Page 108 of Four Weekends and a Funeral

He swallows audibly, and in my mind, I can see the way his throat moves. “When he died,” he continues, “instead of allowing myself to feel sad he was gone, I felt so guilty for pushing him away by choice. I was still sad, but I wasn’t letting myself feel it. I didn’t think I deserved to feel the loss, like there was only so much of Sam’s memory to go around and I hadn’t earned my piece.”

I finish his thought for him. “And I only made everything worse.”

“No, that’s the thing. I blamed you for that guilt, but it was there before Mrs.Lewis introduced us. Don’t get me wrong, thinking I was falling for his girlfriend didn’t help, but what I was feeling wasn’t your fault.”

For a moment, I let his words—I was falling—float deliciously around my insides before I force myself to hear the past tense of it.

“But you also made me feel like things could be better, like it wouldn’t always feel so lonely,” he says, his voice cracking with emotion. It makes me wish I could hold his hand. “I’m sorry I put all of those feelings of anger and shame on you. It wasn’t fair.”

“I’m still sorry I complicated those feelings further. I’m no stranger to guilt. It’s my favorite feeling.”

“How’s that?”

Finally getting comfortable, I snuggle deeper into my pillow. “Not my favorite as in ‘most enjoyed,’ but I seem to prefer it over feeling anything else. I don’t know. Maybe I enjoy it a little. So many emotions want you to just sit and feel them until they go away. Guilt demands action. You have to atone for it. It tells you exactly what it wants from you. Sadness doesn’t do that. At least it doesn’t for me.”

“You sound like my therapist.” He chuckles lightly, and the sound makes my insides fizzy.

“I sound like my therapist. Survivor’s guilt is an ongoing theme for me. After my mastectomy, I was kind of…depressed. Mara and Chelsea were amazing, but the recovery was more than I anticipated. And I wouldn’t let myself be sad because what kind of asshole feels sad after escaping cancer? Deserving people feel grateful. Deserving people survive and go climb mountains and live life to the fullest. I grabbed on to that last one and ran with it.”

I clear my throat. “Rather than figuring out how my new body fit into who I was before the surgery, I created a new personality: someone worthy of a second chance. Because an introverted couch potato couldn’t possibly deserve it. When I met Sam, I thought he was living exactly the right life. He was colorful and alive. I thought being the person he chose proved I was too, and being the person he dumped proved I wasn’t. Now I’ve come around to the idea that I might not be cut out for sucking the marrow out of life, and it might be okay to just be myself.”

“There’s no one else like you,” he responds, his voice a secretive hush. “I don’t want to torment myself anymore. And I don’t want to feel sad, but I am. Whether I like it or not.”

I want to ask if he feels my shadow in his life, the way I feel his—but I’m not brave enough to hear the answer. “Are you in the bunk bed tonight or driving home?”

“Air mattress, actually. For Christmas, I built Otis this lofted bed thing he wanted. I’ve been down here a lot the last couple weeks. Figuring some things out.”

“Wow. No more bunk beds. It’s the end of an era.” I hear his laugh, which transforms into a yawn. “Should I let you go?”

“Probably. I should go inside and head to bed.”

“It was nice to hear from you,” I say, forcing a formal distance into my tone. “Good luck, Adam.”

“Good luck?” I almost feel his light chuckle on my cheek. “Is that better or worse than wishing me well?”

“Better, I think.”

“Okay. Good luck to you too. Night, Ali.” He starts to say something else but stops himself. “Night.”

“Night,” I say, and hang up the phone, already impatient for our next late-night call.

29

Ruth Bader Winsburg, Night Cheese, and Risky Quizness

I don’t hear from Adam again after our late-night Christmas call. I considered reaching out at midnight on New Year’s Eve, hoping this would be our new thing—emotional late-night phone calls on bank holidays, and by Memorial Day we’d be making declarations of love—but I fell asleep at nine p.m.

On New Year’s Day, I have no missed calls on my call log, and it’s time to move forward. This morning, I purged my closet of my fake life. Now I’m at Chelsea’s apartment before our trivia tournament, and I can’t resist showing off my personal growth to her and Mara.

Chelsea’s apartment is a third-floor unit in a 1920s colonial in the Como Park neighborhood of Saint Paul. The architecture mixes perfectly with her floral-forward, English-country-home styling.

I plop a laundry basket on top of her fluffy blue bedspread. The bland-colored bits of my performance fabrics—grays, olives, and khakis—drape over the top and fall onto the cheerful floral print.

“The remnants of your Cheryl Strayed period,” Chelsea says reverently. She holds my dark green North Face shell jacket to her chest.

“Taking to the woods is always a cry for help,” Mara says from the hallway.

I lean against the tufted headboard. “But in movies it’s always a positive thing.”

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