Page 151 of Again, In Autumn

My stomach hurts. The stress of worry goes to my head, making me dizzy, and it’s all I can think about until I David announces, “Be there in five.”

I open my eyes and sit up. “Can we stop somewhere really quickly? I need to freshen up.”

“We don’t want to be late,” Francesca says.

“I know.” My voice shakes. “I just need a minute.”

We pull over at a chicken shop, and Francesca gets in line to order the kids dinner while I go into the single stall bathroom. My shaky hands press into the sink.

This is me and Adam. Nothing to be nervous about.

Talking on the porch. Spending the time together at the inn. Holding hands in the grocery store. That’s what I’m fighting for – a normal, easy relationship full of love and compassion with a man who I know will treat me with the utmost respect.

I catch a look at myself in the mirror. Fourteen years’ worth of thinking I wasn’t pretty or interesting enough might have stopped me making this gesture. Eighteen-year-old Vienna lived a little bit in every mirror I passed. I didn’t smile at her, and I couldn’t love her, because she taunted me with unfulfilled dreams. Fuck you, I would tell her.

Adam told me he didn’t love me because I was beautiful, he loved me because I was me. When he saw me in the market that day and when he held my hand outside of the ice cream shop, I didn’t feel beautiful. At that time, I felt like crap. I had very few kind things to say about myself, but in the years that followed, I made up a story about that girl. With every passing year, I treated her as the baseline of perfection. A quality I can’t revert back to. I looked on that time with longing, and I’ll probably do the same in ten years.

I wish I were thirty-two again. She had no idea how beautiful and youthful she was. How loved, for all of her flaws.

I tuck my hair behind my ears. Adam’s letter crinkles in the pocket of my coat. My nose wrinkles, and my cheeks are pink. I don’t care if Adam sees me in the crowd and I wow him with my beauty or if someone judges the quality of my jeans or the sleekness of my hair. I view my perfectly imperfect face and smudged mascara and feel a surge of love for myself.

“I’m sorry I was so mean to you,” I whisper.

My green eyes and glistening lashes flutter, folding the skin at the corners. Every line on my thirty-two-year-old face exists because of eighteen-year-old Vienna.

She was courageous, intimate, bold, deep feeling, and scared. I blamed her, me, because I hadn’t been strong enough to see into a blank future, and I realize now that my life isn’t anyone’s fault, least of all my own. If I’d chosen differently, who knows what life could have created? I may not have learned the courage to look myself in the eye and tell her:

“I forgive you.”

I needed to see Adam to properly see myself and the girl that lived with him, who I’d abandoned, because I blamed her for everything I couldn’t keep.

She smiles back at me. She forgives me.

For the first time in fourteen years, I know where I’m going when I step out this door. I’m not acting on autopilot. I’m going to tell Adam I love him, that I’m sorry, and I’m done hiding myself away.

Chapter Forty-Three

This is it. This dingy little building, tucked between a tattoo parlor and a pharmacy. The dark paint-peeled exterior barely registers at night.

David pulls into a ride share drop off and turns his caution lights on. A gaggle of people hurry to join a line. We overestimated our arrival time and may have spent too long getting chicken, and the concert has already started.

“Is this safe?” Francesca says, wide eyed at the scene.

I point to a blonde gaggle of young women holding out tickets for a man at the front door. “They just went in with Louis Vuitton bags. I think we’ll be okay.”

“Go in, Vienna, see if you can get tickets,” Heddy instructs.

I swallow my nerves and slide open the van door. Jogging up to a window cut into the brick, I find a woman with a blonde pixie cut and a dragon tattoo on her neck sitting low in a chair. Before I can speak, she says:

“We’re sold out.”

I put my credit card on the counter. “Please. Just one ticket.”

“We’ve been sold out for hours,” she explains, looking down. “People get here when we open. I’m just sitting here counting my money.”

I look at the people walking through the door. “Well…could it really hurt to have one more person in there? I don’t take up a lot of room. I’m fine having sweaty strangers in my personal space.”

She flickers her eyes up. “There’s a thing called capacity. We’re already over it. It’s a fire hazard, and I’m on the fire department’s radar. I can’t afford to get shut down. Again.”

---