Page 61 of The Second Chance Bus Stop
Malmö
The Rent-a-Safe manager will miss this routine when he retires. What new routines will he have when he no longer opens the facility up with the keypad at eight every morning? When he doesn’t make his coffee in the small staff room at nine, inspecting the shared fridge and bin carefully to identify any offences: un-labelled personal food items, expired food, glass in the food-waste bin. And when he won’t take his Tupperware out of said fridge at precisely twelve fifteen and place it on the glass plate of the white microwave, which has been there almost as long as he has.
His wife seems to have a lot of routines. None of which he is part of. Cleaning the kitchen on Mondays, the bathroom on Tuesdays, stroking her face at night with those round cotton discs that don’t fluff like the loose stuff, two chapters read before turning out the lights each night. He wants to sleep right away, when his head touches the pillow, but he bears it for her, the light. Waits quietly until she places a floral bookmark in her novel and rolls to her side and flicks the light switch to make it all dark and peaceful. He’s never told her that he waits for her. Maybe she doesn’t know? But this is the thing withwords: they fall into routines of their own, and his were never to say, ‘I love you’, ‘Thank you’ and ‘I’ll wait to sleep until you’re ready because you’re my person in this world.’
He shakes his head and turns now to a routine he does know. Something he can handle. The English number he will keep calling until he hands in his key and picks up his last check.
He listens as it dials, then to the generic voicemail greeting he’s spoken to a couple of times. Read his number out and hoped they’d call back.
No one ever did.
He stands up and takes his mug in his hand, heading to the back kitchen for a coffee refill. One more week with his routine.
Sophia
Jönköping
The next morning I wake up alone and it takes my mind a minute to piece together where I am and what happened last night. Blade kissed me. Not my mouth—but in a way I actually enjoyed, without laughing at me or making me feel insecure or strange. He likesme.
This is all moving too fast. I’m starting to believe that maybe there is a planet where I can breathe and exist and love, but then I think that astronauts receive years of training before they throw themselves out there, and I have only briefly known this man.
I am sipping my cold milk when Blade comes in, a paper bag with baked goods in his hand. I move my mouth into a smile. He sits down next to me on the fold-out-sofa bed I haven’t put back yet. He hands me something fluffy and sugary and still warm.
‘Good morning,’ he says softly.
‘Good morning,’ I reply with a hoarse voice. I worry my panic and want and confusion all show plainly on my face. But all I see is a fondness in his gaze, as if I’m the only person he wants to see.
‘I’m sorry if I made you feel uncomfortable last night, if thetears were because of me. Let me know if there’s anything you need me to do. Anything at all.’
‘I don’t know what to do with what I’m feeling,’ I admit in a burst of words.
‘If it’s any consolation, neither do I.’ He leans in, then hesitates for a moment, but finally kisses the top of my head.
I think that maybe I’ve started to change. I no longer identify as a grass flower but something else. I brush the hair off my face and look up at him. There’s something he has to understand.
‘I’m currently a peace lily,Spathiphyllum. They’re lush and green and lively-looking. But God forbid if you forget to water them. Unlike many other plants that just sit there without making noise and then suddenly die on you, the peace lily wilts like it has lost its soul, all within a single day. You give it some love and it perks right up. Like nothing ever happened. Then once in a while when it’s feeling super grateful it grants you a single gorgeous flower.’
He laughs.
I press on. ‘What I mean is this: I’m not an easy woman. I may look it. I’m all quiet and compromising. But when you really get to know me, I’m not like that, not really. I have needs that I don’t even know how to meet myself.’
‘Not understanding what you need doesn’t disqualify you from having people try to give you what you need.’
‘I mean, yes, maybe? But I can only go so far away from what I need. I want to compromise, to meet in the middle more, but I can’t.’ The not kissing. Touching the topsoil of houseplants when I’m in someone’s home. Moving while I talk. The fact I wipe surfaces with two different types of antibacterial spray because they both are said to kill 99 per cent of bacteria, so if I use two, one of them will surely kill the1 per cent the second one doesn’t and vice versa. These things are difficult for some people to understand, let alone live with.
‘I’ve spent my life compromising. Isn’t that what life and love is? It doesn’t have to be a fifty-fifty thing all the time, does it? Right now my mum and I have a zero-one hundred balance. It’s like the disposable-income split, exactly like that. Give me ten per cent, Sophia, and I’ll give you 90.’
‘What if I don’t know what I can give? Or even what I need in return?’ Because it’s the truth. I’ve been raised to be like everyone else, to hide everything that’s me. I grew up and continued the masking. I’ve tried to be every sort of person there is, and not one of them has worked. Not even my own family can figure me out. And now I’m trying to figure out what part of invented, made-up me this man likes, because if I don’t know that, then how can I continue to be what he wants?
‘Here’s what I think we should do, just for now. You go to work, I will go and do my stuff. We both come home this evening. Then we repeat again tomorrow. Because remember what you told me about being ready? We are never ready for the day.’
I nod. That makes sense.
I lean into him and let myself be held—I’ve never had anyone to lean into before.
Zara
London
