Page 25 of Make Room for Love

“It’s fine,” Isabel said. “I met him. You don’t need to explain.”

That soothed Mira’s nerves a little, even if she couldn’t expect Isabel to fully understand. In Dylan’s circles, a brilliant, brooding literary star could get away with anything. But Isabel hadn’t known that version of him, and even if she had, she wouldn’t have cared.

They kept walking in a strained silence. Finally, Mira said, “I can explain more. If you want me to.” Isabel seemed willing to let this go. But Mira so rarely got to speak for herself on her own terms. She wanted to try, for once, instead of letting Isabel assume the worst about her.

A car drove by, blasting a pop song. After it passed, Isabel said, “Can I take you out to lunch? You can do it then. It’s on me. I mean—” Isabel stopped mid-sentence.

Mira huffed a laugh. “Let’s split it, okay?” She didn’t have much room in her budget to go out for lunch. But she wasn’t going to let Isabel pay for her.

Isabel was silent for a few moments. “You got anything in mind?”

“No.”

“Let’s go to the halal cart. It’s nearby.” Mira was relieved. That had been a calculation on Isabel’s part, picking somewhereinexpensive without drawing attention to it. “We can talk in the park. It’s nice out here.”

11

Thankgod for the halal cart next to the park. On their walk, Isabel had led Mira past half a dozen restaurants where she’d regularly gone with Reina. That was the thing about being dumped after a relationship of six years and staying right where you were.

Sometimes she envied Reina, who was all the way across the country at her artists’ retreat in California. Free from her old life, free from the partner who couldn’t be what she needed.

It wasn’t that Isabel missed her ex, or that whatever happy memories she had remaining would overwhelm her. But today, of all days, she didn’t want her surroundings to remind her of her failures.

Still tense, they unwrapped their pita sandwiches on a bench: shawarma for Isabel, falafel for Mira. “I moved in with Dylan because my landlord raised the rent on my windowless bedroom, and my stipend was so low that I couldn’t afford to live there anymore,” Mira began, looking out at the river. “At that point, we’d only been dating for a few months. He was a few years older and had a fancy condo, and I thought— I mean, I wasn’t stupid. I had some idea of what it would mean for me to live with him. But compared to the alternative of scramblingto find an even worse apartment, it still felt like he was rescuing me.”

Mira met Isabel’s gaze. She seemed hesitant, but defiance burned in her eyes, too. She was daring Isabel to pity or condemn her. “He wasn’t openly abusive to me. Not in an obvious way I could point to at the time. But I knew we weren’t equal partners who happened to make different amounts of money. I was there on his largesse. And I felt like I had to be grateful, and to give him everything he wanted because I was indebted to him.”

Mira was crumpling a napkin in her lap. Isabel had known Mira was angry. How could anyone not be? But in that moment, it was painfully clear how much anger Mira was holding onto, and how much it was killing her to hide it.

Isabel knew all about being angry at how the world treated you. She’d always been loud about it, and she couldn’t hold back even if she tried. Mira’s life was different and harder. But they had something in common, and that shared understanding went beyond words.

Isabel nodded. All she could do was stay quiet and let Mira say what she needed.

“He never said it overtly, either, so I felt like I was crazy for even thinking that there was something wrong.” Mira’s expression was unnaturally calm. “It only really came out when we fought. That’s not really the right word. When he got angry at me, and I tried to stand up for myself at all. He’d say, ‘What else are you going to do?’ After hearing that two or three times, even if he pretended he didn’t mean it later, I got the message.” Mira took a shaky breath. “Who else was going to pay for my healthcare? Where else would I live?”

“My god, Mira.” What was there for Isabel to say? “That’s… I’m sorry. That’s not right.”

She wanted to find Dylan and throw him out his expensive floor-to-ceiling window into the East River. But her fury was mingled with guilt. She shouldn’t have needed Mira to spell it out for her. A woman moving into a man’s apartment because she couldn’t afford rent usually wasn’t a happy story. And when Mira had told her in the park, all Isabel had thought about was barging into Mira’s business. Rescuing her, like her ex had pretended to do.

Had Mira ever seen anything good in Dylan? Or had she just been doing what she needed to do? Either way, Isabel wasn’t judging. But if Mira had loved him even a little, if she’d hoped for something better and been let down… The thought broke Isabel’s heart.

“No, it wasn’t right,” Mira said, echoing Isabel’s words. She still sounded too calm, but the set of her jaw and the stiffness of her shoulders made it clear she was boiling with anger. “The truth is, I was relieved when I caught him cheating on me, because I finally had a good reason to leave him.” She looked straight at Isabel, her defiance returning. “Even if I had no idea where I was going to go, or how I was going to be on my own. At least I didn’t have to be with him anymore.”

Isabel nodded. Mira was braver and stronger than she knew. Truthfully, she was even braver and stronger than Isabel had known from the start. And Mira had held on to her softness and her sympathy all this time, which made her even more remarkable. But she never should have needed to endure so much in the first place. Isabel wanted to rip the world apart for her.

“I don’t know if he acknowledged to himself what he was doing,” Mira continued. “Maybe he deluded himself into thinking that I didn’t mind the power imbalance between us, and I just wanted to be his perfect, docile girlfriend who always did what he wanted and never inconvenienced him or had any needsof my own. And that’s why he was so angry when I left him, like he thought I loved him so much I’d put up with anything.” Mira’s voice shook. “I wonder about it sometimes. Whether he knew how much he had taken from me.”

The words rang in the space between them. “Christ, Mira. I’m so fucking sorry. That’s awful.” Isabel rubbed her face. “I— My god. He didn’t deserve you. You didn’t deserve that, is what I meant.”

Mira looked down at her sandwich, still uneaten. “Thank you,” she said faintly.

“I’m sorry for offering to…” There was nothing Isabel could say that was close to adequate, even if she hadn’t known. “Sorry.”

It was unbelievably selfish, after Mira had confided in her, for Isabel to even spend a second thinking about what this meant forher. But over the last week, she’d been nursing daydreams about Mira, knowing full well that they were impossible—that Mira might discover that she liked women, that Mira could return her feelings, that they could have a future together.

As though Mira would ever want anything more from Isabel while living in her spare bedroom out of necessity. She imagined herself in Mira’s position: running from your abusive ex and finding out that the person who’d offered you a cheap spare room had been lusting after you, too. The thought of putting Mira in that position made her sick.

It wasn’t as though she would have tried anything. Mira was straight, after all. But Isabel was going to have to be much more careful. No more letting her gaze linger too long. No more letting her guard down.

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