter and I hold a buttercup against you like this, then your throat looks yellow. Like the butter! It wouldn’t do that if you hadn’t eaten butter today.”

All sorts of thoughts play across her tiny face. Surprise, incredulity. She frowns before she settles into a giggle. “Noooo,” she says.

“Yep, it’s true. Right, Daddy?” I ask her father.

“Sure is. Didn’t you have butter on your bread this morning?” he asks, teasing her.

“Yes…?”

“There you go.”

Shandor plays an old flamenco song on his guitar. His father sits proud next to him like he has since the meal was over and Aunt Physante brought out his favorite chair. Uncle Brishen’s attention never leaves his son as his fingers make a last dance over the strings.

The text from Zoe ticks in earlier than expected.

It’s time! Are you coming?

It’s not easy to be discrete between the thirty remaining familiars of the Xodyar clan with Shandor and I being the lost children who’ve returned. When I stand, every gaze finds me. They’re silent, expectant, and I have to make a public statement out of our departure.

“Don’t be too late,” my mother says like she can decide over us. Realizing, she explains, “I’m making
shakshuka
for breakfast.”

I bite my lip over that, because as far as I know in no clan does
shakshuka
have to be eaten bright and early.

Shandor and I walk off, stroll into the smoky grey that tints the Swedish midsummer nights. On our way to the car, I turn and take in the sight of them behind us. He stops too, sharing a small smile with me and a sense of belonging that I thought we had lost.

“Crazy, huh?” he murmurs over them, over us, over the connection we still hold with our people. I nod, not quite ready to speak.

In the end, I manage a “Yeah.”