Page 58 of Always

Anika followed him into the car. She badly wanted to understand what was going on, but she couldn’t see any way to accomplish that with Marco sitting right next to her in an agitated state.

They pulled up to the cafe, waited in line to place their order. Once they were alone at their table, Marco said, “I don’t understand why he’s still hanging around. I thought things were over with him and Hannah.”

“They are,” Anika said. “Or I thought they were.”

Marco grabbed her hand, a little too hard. “Is something going on between you two?” he asked quietly.

“Please let go of me,” Anika said.

Marco released her at once.

“I need to go to the bathroom,” Anika said, standing up.

She fled to the ladies’ room, which thankfully was a single room with a locking door. She turned the latch, sitting down on the closed toilet lid. With trembling hands, she took the little paper packet out of her bag. She unwrapped it carefully and upended its contents into her open palm.

It was her mother’s sapphire earring. This time, she knew it at once. It was the real thing, the one that her mother had worn, and Anika had worn to nearly every significant event of their lives.

As she held it in her hand, Anika understood that the replacement Marco had made for her, while lovely, was completely hollow to her. And in that same way, the moments they shared together—the waterfall, the jogs, the dinners, the balloon ride—were somehow also hollow. They were beautiful and perfectly crafted, but they lacked an essential something. Maybe it was history, or maybe it was something more germane to their essence, the difference between sapphire and glass.

By contrast, the few scattered moments she had experienced with James over these past few months, as simple and unglamorous as they may have been—brushing past one another in a dirty pub, waiting at the hospital, standing outside in the rain—each one was electric to her. She could feel every second of it again, the smells, the sounds, the way her heart had pounded and pounded inside of her as if it would burst. They were just chance, unplanned moments, and yet they were everything to her.

When she came out of the bathroom, her latte was waiting for her, along with Marco’s apology.

“Anika, I’m sorry,” he said, taking her hand again, much more gently. “I don’t mean to be a jealous fool. I just can’t stand the thought of losing you.”

He’s so charming,she thought.He always knows just what to say.

But Anika’s preferences had been formed long ago to a different sort of temperament: not always smooth or charming, but warm and open and completely honest.

As they ate, a stiffness lay between them. They could both sense it. Marco was too worried about his father to try to breach the distance between them. Anika couldn’t even muster the desire to try.

She drank her coffee as quickly as she was able without burning herself. She wanted to be alone again at the office.

When Marco dropped her off, she came back upstairs. Hannah was sitting by the window, flipping through a magazine. She must have stopped bossing Calvin around, because he had taken off his headphones so he could eat his lunch more comfortably.

“Was that James’s car in the parking lot?” Hannah asked curiously. “I saw it through the window.”

“Yes,” Anika said, distracted, “he came to drop something off.”

“I thought you were meeting Marco?”

“I was,” Anika said.

“What was James dropping off?” Gwen asked.

“My earring,” Anika pulled it from her bag to show it to them. “He found it.”

“What!?” Gwen exclaimed. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know,” Anika faltered. “I’m not sure...I suppose he found it after the dinner? Maybe he forgot to tell me until now.”

“No he didn’t,” Calvin said.

Anika looked over at him where he was placidly scooping noodles out of a carton with a pair of disposable wooden chopsticks.

“What did you say?” she asked.

“I said he didn’t find it after the dinner.”

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