Despite the frigid gale that seems intent on blasting every vestige of color from my chilled cheeks, I don’t hurry to my car as I step onto the sunny sidewalk outside The Foundation’s building, preferring to turn my back to the wind and attempt to text with frozen fingers. The screen doesn’t even respond the first three times and I blow on my hands.

“I just got out of my meeting. I’ll be there to pick you up in like, an hour and a half.”

The only reply is a thumbs-up emoji, and I slip the phone back into my pocket with a subconscious frown, just cuz it’s easier than pretending to smile.

I try to remember how to breathe.

Just be calm.

But that’s easier thought than said. Easier said than done, but my tongue feels stuck to the roof of my mouth, keeping even the freezing air from reaching me. 

I’m not really even sure how I made it through the interview. Time flashes by me like a silent movie, and I think I speak but never hear the words. My heart floundering about in my chest.

I feel like a fish out of water.

We’re okay. This is okay. I repeat as I slide into the driver's seat.

I’m overthinking this.

I don’t feel it, but I know it. I always overthink. 

I tried to think up a cure for it once.

Whatever…

This is just a first impression.

But those…

Those are usually bad, at least in my experience.

Or maybe just from my point of view.

I can count on one hand the friends I’ve made that I wasn’t positively terrified to talk to the first time.

I can count on two fingers the ones that didn’t proceed to go and hurt me, really really bad.

But we don’t need to be friends. Just do our work.

As long as I can keep it together that - that much.

This is fine.

But in my head, I see the little dog with the world burning to cinders around him, and that’s so stupid I could scream.

It’s so me.

I don’t even know how I make it home, expecting every moment to wake up to find the car crashed into a tree. My nose broken. The world overturned. Seeing red. 

Or white.

I don’t even lock the car as I leave it in the driveway and hurry into the house to change for my date.

Slipping on the pink dress, I fumble with the sash like I used to fumble with my shoelaces.

Take your time Licia. Why the rush? My papi would say. You’re always hurry hurry hurry.

I always used to want to be in a thousand places at once. Birthday parties - sleepovers - library programs - leading my mom around like an overactive puppy tugging at the leash.

Used to…but how long ago…?

Now, I just wish I could go to sleep. Could live behind a closed door without anyone trying to tell me that isn’t living.

When did it start? 

Or when did I end?

Rebirth as this ghost with the trembling hands. Fumbling, fumbling.

Messing up everything.

Calm down, Licia. It was just a dream.

But then it wasn’t.

Freeing my hair from the braid and shaking it out as I stare into the mirror, I think, I look deceptively young.

I’m only 28.

That’s not old to anyone but the Gen Zs and grade school babies who call everyone older than them “boomers,” regardless of their age.

But I don’t feel young.

Maybe it’s just because I’ve had so much horror packed into this itty-bitty life. Pack-ratted into the corners and spilling out of this itty-bitty shell.

I’m almost 29. 

That feels like a long time. 

And it doesn’t.

The years went slowly until they were gone.

My time is dilating.

Every Tomorrow is born as a ‘yesterday.’

And sometimes, late at night, I wonder if that’s a bad sign.

A sign it’s almost over.

Maybe the ending is always deceptively close. The older I get the less difference there is between tomorrow and next year.

I burned them all away waiting…

For him. For them. For her.

I run my fingers gently over the places the wrinkles will be the next time I blink, and wonder if I have enough time left in this castle of ice we call Life to make realities of all the things that are still only daydreams.

I want to visit Andrew in Mexico - to go on that long vacation we keep planning, hitting all the islands in the Greater Antilles - to make my own sunset masterpiece. 

To be a mother.

I used to dream…before that abstract noun became a dirty word.

Kat?

I guess I still want to be - if I’m honest.

Be a real one but..

Don’t.

The memory strikes a tender chord and it snaps - it ignites like a match.

If you ever have kids what would you name them?

What the heck? 

It’s just a question. Don’t act all weird. It’s not like I asked you to marry me.

Aishhh…

I smear my mascara as the trembling sets in again.

There’s too much in my head these days. Too much I’d give anything to undo. The embarrassment is insufferable.

Why remember these things now?

That’s another bad sign.

Time.

We live in a circle.

There’s a line about that and a song from some children’s movie I watched eons ago.

Neither one seems poignant enough for this unique breed of anxiety.

I conceive the behemoth in some deep recess of my psyche and it looms over me as I lean into the cold stream bleeding from the sink.

I remember watching Tia Maria get ready for work in the mornings. We only had one bathroom in the apartment and I’d sit on the toilet seat brushing my teeth as she painted her face, and complained that she was so old and ugly. I disagreed. There wasn’t an inch that wasn’t beautiful on that round, cocoa face - not a gray hair amongst the long lashes...

I wonder if age is one of those things you see more clearly when you’re living in it.

When you used to feel lighter, but Life adds layers of weight, before it ever starts adding rings to your face -

Then again, I can’t remember how it ever felt to be bubbly - free and happy - though I know there must have been a time. 

Back when me and Andrew were still having our double birthday parties at Mickey Dees.

When I had to keep him out of Daddy’s workshop so he didn’t lose a finger on any of the saws.

Before our parents started to fight.

Maybe Life aged me faster. 

It had to.

*

Kattar’s dressed like he’s about to model for a magazine when I show up, watching my “grand entrance” with a subtle smile that catches me off guard.

“You got all dressed up just for a date with me?” I laugh, a little bit uncomfortably, swinging the door shut with one foot.

“Yes,” he says, unpretentiously, and that just makes me more self-conscious.

“You’re wearing the pink dress I see,” he smirks, and this time there’s just a twinge of the playful, rougeish light, behind the dark eyes.

“It happens to be the only nice dress I own, thanks to my impossibly poor taste…” I say awkwardly, trying not to blush.

“Uh-huh…” he smiles slowly, with a patronizing air that just makes me burn redder.

I glance around the room to try to distract myself from the embarrassment, too flustered to trust myself to look him in the eye.

I catch sight of his medical bag on the sofa.

 “Did you want your…?” I trail off, nodding my head toward the black satchel.

There’s a fraction of a pause - no more than a breath, but I feel it, a milli-moment before he shrugs with affected lightness as if to say, “Whatever.”

I turn to grab the bag but am stopped short by a sudden movement out of the corner of my eye. Before I can comprehend exactly what I saw, I’m being pulled back to my starting point by the stupid pink sash.

I stumble backward, but it doesn’t come untied this time.

“For goodness sake!” I stammer, flushing red up to the roots of my hair.

“Oh look, 2nd time’s the charm.”

Somehow his easy-going manner is even more embarrassing than the antics themself. 

“Do you need something? Like a chew toy maybe?” I ask as I adjust the twisted sash crossly.

“I was pulling for service.”

I just scowl.

But he looks at me with a stellar impression of an angel-baby smile, batting his eyes, as he says sweetly, “Could you grab me my phone off my nightstand, please?”

Muttering under my breath I betake myself to the next room.

“...Little creep…I’m going to drive you out to the middle of nowhere and leave you there…”

The bedroom door swings open at the gentlest prodding, unlike mine, which always sticks.

How he manages to weave perfection into even the littlest parts of his life is beyond me.

Must be his mother's blood.

I…

I just shake my head, making my way through the almost darkness rather than turning on a light. Even with the blinds drawn, I can see that the room is still pristine. Pillows fluffed in crisp cases - his blankets look like he ironed them, honestly. 

Is it possible to inherit faultlessness?

If it is then I’m jealous.

Maybe.

The item in question is where he said it was this time. I retrieve the cell gingerly from the nightstand, trying not to wake up the screen as I do so and accidentally kick my right foot against a neat stack of boxes.

I stare blankly at the shadow until it comes into focus. 

Letters? Packages? Why would he have so much unopened…?

I return to the living room as nonchalantly as possible, brushing my hair back from my neck as I hand him the phone, asking casually, “What’s with all the boxes in your room?” 

“B…boxes…” He falters like he’s pretending to be surprised that there would be a mountain of mail a mile high by his bedside, but then he checks himself, letting free a sigh that was buried somewhere impossibly deep.

“It’s…‘get well soon’ stuff.”

Just breathe-

“My fans just found out.”