Chapter 43 - The Light We Lost

When we met for a cup of coffee that spring as you were passing through the city, I could sense there was something different about you. There was something different about the city, too. They’d started building the Freedom Tower at Ground Zero. It felt like the bandaging of a wound, or like an elaborate tattoo inked to cover a scar. I understood the desire to rebuild, to create something tall and grand, a big fuck-you in the New York City skyline. But the area felt sacred to me, too, still raw. Not quite healed enough to build on.

It had nothing to do with us. It had to do with the people who looked like birds flying out of windows as the towers burned and collapsed. With the new building going up, it made it harder for me to see them. I kept away from that part of Manhattan. Is it awful to admit that I’ve never gone, even now that it’s all completed? Even now that there’s a memorial there too? I didn’t think I’d be able to handle it alone, and I didn’t want to go with Darren.

We didn’t talk about the Freedom Tower that day, though, or the memorial, or the morning we met.

You started out by telling me how impressed you were with the It Takes a Galaxy episode you saw during your layover in London. “The one where Electra proves to her grandfather that she can repair his spaceship, even though he thinks they should ask her brother. Was that one yours?” you asked.

I smiled. “Guilty as charged,” I said.

“I thought so,” you told me, as you sipped your Americano. “It felt like taking a little trip into your brain.”

Darren never said anything about It Takes a Galaxy. He certainly wouldn’t have said that. I felt a pang, a wistfulness. It had been great to be in a relationship with someone who cared so much about my job, who understood that part of me.

“How’s Islamabad?” I asked.

“Good,” you answered. “It’s . . . good.”

For you—for us—a nonanswer like that felt off. I took you in, then, trying to see what I was missing. You seemed relaxed. You were leaning back against your chair, holding the cup of coffee in your lap.

I started fishing. “Do you like your apartment?”

“It’s nice,” you said. “It’s a house, really. I share it with some other journalists.”

“Oh, that sounds fun. A nice group of guys?”

You looked down at your coffee cup. “Actually,” you said, “I share it with Raina. I met her when the AP first sent me to Islamabad. We ended up collaborating on the piece.” You shrugged.

“And you collaborated on a lot more?” I supplied for you. I wondered if that kind of work and life collaboration was what you’d imagined for us when you asked me to come away with you.

You shrugged again, as if you were embarrassed to tell me this. “She’s a Pegasus,” you finally said, “like you.”

It felt like a punch in the gut when you said that, which was idiotic because I never agreed with your interpretation of that myth anyway. But I knew what that word meant to you. And even though I’d been with Darren for nearly two years, and you hadn’t been with anyone, and it only seemed fair that you find someone too, it still hurt. As long as I’d been with him, Darren had never taken your place in my heart, and I hated the idea that someone else had taken my place in yours.

“That’s great,” I told you then. “I’m happy for you, Gabe.”

You ran your fingers through your hair, like I’d seen you do hundreds of times before. “Thanks,” you said. “So how’s your boyfriend? Daniel? Derrick?”

“Darren,” I said. “He’s good.”

Did you mess up his name on purpose? I always figured you had, but I didn’t say anything about it.

I’m glad we only saw each other for coffee that day. I don’t think I could have taken much more than that. The jealousy I felt scared me—it made me question my relationship with Darren, and I didn’t want to do that. I loved him. And you loved someone else.