Page 30 of Summer Skate

I shrug, but of course I feel it too. None of this feels real. He comes close to me, kisses the side of my head.

He smiles. “What if you need more material?”

“The book is done!”

“What about the sequel?”

I wave him off and laugh and put my hands on his shoulders. “Enjoy the train ride back to the Hamptons.”

“Please. That blade underneath the track might as well be slicing me.”

“Hey. Maybe there will be some cute girl . . . on the train . . . waiting to tell you that she just loves hockey . . . ”

“If she’s not antagonizing me, I’m not interested.”

We hug one last time and I whisper his name into his ear, and he says mine into my hair, and I somehow manage to turn and walk away.

When I open the door to my apartment, everyone is so happy to see me that I almost cry.

My daughter has so much to say, so much to show me, that she doesn’t stop talking for twenty minutes straight.

She won’t allow Alejandro to talk to me at all.

I listen to her while silently reorganizing the apartment.

I adjust the furniture and lamps slightly, put the mail into a neat pile, throw out the junk.

I fluff everybody’s pillows and comforters and wipe down the handle of the fridge.

My daughter tells me that she taught her brother how to say the word trajectory . She says it to him, asks him to repeat. He does, somewhat successfully.

“Wow! That’s a fancy word,” I say, laughing.

I ask her about her new soccer class that she is taking with her friend Ashley.

“I had so much fun! I scored seven goals today!”

“Wow! Was Ashley there? Did she have fun too?”

“She was there, but she didn’t have fun.”

“Why not?”

“She was the goalie.”

Alejandro is busy working on a pitch that will happen first thing in the morning, and I’ve been gone for a million years in parenting time, so I’m in charge of dinner and turn-down service tonight.

I order three types of pasta from an Italian restaurant in our neighborhood. I cut the meatballs into tiny pieces. It all comes back to me like riding a bike.

I give baths. I persuade my daughter, who is hysterical about a tiny cut on her finger, that it’s okay if her Band-Aid falls off in the bath. We have more Band-Aids in the kitchen. They are unicorn themed. All will not be lost.

I shimmy pajamas onto their damp bodies.

I attempt to put on a car show for my son.

I listen to him say, “Not this one” a bunch of times.

I’m not up on which one is the right one, with the right cars, making the right noises.

After I turn off the TV, I sit in his room while he mimics the sound of an ambulance until he passes out.

I go into my daughter’s room. She’s in tears, anticipating scary dreams.

“Scary dreams happen,” I say. “I have them sometimes. But they aren’t real. Monsters aren’t real. Think about it. Have you ever seen a monster? They might stay hidden for a while, but eventually they’d get hungry, and you’d see them in restaurants.

“Think about something else. Think about something happy, and then your dreams will be happy.

“I checked the closet! I checked under the bed! There’s nothing there! Yes, I’ll keep the door open. No, I won’t shut it. I won’t. I won’t. Even after you fall asleep.”

She lets me leave. She calls me in again. She says: “I know I’m really annoying and you want me to go to sleep, but my brain has so many questions and I won’t remember them in the morning.”

“Okay,” I say, sitting on her bed. “Go ahead.”

Once she’s out, I find Alejandro in his office.

“I am awash in stress,” he says, turning from his computer to look up at me.

“Why? You do this all the time!”

He sighs. “I just really want this one. There are three other banks competing, but I really, really want it.”

“Are you almost done? Do you want me to wait for you to go to bed?”

“No,” he says. “Go ahead. I still have a lot to do.”

I finish unpacking. I eat leftover pasta. I read. I watch TV. In the stillness, the dark, the quiet of my bedroom, I allow my thoughts to drift. I replay the train ride, in its entirety, because I can’t help myself.

The waves still hit me here, miles from the ocean, but I feel safe.

I take a shower. When I get out, I stare at myself in the mirror, at my body wrapped in a towel.

I can see my tan lines, the white lines where my bikini top once lay.

They are fading already. I put on a T-shirt and my sexiest black underwear.

I go back into Alejandro’s office and lean against the door frame. He looks me over and smiles.

“Can I help you?” he asks.

“You should take a break. Clear your head. It’ll be good for you. You always say you do a better presentation when we’ve had sex the night before.”

“Yeah. That’s true. But . . . ”

“Come on.” I narrow my eyes at him. “How badly do you want to win?”

After it’s over, Alejandro goes back into his office, and I go into the living room and turn on my computer. The screen is the only thing illuminating the room. I am processing all these conflicting emotions, and yet I feel a sense of calm wash over me as I type.

How do I reconcile all of this? I’m not the same person that I was the last time I sat at this computer. I’ll never be the same again. But I guess maybe that’s exactly how I reconcile it. I was changed by him. And I’ll never be the same again. Who needs the old Jessica? Seriously. Who needs her?

Still, I’m not okay. Not yet, anyway. I’m sad, and a little lonely, in a way that I never was before I left.

It’s hard to get comfortable with people coming and going.

Of course, the going is worse, especially the ones that hit hard, that you can’t imagine you’ll ever go without.

Then again, maybe there is something to being tied to someone, to the consequences if you leave.

Maybe I do believe in marriage after all.

Maybe it’s not nonsense. Maybe it’s just hard.

People always ask me why I don’t wear my wedding ring.

And I always lie. I say it’s too fancy, too tight, or just none of your damn business.

But the truth is: I don’t wear it because I use my hands to write, and when I look down at my hands on the keyboard, clicking away, I want them to be free.

Here, I have a little barrier between myself and the outside world.

Here, I have a space to call my own. So I sit there, in the dark, and I write the ending to my book, and for the moment, I feel free.