Page 30 of The Seven Year Slip

It felt nice to do something formeagain. To justbe.

No to-do lists to keep pushing myself through, no expectations.

Just me.

And while I didn’t feel like the child who used to curl up in a claw-foot tub to paint, I did feel...safe.

I still felt alone—I doubted that would change—but I didn’t feel like I’d rattle apart. The truth was, I had been isolated for the last few months, ever since Analea died, because it was the only way to keep myself together. My parents had each other to cry on when the grief rose in the middle of the night.

I had no one, alone in an apartment in Brooklyn.

I didn’t have anyone to rub my back and tell me that it was okay not to be okay. I had to tell myself as I sat on my kitchen floor in the middle of the night and cried into a pillow so I wouldn’t wake up my neighbors.

The past was the past was the past, and it couldn’t be changed. Even if I somehow met her here in this apartment seven years in the past, it wouldn’t change anything. She would still die. I would still find myself on the floor crying at two in the morning.

And then Nate came along three months later and thought he could fix me, I guess, with a little well-placed love. Except I didn’t need to be fixed. I’d gone through the worst day of my life by myself, and I came out the other side a person who survived it. That was not something to fix.

I didn’t need to befixed. I just needed... to be reminded that I was human.

And dinner with a stranger who didn’t look at me like I was broken had been a surprisingly good start.

11

Burn, Baby, Burn

Eventually, I stopped paintingand drew myself a bath.

I sank down into the hot water, the lavender and chamomile from the soap I’d used soft and calming, and I stared up at the crown molding on the ceiling, all of the intricate swirls and gilded patterns characteristic of the Monroe. I must’ve dozed off at some point, because the next thing I knew the front door was opening, and I heard someone cross the apartment. Their footsteps were heavy. I rubbed my eyes with my pruny fingers.

I sat up in the bath.

Iwan.

I reached for my phone on the stool. Five p.m.already?

“Lemon? I’m back,” he called, his footsteps coming closer.

“Here!” I replied, trying not to panic. “I’m—um—in the bath!”

His footsteps suddenly stopped. “O-oh!”

I winced.Nice going, Clementine, I thought to myself.You should’ve just said not to come in.My ears burned with embarrassment. “Don’t make it weird!”

He sputtered. “I’m not making it weird, you’re making it weird!”

“You made it weird first!”

“I didn’tsayanything!”

“You saidOh!”

“Should I have said something different?”

I buried my face in my hands. “Just—just ignore me. I’m going to go drown myself in the tub. Goodbye.”

He chuckled. “Well, don’t drown yourself for too long. I’m cooking again tonight,” he added, and his footsteps faded into the kitchen.

I quickly reached for my towel and pulled myself out of the bath. I heard him in the kitchen, putting things away, as I dried myself off and remembered that I hadn’t picked out any clothes. “Shit,” I muttered, and opened the bathroom closet to try to find one of her bathrobes. Instead, I found a lovely black satin robe with a marabou feather trim. It was utterly ridiculous—the kind of expensive robe wealthy women in old movies wore, complete with a long cigarette holder and a dead body in the foyer. I snorted, pulling it off the hanger. I’d almost forgotten that she had this monstrosity. A few years ago, it caught fire thanks to her Saint Dolly Parton candle, and she ended up tossing both out the window in a panic. The apartment smelled like melted feathers for weeks.

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