Page 50 of What We Broke

I simply nod, because if he’s in, then so am I.

This officially ends the session and we all awkwardly meander around one another, standing and saying our goodbyes as we make our way to the exit.

It’s such a surreal experience to sit in a stranger’s office and find it to be the only way you can communicate with your significant other. But no matter the outcome, seeing Dr. Sosa these last few weeks has been the most honest conversations Leo and I have had in twelve months.

I don’t know where we will be in another twelve months, but this makes me feel a lot more hopeful than him living at Gio’s and barely talking to me.

We’re sitting in my car now, and it dawns on me that there is one thing I do want to say. Words we haven’t exchanged, words I still feel, stronger now than ever.

“I love you, Leo,” I say. “No matter what you try to tell yourself or how unloveable you try to insist you are. I. Love. You.”

I hear a soft sniffle followed by a wet laugh. “You say the sweetest things, but you’ve always been the dirtier fighter of the two of us.”

“I’m not fighting dirty when it’s the truth.” In the spirit of honesty and generally pushing my luck, I add, “If the roles were reversed right now, would you fight for us? Would you let me go?”

A sigh of resignation fills the car, followed by his very telling silence. “Well?” I press.

“No,” he says. “You know damn well I wouldn’t let you go.”

CHAPTERELEVEN

leo

THEN

Pushingthe heavy glass door open, my eyes scan the hair salon, searching for Zara. When I spot her washing a client’s hair by the row of basins, I wave.

Smiling, she raises a hand, gesturing for me to wait a minute. Instead of loitering in the waiting area, I duck back outside and go to the coffee shop next door and order us each a large caramel latte. Hers iced, of course.

It wasn’t surprising that we both like the same drink, because as it turns out, Zara and I have a lot more in common than Jesse and I do.

Jesse is a man of precision and purpose. We often joke that he is always the man with a plan. Zara and I are the complete opposite. We’re fueled by feelings, both good and bad. We live in that single moment, and you’d have no idea what to expect with either of us because it could all change in a hot minute.

Which makes my visit to her workplace even more out of character. But being with Jesse is unlike anything I have ever done. It’s stable. It’s constant.

And I find myself wanting to make plans.

“Hey.” Zara’s voice comes up behind me just as my drink order is placed on the counter in front of us.

Carefully grabbing the two drinks, I turn to hand one to her and kiss her on the cheek. “How are you?”

“Good,” she answers suspiciously. “And you?”

“You want to know why I’m here, don’t you?”

“Well, it can’t be an emergency with Jesse,” she says. “You look too calm for that.”

“I finished work early.” I point to my head. “And I need a haircut.”

Zara and I both work downtown. Her in a funky, hipster hair salon, and I’m two months into my new job as a bank teller for a popular financial chain.

She reaches for my hair and runs her fingers through my curls that have just started to grow back after she took the hair clippers to them. “You don’t need a haircut, unless you’re planning on letting me shave it again.”

“I think Jesse will kill us both,” I tell her. “But humor me anyway.”

She doesn’t balk at my request, and I appreciate it more than she knows. If it wasn’t for the fact that I know she is the senior stylist who has free rein, I wouldn’t bother her at work. It’s been two months since I first met Zara, and the ease in which we both became a staple in one another’s lives should’ve shocked me, but just like with Jesse, I’m smitten with her too.

“I just have to put some hair colour on my client,” she informs me. “But come inside, take a seat, and I can fit you in while we’re waiting for theirs to set.”

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