Page 42 of Come Back To Me

I made a new list of things I wanted to forget.

The way she cooked my meals when I was a zombie and carried them over to me, placed the fork between my fingers, and told me in her gentle voice to eat.

Her cold fingers when they smoothed the lines on my face.

How she never complained about the months when I disappeared, she never brought them up after.

The way she’d lash out at me, accusing me of cheating on her.

Those girls, the ones who were not Yara, their speech was fickle, their voices high and twangy. They never asked a real question, just hinted around it. They sounded cheap, like those plastic recorders they teach you to play in middle school. I’d had those girls, I’d listened to them speak, and say my name, and ask me non-questions. Yara’s voice was deep…elegant. Her accent was regal and her tone matter-of-fact. I added something I wanted to forget to the list of Yara’s questions.

Why fuck a girl and lead her on if you have no intention of being in a relationship with her?

Why are you whining that you can’t write a song when you haven’t tried to write a song?

Why do you let your brother speak to you like that?

Why do you want to marry me anyway?

After a relationship ended and you went through the initial grief, it was time for the groveling (or bargaining as the shrinks called it). Groveling was a rite of passage. It’s where you got to look so pathetic no one would want you anyway, but you were sad enough to try. I didn’t know where she was to grovel or I would have. Fuck, I would have gone the whole nine yards with the groveling, been a beggar. I skipped that stage and went straight to the asshole stage. That’s the best one. You get to drink a shitload—and you don’t even care what you’re drinking. There’s a lot of“Fuck that bitch.”And,“I’m better off without her.”When you get tired of the hangovers and your dick won’t get hard anymore, you stop drinking and you medicate with fun new things: friends, the gym, brown rice and chicken breasts perfectly portioned, and random hookups with girls you meet at the gym.

Grief without the fights, grief without the apology, grief without the closure.Thick, suffocating grief wound tightly around one woman. And with as much pent-up grief as you have for one woman, you’re sticking your dick in another one. It’s sick.

Pride, I had too much of it. If I really wanted to I could have fucking found her. I know that now. I should have begged and groveled, crawled to her on my hands and knees so she could see the effect she had on me. Maybe I could have brought her back.

The pen was there that day, lying on my nightstand. I didn’t recognize it, where had it come from? It was a tourist’s pen, something you’d buy at the Market: a skyline of Seattle behind a tiny plastic dome. There were flecks of glitter in water. I picked it up, watched it snow over Seattle. And then, just like that, the words fell into my head.

Are you going to write a song about it?

Why yes, yes I was. I called the song “Beggar.” It was the second song I’d written about Yara and it took twenty minutes to get it out. It had her rhythm:soft, soft, hard, hard.When I was done I felt…less. Just less, like I’d transferred some of my grief into a composition book instead of letting it sit in my chest. This was what Yara had told me would happen if my heart broke. I hated the song because of that—I hated every song about her, and they all were about her. I hated the girl that made us famous. I hated myself for loving the girl that made me a beggar. Bitter, bitter—like orange rinds. She’d done this to me purposefully, hurt me with intent. I changed for her, but she hadn’t changed for me. That was the difference. She’d just left me behind.

I checked my trash for her e-mail.

I have a dream that Yara is locked in a closet and calling my name. When I wake up I’m covered in sweat and my heart is pounding. I glance at my phone. It’s five o’clock in the morning. I do the numbers in my head as I swing my legs over the side of the bed. Two years this month, that’s how long it’s been since she left. I take a shower, make myself a pot of coffee, but I can’t shake the dream. I could see her so clearly, her long hair braided down her back, her red-rimmed eyes. I make a point not to look at old photos because every time I do it feels like I’m back at day one—the first day after she left me—but I can’t stop the dreams. They bring her face back to me in detail. My friends tell me that I need closure. Before the residue of the dream has worn off, I book a one-way ticket to London. It’s now or never, I tell myself. I pack a small bag and leave without telling anyone.

“Business or pleasure?” the woman in the seat next to me asks.

She fastens her seat belt and then looks over at me expectantly. I have no plan to spend the flight talking to a stranger.

“Business,” I say.

“What sort of business?”

“I’m going to find my wife.” And then I lean my head against the window, the pillow propped against the glass, and fall asleep.

I stay in a hotel she once told me about, on the Strand. She bartended there for a few months before she decided to adventure in America. What are the big differences between London and Seattle? The weather is the same. As I put one foot in front of the other and steer my body through the streets, I am rained on the same way I am rained on back home. I don’t walk with my head down like everyone else because I am looking in their faces, the people who carry umbrellas (we don’t really do that in Seattle, carry umbrellas). I am searching for Yara, who no longer works in the same place Ed Berry reported. Rainwater drips down my face, into my mouth because I won’t bend my head against the rain.

I am looking for Yara. I am looking for Yara…

I think about calling Ed, but I’m already here. I can find her. That’s what I say to myself as I walk through the streets. Even before I met her it seemed I was looking for Yara. I knew that she struggled to accept love. I was too young to understand consequences. I thought everything would work out in my life, that the wrongs would right themselves and that eventually she would be okay. That’s not how it works. I know that now.

The bars here are all named things with aTheat the beginning:ThePorcupine,TheImperial,TheGlassblower,TheOyster and Mirth. I look into their windows, eyeing the bartenders. I am looking for Yara.

She is everywhere and nowhere. I see her in the people. She Americanized herself to fit in, but now I see that she is London. How can a person be like a city? Her attitude about life is damp, but she pushes forward with an old elegance. She doesn’t complain about what’s happened to her or why. It’s the damp she lives in, it’s part of who she is and she’s fine with that. I’ve seen so many others question, and cry, and rage against the whys of their life. Yara doesn’t waste time on that. She has somewhere to be and she goes. She grew up with adjectives. She’s interesting and old like the gothic buildings that line the street. If you go inside many of them they’re modern and young—that’s like Yara too.

I love London.

In the afternoon I am tired of walking and looking, looking and walking. I find a place to sit and eat called The Counter at the Delaunay. There is a blue and white pattern on the floor that I can’t stop looking at. I sit across from grandparents who have brought their young grandchildren for lunch. We’re all in a booth by the window. The boy and girl look like twins.

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