Strength

June 2017

My new apartment was under renovation. It belonged to my friend Zoe, who had made me a deal - I could live in it in exchange for working on it. It sounded good to me.

It was a mess, though. No one was supposed to be living there. There was no furniture and no fridge, and everything was covered in a thick layer of golden dust that had been sanded off the wood floors. Zoe's boyfriend and cousin wrestled an old fridge up to the second floor for me, and then she and her daughter and another cousin came up and cleaned it out and made sure it was working.

Ninja had joined the moving crew on its way from A to B, and she stayed late and went out shopping with me. I was setting up a new home from scratch; I bought a bed, some sheets, and some curtains. The walls in my room were lime green with patches of white spackle, and the ceiling was a lumpy mess that needed sanding.

The next morning I set about making the kitchen functional. I cleaned everything, from the tops of the cupboards to the cracks in the baseboards. At least once I collapsed in the middle of the floor and just cried. I wasn't supposed to be there. Everything had gone so wrong. I kept hoping that Aiden would call and say he had made a terrible mistake and wanted me back, but my phone stayed silent. I wondered what he was doing. Probably crying on Shelby's shoulder about how bad his life was.

By the afternoon the kitchen was sparkling. Zoe invited me to go ride motorcycles with some friends, and I jumped on the distraction.

I spent a lot of time with her, and it became obvious that I was very lucky to have her as a friend. She was supportive and helpful and adult, but also badass and crude enough that I felt like we might be related. She was understanding when I shared pieces of what had happened with Aiden and Shelby. She made it clear that I was to go to her if I needed help, without being an intrusive asshole about it. She fed me protein shakes when anxiety wouldn't let me eat.

She came to me for help too, when things weren't going well with her boyfriend or her daughter. She knocked on my door one night and said she just couldn't take it and needed to escape. I brought her into my room and we shared a bottle of wine and commiserated about life. Some mornings I brought her lattes, and some evenings she made me margaritas. We watched movies and I braided her hair.

A few days into my new arrangement, my friend Hawk messaged me to check in. He realized immediately that I was a disaster and invited me to go along on his upcoming motorcycle trip across the country. What the hell, I thought. I'm free. Might as well act like it. Ninja encouraged me to go, even after I came clean to her about the details of my involvement with Hawk years earlier.

"I knew," she scolded me, like a mother hen. "Do you think I'm an idiot? Please. I know you, and I know Hawk." We had a good laugh.

Hawk and I spent ten days on the road, and it was a blast. He egged me into doing 1,000 miles on the bike in a day, and I did it because I have a chip on my shoulder. I hit it off with his friends. I introduced him to my cousins. I dumped his bike twice, and to his credit he was completely chill about it. We drove through hours of rain, soaked and freezing, and we baked ourselves senseless under the blazing Midwestern sun. I realized I was better off without someone who held me down and refused to adventure with me.

The day after I returned, Aiden showed up on my doorstep. He had made a terrible mistake. He wanted me back.

I told him to go to hell.