Page 124 of The Fate Of Us

I popped a ripe strawberry into my mouth before ditching the morning sun and heading backinto the air-conditioned room, making a beeline for the bedside table where my laptop lay.

I had a rough idea of Alice’s schedule, and after seeing her for years, that was no surprise.

Tuesdays were her quiet days, she told me, that memory sticking with me as I scrolled through my contacts, clicking the FaceTime button without a second thought.

Each ring was even more annoying than the last, the silent prayers I whispered in my mind that herTuesdays were as quiet as she told me they were the only thing to block the noise,andthe thought of enduring this for another minute became—

“Nate! Well, this is a surprise.”

Thank you, therapy lords, I owe you.

“Alice, hi.” I cast my eyes down at the screen, the corners of my mouth twitching.

Asmile, as if it had been beaten to within an inch of its life.

I shook my head. “I… I was just hoping…” The words lodged in my throat, probably because I hadn’t spoken to anyone but the room service attendants in days, but I saw Alice’s mouth pry open when she noticed that the words weren’t coming.

“Is everything okay, Nate? I thought we’d postponed your meetings until after you wereback in the city.” she wondered, pressing her glasses up the bridge of her nose.

I nodded. “We did… but I’d like to un-postpone them… if that’s okay.”

Her smile was as warm as the sun shining through the windows, brightening the roomwith little effort. Sympathetic eyes, ones that I knew would listen to me at three in the morning if I called, stared at me through the screen, gathering what she could through the pixels.

She went out of frame for a second, the sound of her phone switching off rattling through the speakers below the screen, before she leaned back in her chair and nodded at me.“I’m all ears.”

My head fell forward, as a thankful smile I wasn’t sure if she could see tugged on mymouth, before I slowly lifted back up to face the pixelated version of her. “Thank you,” I nodded. “I appreciate it.”

“Any time, you know that, Nate.” I did. “Now,” The drag of her notepad across her deskbroke up her words, as she plucked a pen from the cup she kept tucked away in the corner of her office. “What’s happened?”

What hasn’t happened would be the better question to ask, but I started with the basics,the one thing that I knew she’d want to hear first. But….

“Just before I start talking… exactlyhowquiet are your Tuesdays?”

Her brows knitted together. “Why?”

“I think we might be here for a while…”

It was like she could tell by my face, how sunken my eyes were, how messy my hair was,that she knew I wasn’t kidding.

“I better go get my laptop charger then.”

In the years that I’d been going to Alice, I don’t think I’ve ever seen her sospeechless.

“Well,” was all she said when I’d finished talking, and that was around a minute and ahalf ago.

I squinted my eyes at the screen, clocking how not a single part of her had shuffled. “Have you frozen… or are you just in shock?” I asked, a hint of humour coating my voice.

Like someone had pressed play on the scene in her office, Alice shifted, pulling herglasses away from her face and hands pressing into her cheeks, her pinky finger tapping her lip. “Well… I guess if I were to provide you with anything positive to take away from all this, it would be that you can finally throw away that damned photo, finally rid yourself from its torment.”

Highly unlikely, I thought to myself. “To be honest, Alice,” I ran a handthrough my hair. “I think that I could burn it, shred it, and destroy it every way I could think of, and it’ll still torment me. Knowing that it never meant anything in the first place.”

A shrug rolled through her shoulders, as she began to clean her lenses with the electricblue sleeves of her sweater. “But surely, now you know it wasn’t real, it’s going to be easier to move on… you know,” Alice leaned forward and moved her hands, as though she were balancing imaginary weights. “It was a miscommunication, Nate. A, slightly, innocent mistake.”

A snort erupted through my nose. “There’s an innocent mistake, and then there’s what Idid.”

I dropped my head as the words fell out of me, careless and true. I let my balled-up fistcollide with my other hand, cupping it before I brought my eyes back to Alice. “There’s messing up, and then there’s swearing off the girl you love because you thought she’d cheated on you when actually, she never did, and because I was too angry to watch their movie, I wasted too many years hating a girl who never did anything wrong to begin with.”

Her smile went tight, her head tilting as I caught my breath. “Well, yes. There’sthatperspective too.” My head fell into my hands. “Have you spoken to her?”

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