Page 11 of Always

She packed up her over-stuffed carrier bag and turned out the lights. As she was heading toward the staircase, she heard Gwen and Hannah coming up, talking to James. Anika paused—in that moment, she had no desire to meet up with them again. She wondered if there was some way to sneak away unseen.

As she hesitated, she realized they were talking about her.

“You took a university class with Anika?” Gwen was saying.

James murmured something, probably a simple confirmation.

“Was she as serious then as she is now?” Hannah laughed.

“I wouldn’t have recognized her at all,” James said seriously.

“Really?” Hannah asked.

“No,” James said, “she’s nothing the same.”

Gwen and Hannah wouldn’t have noticed it, but Anika heard the disgust in his voice. It was clear that what she had perceived as guardedness was actually disdain. Seeing her again, he found her so changed for the worse that he could hardly believe he had ever been in love with her.

Humiliated, Anika backed into the office. But they would be up here in a moment. There was no back door. She couldn’t avoid the meeting. She pushed forward through the doors again, making sure to jostle them so that Gwen and Hannah would hear her coming out.

“Oh, hi!” she said, seeing them at the top of the stairs. “I was just leaving! It’s Friday—I’m sure you girls have plans tonight, you should go too!”

She tried to sound cheerful and oblivious.

Hannah looked thrilled at the unprecedented time off. Gwen seemed pleasantly surprised, but slightly suspicious. James was searching Anika’s face, perceiving her strained smile and flushed cheeks. Guilt flitted across his face as he wondered if she had heard them.

“Thanks again for coming by!” Anika said, slipping past James. “I’ll have Hannah contact you with the plans for next week.”

She forced herself to descend the stairs at a normal pace. Once she was safely out on the street, she practically ran to the subway station. On the train, she rested her face in the crook of her arm as if she were sleeping and tried to cry without making any noise. It was stupid, incredibly stupid, to care what James thought about her after all this time. She already knew she wasn’t beautiful anymore.

She wasn’t hideous, of course; she’d had a couple of relationships, even a boyfriend that proposed to her a few years back, though she’d turned him down and ultimately ended the relationship. But she had lost her spark, the enlivening flame that attracted someone of James Dawson’s caliber.

When Anika got home, the apartment was mercifully quiet. Yet, somehow, she couldn’t settle in her room with a dinner plate to catch up on work or read as she usually would have done. She felt too frustrated and distracted for her usual quiet pursuits.

Instead, she went to her closet and found the box labeled “Shoes.” She dug out a pair of sneakers that she hadn’t worn in over a year. She pulled on a pair of shorts and tied her hair up in a ponytail. Grabbing her headphones, she left the apartment and jogged into Central Park.

She hadn’t come into the park since moving back to the city. She was struck by the quiet, how well the trees dampened the noise of cars and horns and music and ringtones and talking. She ran down pathways, across bridges, past benches, through groups of mothers with strollers and teenagers jostling one another. Other joggers waved to her in passing, as if she were one of them, as if her panting and heavy sweat weren’t giving her away.

She skirted the west side of the reservoir, down past the great lawn, threading between the Shakespeare Garden and the turtle pond, then crossed the Bow Bridge.

When she had exhausted herself, she walked for a while, and when she remembered how adoringly Hannah and Gwen looked at James, and how dismissive he had been of his connection to her, she started running again as if she could outpace her own miserable thoughts.

She kept going until well over an hour had passed and she was too tired and sore to take another step. She exited out onto 59th Street, using her phone to call an Uber back to her apartment.

When she woke up Saturday morning, her legs were sore absolutely everywhere, to the point where she could hardly sit on the toilet to pee. She was also ravenous. But instead of attacking the bagels Stella had delivered every weekend, Anika made herself a protein shake. She was tired of feeling geriatric when she was only twenty-eight.

She heard a thump from Stella’s room, probably a shoe hurled against the door in protest at the blender running so early in the morning. Anika ignored it. For once she didn’t care in the slightest if Stella was perturbed.

Anika pulled out her phone to text one of her girlfriends that she hadn’t spoken to in a month.

What are you doing today?

Playing tennis with Carmen and Amanda. You wanna come?

Anika considered her throbbing legs, then firmly typed her response.

Love to! I’ll meet you at the courts in an hour.

A pause, then Kelsey typed back,Really? You’re actually coming?

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