“You didn’t tell her?” Michelle said when I got home to find her rooting through my room, looking for her favorite lip gloss. She was meeting Lewis and was flustered and late, so I probably shouldn’t have told her that I’d seen Nico again. But I had to, otherwise I would have spiraled on my bedroom floor until she got home.
“I know,” I groaned.
“You told her about Vas’s punk band but you didn’t tell her you used to be together?”
I covered my face with my hands and groaned again. “I know.”
“I can’t believe this,” Michelle said, and she sounded so genuinely confounded that I took my hands away from my face to find her shaking her head. “I mean, you haven’t seen Nico for four and a half months, then you see her twice in two weeks. What are the chances?”
“Right?” I slapped her arm. “That has to mean something, doesn’t it?”
She slapped me back. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Overthink this. It’s just a coincidence, Mara.”
I huffed because she was probably right, but sometimes it’s fate, right?
Why couldn’t it be fate this time?
Perhaps the only difference between coincidence and fate is your desire for it to be one, not the other.
“What are you going to do?” Michelle asked, and I remember that she looked more concerned than thrilled.
Not that I expected her to be thrilled. After all, it was Nico, so Michelle—or I, let’s be real—had no reason to believe that things would be any different this time. That Nico had emerged from the sea the perfect girlfriend. But just this once, I wished that she wasn’t so meticulously, immovably logical. Especially about those magical, movable things that have no regard for logic. Things like fate and luck and that other four-letter word I didn’t dare say out loud.
“What do you mean?” I asked, reaching for one of my pillows and hugging it.
“Are you going to see her again?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“So you swapped numbers?”
“We’re going for coffee again tomorrow.”
She arched an eyebrow at me. “And whose idea was that?”
“Hers,” I told her with a smug smirk.
But when Michelle’s gaze drifted over my shoulder to the window behind me, my heart clenched like a fist. It was the look she gets when she’s trying to solve a particularly demanding algebra equation, her forehead suddenly so tight that I wanted to tell her to relax because she’d give herself a headache. But I couldn’t because I knew what she was doing. She was trying to find a way to say what she wanted to say, but she didn’t know how and that made my chest feel even tighter because Michelle always knew what to say.
Always.
Finally, she nodded to herself, then looked me in the eye.
“Mara, you have to be careful. Nico isn’t the same person you knew before.”
Usually, I’d have a well-rehearsed defense ready to reassure her that I was fine—that I wasn’t going to get hurt—even though we both knew that wasn’t true. But I couldn’t argue with that, could I? Nico wasn’t the same person. And I don’t just mean her pretty pink clothes and pretty pink purse and pretty pink perfume, but her attitude was different. It still felt like she was in perpetual motion, but the swaggering, slightly sullen Nico I’d found singing outside Brighton station had been replaced by someone lighter. Fragile. Not fragile in a delicate, breakable way, but tender, I guess. Tender in the most warm, welcoming way.
“I guess almost dying will do that to you,” I heard myself say.
“It certainly puts things into perspective, doesn’t it?” Michelle exhaled sharply.
“So, maybe you’re the one overthinking it this time?”
Michelle pulled a face at me and I thought that would be it.
But then she said, “The thing is, Mara, Nico is so vulnerable right now.”
“I know,” I said, holding the pillow tighter.
“Everything you tell her becomes a new memory that potentially papers over an old one.” She tugged on the sleeve of my denim shirt and waited for me to look at her. “So it’s not fair to let her think that you’re just some random who found her notebook. Especially if she can’t remember how she ended up in the sea. She was supposed to meet you on New Year’s Eve, wasn’t she? So you have to tell her. It might trigger something.”
I hadn’t even thought about that.
But before I was forced to admit she was right, my phone rang. I glanced down at where it lay on the bed between us, but when I saw that it was a number I didn’t recognize, I ignored it.
“You’re seeing her tomorrow, right?” Michelle asked when I looked up again.
“Yeah, she wants to see my parents’ café.”
“Perfect. Tell her tomorrow. As soon as you see her. Don’t even say hello, just rip off the Band-Aid. You have to, because the longer you leave it, the worse it will be. Otherwise, when everything comes back to her, she’s going to know you lied to her and you’ll never be able to come back from that.”
I hadn’t thought about that, either.
“Rip off the Band-Aid,” I repeated with a nod as my phone buzzed.
I glanced down at it again to see it was a text and reached for it.
“Hold on,” I murmured.
“Who is it?”
“Mara, darling.” I remember how the words wobbled as I read them aloud. “It’s Rebecca. Nico’s mum. Sorry to call unannounced, but can you please call me back when you get a moment? Thank you. —R”
Michelle leaned in to peer at the screen. “How did Nico’s mum get your number?”
“No idea.”
“So she doesn’t have it from before?”
“Why would she have my number?”
“Lewis’s mum has mine in case of emergencies.”
“Michelle, come on.” I tilted my head at her. “Nico isn’t Lewis, is she? I couldn’t get her to commit to two Saturdays in a row. I can’t imagine she went home and told her mum about her amazing girlfriend Mara.”
“True.” She raised her eyebrows and nodded. “Nico must have given it to her when she got home, then.”
“Yeah, but why?”
Michelle gestured at my phone. “Call her and find out.”
I did, then hissed at her as she leaned in to put it on speaker so she could hear.
“Yes. Hi. Hey. Hello, Mrs. Rudolph?” I said when Nico’s mother answered. “This is Mara Malakar.”
“What did Nico eat?” she literally shrieked.
She didn’t even say hello, she just started yelling.
So loudly that both Michelle and I recoiled, then looked up at each other.
“Nico’s sick!” she shrieked again.
That made me gasp. “Sick?”
Nico was fine when I saw her an hour ago.
“Yes! She’s been vomiting since she got home. What did she eat?”
“Nothing. She didn’t eat anything.”
“Tell me, Mara! Tell me right now!”
Michelle turned her finger in a circle by her temple and I swatted at her.
“Tell me!” she demanded again. “Nico says she only had a peppermint tea, but I know she’s lying!”
I was so startled that I blurted out, “Hot chocolate.”
“She had a hot chocolate?”
“Yes, Mrs. Rudolph.”
There was a tense beat of silence. Then she said, “So sugar and dairy?”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Rudolph,” I babbled, close to tears. “I’m sorry.”
“Oh, darling girl,” she cooed, her voice suddenly sickly sweet. “It’s not your fault. You know what Nico’s like. She never listens to anyone, does she?”
There was something about the does she? that made me hesitate and look up at Michelle again.
Does she know about before? she mouthed.
She can’t, I mouthed back.
But I wasn’t so sure this time.
“Don’t worry, darling,” Nico’s mother sang. “She’s been eating clean for so long that even a hot chocolate will upset her stomach. She’ll be fine.” But something about the way she said it didn’t reassure me. “Especially now she’s seen you. She came home walking on air. She hasn’t stopped talking about you!”
“Really?” I said, holding the pillow closer to me as I bit down on a smile.
“Your afternoon together did wonders for her,” she said, and it wasn’t just what she said that made my shoulders fall, rather how she said it. Her voice was beautiful. Soft and soothing and stirringly familiar.
It took me a moment to realize why.
She spoke how Nico sang.
“It was just what she needed, Mara.”
When I grinned at Michelle, she rolled her eyes and mouthed, But.
I scowled at her. Sure enough, though, Rebecca sighed and said, “But”—and I didn’t dare look at Michelle—“I’m glad you didn’t tell her that you knew her before.”
So, she does know, I remember thinking, my heart fluttering.
“She’s so helpless,” Rebecca said, and I noticed how her voice became thinner, the singsongy lightness gone. “Her therapist and I have spent a great deal of time discussing her situation and together—”
“Together? That’s good,” I heard myself say, but as soon as I did, the back of my neck burned.
It was enough to derail Rebecca, who stopped and snapped, “What’s good?”
My voice trembled as her tone switched again. “That Nico will still be seeing her therapist.”
“Why wouldn’t she be seeing her therapist?”
“It’s just that Nico said earlier that you wanted her to stop going.”
There was another tense silence, then her voice was slow and sweet again. “Oh no, I still want Nico to go to therapy. I just think three times a week is a bit much. Don’t you?”
I had no idea, so I just muttered, “I guess.”
“But that’s the problem, isn’t it?” she continued as though I hadn’t said anything. “All of this is a bit much for Nico. I know when someone loses their memory in books, they taste a madeleine dipped in tea and have a Proustian rush where it all comes back to them, but that’s not how it works in real life, darling.”
I know that, I thought.
I don’t know why it made the muscles in my shoulders tense again, but something about Rebecca’s tone—gentle as it was—was giving more Head Teacher than Concerned Mother.
“I know in films it’s more dramatic,” she went on with a well-polished laugh. “Very Christopher Nolan. Remembering that way is certainly more satisfying than months, even years, of hard slog in therapy, but it’s not healthy. Remembering everything all at once could completely overwhelm Nico and we don’t want that, do we?”
“No, Mrs. Rudolph,” I muttered, and even Michelle sat a little straighter.
“No, it’s much better that it happens organically, rather than in a rush, which might set Nico back even further. That’s why her therapist and I are working together to help her remember slowly. On her own terms.”
Michelle lifted her shoulders, then let them fall again as she mouthed, That makes sense.
“So, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell her about your friendship just yet, darling.”
I hesitated as I remembered what Michelle said earlier about ripping off the Band-Aid.
“I don’t want to lie to her, though.”
Rebecca chuckled.
Nico’s new chuckle.
“Sweet girl. What a good heart you have,” she sang. “You’re not lying to her, though. You’re protecting her. Nico will understand.” I think she knew I was going to object again, because before I could, she added, “We will tell her, I promise. When she’s strong enough. You just need to be patient. Trust the process.”
I nodded. “Trust the process.”
“Although,” she said, making the word sound about a minute long, “if this is going to be too much for you and you don’t think you can spend time with her without saying something, I completely understand if—”
I didn’t let her finish. “No. No. I can do it. I can do it, Mrs. Rudolph.”
Even I could hear the desperation in my voice, which was hardly convincing.
Still, she sounded thrilled. “Oh good! I’m so glad we spoke, darling girl.”
Then she was gone and I was left staring at my phone.
When I looked up, Michelle shrugged. “I guess that Band-Aid’s staying on for now, then.”