Page 149 of Savior

This is Myra’s thing: she requires recognition for whatever she does—a pat on the back for each good deed carried out.

“I didn’t know you reported me missing,” I tell her, not recalling whether I was told. I’ve been so focused on putting myself back together that I blurred out the surrounding world. I won’t feel regret, either. It’s what I had to do.

I move for the door, entering the key into the lock and pushing inside, holding the door open with my foot for Myra. She looks…apprehensive. “Come in?”

Tight-lipped, she nods and walks in.

I move around the kitchen, unable to find a vase and settling for a coffee can for the flowers. Since I started therapy, I’ve been stopping at the market, getting whatever flowers were on that week’s special to brighten up the space. Not that the apartment is drab, but a little color never hurt anyone.

Myra looks around the apartment, hands in her pockets as she chews the inside of her cheek. “This is a nice place.”

“Thank you. We only moved here a couple of months ago.” I continue to watch her as I hang my jacket and purse by the door.

Something’s off. She’s very uncomfortable, and I don’t understand why.

My gut says I shouldn’t have let her in, but it’s Myra.

“It’s good that you have this life now. When for so long you were…” she trails off, and I narrow my gaze, wondering where she was going with her line of thought.

Trash? Was that where she was headed with her sentence?

“It’s different, that’s for certain.”

I’ve gone from a tiny apartment I could barely afford, paying for my mom’s apartment and barely making it some months when the club was slow, to living in a beautiful apartment overlooking NYU and Washington Square Park. I don’t know if it’s something I’ll get used to, either.

“Why did you come, Myra?” I ask when she doesn’t strike up any other topic.

The silence felt crushing.

She sighs. “I just wanted to see you and see that you are alright. We used to be friends, you know?”

That last part strikes me as odd: how she’d used past tense.

“We are friends. Look,” I step towards her, grabbing her shoulders when she doesn’t remove her hands from her pockets. “I know I should’ve reached out, but I just got a phone this week, and I’ve had so much going on. I’m in therapy for everything that happened, and I needed to focus on me.”

Something shudders through her, vibrating into my hands like a warning. Her face loosens, though, and she tugs her hands from her pockets and hugs me again. This time, it’s warm and inviting.

“I’m so glad you’re alright. Of course, you needed time. I’m sorry. It just feels so weird to see you here, and I know some fucked up shit had to happen to you. I should’ve walked with you that night.”

She would have. We lived close to one another, but she went home with Josh, the man she’d been seeing. Was seeing? Is she still seeing Josh?

I realize that there was a massive disconnect between us when we used to be very close.

“Listen, let’s do dinner and a movie one night soon?” I tell her, pulling my phone out of my pocket and handing it to her to add her number. “Or drinks? Whatever you have time for.”

She beams, adding her contact info to my phone. “Yes, I need that.”

“It’s going to take some time for me to be… I was going to say the old Sloane, but I don’t know if I’ll ever be her again,” I admit.

She looks at me with pity in her eyes. “You don’t have to be her ever again, Sloane. You’ve got a second chance.”

There’s a haunting feeling tangling in my gut at her words, even long after she’s gone.

I’m sipping a glass of red wine when Luca walks in an hour after Myra leaves, and he surmises after one look at me that something’s happened.

He rushes to me, dropping to his knees on the floor in front of the couch and cupping my face.

The feel of his hands on me, mixed with the buzz of alcohol, is sinful, and I want to lean into it more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life.

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