Once Ghosted, Twice Shy

by Alyssa Cole

  “Wait. Hold up, okay? I’m going to call her lawyer. I don’t think she can get out tonight, but maybe something can be done.” Fab was trying to do what needed to be done, to stay calm, but panic was welling up behind the shock. “In the meantime, I’ll rent a car tomorrow to take Angela to see Lise. She has debate tonight.”

  Angela was still at school, where she couldn’t check her cell phone. She likely didn’t know yet.

  Oh, fuck.

  “She will come home to an empty apartment,” Maman said gravely, and Fab’s stomach flipped. “No one to make her dinner or breakfast. No one to make sure she’s safe. She will need someone in the weeks and months to come. She will need family.”

  “But Lise’s lawyer—”

  “Have you watched the news?” her mother cut in, a note of bitterness in a voice that was usually tinged with sweetness—the rind of an orange instead of the pulp.

  Fab’s hands were shaking, and she wondered if her mother could hear the clacking of her cell phone against the spun metal teardrop earrings she’d made. “Was there something about Lise?”

  “No. There was nothing because no one cares about people like Lise. They do not care about people like us except to wish we were gone.”

  Fab knew the anger in her mother’s voice wasn’t directed at her. It was frustration. Maman had half-raised Tati Lise herself, and now had to wait helplessly as her sister’s fate was decided by a system that had once been a beacon of hope but seemed to grow crueler by the day.

  “Maman, I’m sorry.”

  “I know you are sorry, but you know—” Her mother inhaled sharply, then again, and impotent fear froze every muscle in Fab’s body. Maman was crying. Maman had never cried before, not where Fab could hear it. Her own eyes went hot with tears.

  “You know what I wanted to talk about with you, I think,” Maman continued. “Angela is not an adult. She needs someone to take care of her, and if your father and I do that, she will have to move to Florida, away from everything she knows, everything Lise has built for her. Lise worked so hard to get her into that silly, expensive school, and if she comes here she loses that. She loses even the ability to visit her mother in that damn jail. You are the only one who can take care of her right now.”

  Her mother was explaining this slowly, but not unkindly. She knew what she was asking of her daughter—the same had been asked of her when she was much younger than Fab. While her parents had worked, she’d cared for her siblings. She knew the sacrifice that went with it, but she, like Fab, knew that they had no alternatives that wouldn’t hurt a young girl who was already about to have her life turned upside down.

  Fab sucked in a breath, and then said what needed to be said. “Don’t worry. If Lise isn’t released, I can . . . I can be Angela’s guardian.”

  How did this even work? Would she even be allowed to take in her cousin?

  God, if she was, what was she supposed to do with a teenager? The longest she’d spent with Angela in a supervisory role as opposed to ‘fun older cousin’ had been a weekend, when Lise had gone on a trip with the members of her church.

  Panic welled up in her. She loved Angela, loved that girl like hell, but she wasn’t ready for this.

  She had to be.

  “I got this, Maman. It’ll be okay,” she said. Then she took a deep breath and added one of the few creole phrases she could pronounce perfectly. “Si bondye vle.”

  She got off the phone and cried. Then she called Lise’s lawyer, who was very nice but clearly overwhelmed, since Lise was one of countless people needing the woman’s services.

  Then she cried some more.

  She carefully applied her makeup, adding extra concealer to hide the puffiness beneath her eyes, and then selected the red cold-shoulder top dress from her bed, pairing it with black stilettoes. She topped it off with a black fascinator with a small veil that shaded her left eye. She supposed it was a good last date outfit—something you’d wear to a celebratory funeral.

  She would go sit next to Likotsi at this fancy event for a few precious moments, hold her hand, and take in that beautiful smile. She would make small talk about the people around them, and try not to think of the things they might have done if they’d lived in the same place. She would cry again, and ruin her makeup, because she was losing her aunt, who she loved, and she would lose Likotsi, who’d wanted to fall a little bit in love with Fabiola but whom Fab had fallen for completely.

  She dropped down onto her bed and let the tears come again—they hadn’t stopped, really, since she’d gotten off the phone with Maman. The tears for Tati Lise. The tears for Angela, who would be crushed when she realized that Lise wasn’t coming home tonight, tomorrow—might never come home again because someone had decided her home was an island where everyone she knew was gone. The tears for her own dreams that would be deferred because, when she took in Angela as her ward, she’d have to provide for her in a way that a new business owner couldn’t.

  And, though it felt selfish, she cried for her own broken heart. She cried for being silly enough to fall fast and hard for someone who’d told her from the start they couldn’t stick around. She cried until it hurt at the thought of having to see Likotsi one more time, knowing she would never see her again.

  She couldn’t be hurt any more than she already was, wouldn’t be able to stand it, and someone had to be waiting for Angela when she got home.

  She picked up her phone, sniffling, and navigated to the dating app with shaking hands.

  Fabiola C: I have to cancel our date. Sorry. Have a nice life.

  Likotsi: Wait. Why? I thought maybe we could talk about . . . where to go from here, I suppose.

  Fabiola C: I can’t do this. You’re leaving, right? It was fun—let’s stop before it’s not.

  Likotsi: I thought you wanted more. Can’t we discuss this?

  Fabiola C: Sorry. No.

  A tear splashed onto the screen, magnifying that No. Fab wiped it away, closing the app with the same swipe. She navigated to the settings on her phone and turned off notifications.

  She had only placed the phone down for a minute before the urge to check the app struck her, so she held down the home key until the app widgets trembled as much as her hands were, and pressed the X on the dating app.

  Delete? All data will be lost.

  Fab tapped Yes. Then she opened her internet search app and typed in “how to take care of a teenager + foster care + nyc” and waited for the results to load.

  Chapter Nine

  Winter

  The walk from the ferry terminal was frigid, with the sun almost entirely set and the wind whipping off the water. The grayness of the sky had deepened, from the early dusk and impending precipitation.

  Fab had been quiet since they’d left the carousel, and Likotsi didn’t try to talk just to fill the silence. She’d made what she wanted known from their first conversation in the train car, and she’d handed over her to-do list. She didn’t think she could offer any more of herself than she had; the day had been fun, but she needed more. She deserved more. She deserved an explanation.

  Fab stopped and leaned on the railway separating them from the river. The sun was setting now, and in the distance Lady Liberty stood holding her torch. Fab seemed to stare toward the statue, scowling, then pushed off of the railing resolutely.

  “It’s brick out here,” Fab said in a flat voice.

  “That means cold,” Likotsi said, trying to make her smile.

  Fab shoved her hands into her coat pockets, and Likotsi felt the ridiculous pain that had lodged in her heart for all these months give a warning pulse. Fab had spent the day pulling her closer and closer, and now she wasn’t even taking her hand. Did this mean that their date was coming to a close?

  Likotsi walked beside Fab silently now, shoulders stiff with worry.

  This whole impulsive day had started because Likotsi had wanted to be rid of her feelings for Fab. When Fab had appeared on the train, she’d told herself it was the goddess h
elping her to find the closure she needed to move on. But as the day had progressed, she hadn’t wanted closure. She’d wanted—needed—the same thing she had from Fabiola the last time they’d met.

  More.

  Sometimes it made sense to lead from behind, and other times you had to take the situation to hand.

  “Fab. I’m a very patient person—”

  “Patient? You set a goal of falling in love with me on the first date,” Fab said, the slightest hint of bittersweet amusement in her tone.

  “You’re right,” Likotsi conceded. “I’m not patient at all, when it comes to important things. And I need to know why. Why?”

  Likotsi hated how her the last word fell from her mouth like a clump of wet snow from a branch, landing gracelessly between them. She wasn’t patient, but she was prideful. She cleared her throat. “What did I do wrong that you would so thoroughly cut me off? I know that you owe me nothing. I know that you have your boundaries. But what I feel for you . . . what I thought you felt for me. Was I so very mistaken? I thought we could overcome the things that might keep us apart. And you shut me out.”

  The icy wind hit the tears that watered Likotsi’s lash line, the cold trying to freeze them as she’d tried to do with her own heart for the past several months.

  “The day I was supposed to meet you at the gala, I found out that my aunt’s annual immigration meeting had gone wrong. I’d told her everything would be fine, but she was scheduled for deportation and sent to a holding facility in New Jersey,” Fab said. They’d almost reached the Freedom Tower, which loomed an icy blue-gray as it reflected the mood of the sky and of the two former lovers who walked in its shadow.

  Likotsi reached out and rested her hand between Fab’s shoulder blades, as close as she could get to Fab’s heart that was still proper and respectful. “That’s . . . it’s unfair,” she said. It was an unfairness she saw too much of as the advisor to a head of state.

  Likotsi was upbeat because it was her personality, but also because if she didn’t, the dark underbelly of her job might drown out her light. That, too, was why she’d needed to repudiate her feelings for Fab once and for all. They’d taken too much of her energy and created too much shadow within her.

  “I’m sorry.” She pressed her hand into Fab’s back a little more as she said the two useless words, because they may have been useless but they were true.

  “She’d lived here for twenty years, and her daughter, Angela, was born here, in Brooklyn. We knew something could happen when she went in for the meeting, but it had always been fine. Until it wasn’t.” Fab took a deep breath, her lungs expanding beneath Likotsi’s palm. “My parents live in Florida. It would’ve been fucked up to make Angela change cities and schools, and give up her friends and everything else she knew, in addition to losing her mom. I’m the only family member here, so I had to become her guardian. I found all of that out as I was getting ready for our date.”

  “Oh.” Likotsi searched her mind for the right words to say, and found none, so said the first thing that leapt onto her tongue. “That must have been rather a big change for you.”

  Fab chuckled ruefully.

  “I love her, even if she gets on my last nerve sometimes. But yes, it was a big change. I don’t regret moving to take care of her, but I had to give up on some dreams for a while. And the day it all became real, I didn’t handle it very well.” Fab stopped and looked at Likotsi. She looked her right in the eyes, not hiding the pain Likotsi had only seen hints of earlier. She couldn’t tell herself this was wishful thinking. Fab cared.

  Likotsi’s own heart began to beat fast, matching the tempo she felt below her palm.

  “You were leaving, anyway. And I was already giving up things that were important to me. I didn’t want anything else to hurt, and knowing that I would have to say goodbye to you? That hurt.”

  Likotsi remembered how cold Fab’s messages had been. How awful it had been seeing that her own increasingly pathetic replies had never been read. How it had felt as if a late-spring storm had blanketed the verdant field of her relationship with Fab with a deep, heavy snow, blotting it out as if it had never existed.

  Fab shook her head. “You have a weird job you can’t quit. I was suddenly in charge of a kid that had just had her world turned upside down. I don’t even have any siblings! I had to learn how to be a guardian, how to be Angela’s rock. I had to make sure she could stay in the fancy private school Tati Lise had worked hard to get her into, and had to look at the tuition for all these colleges she needed to apply to. And even with my parents’ help, I couldn’t do that on a jewelry maker’s salary.”

  A tear streaked down Fab’s cheek.

  “Fabiola.” Likotsi refused to cry, too. She was furious and happy, confused and comforted, but most of all, she was hopeful. Maybe a single flower had survived that spring storm, a miraculous bulb that could bloom from beneath the ice on a cold winter’s afternoon.

  “Besides, it was ridiculous.” Fab’s voice was shaking with emotion. “Who falls in love in, like, three days? Who gets so fucking caught up in someone they barely know?”

  “Me.” The word came out harsh and Likotsi cleared her throat again. “It was one day for me, actually. It was ‘at first sight’ as they say.”

  Fab made a choking sound, eyes shimmering, and nodded. Likotsi understood that Fab could no longer speak, so she took over.

  “After the breakup, I’d hoped that this ridiculous love would leave me as quickly as it had fallen upon me, but it didn’t. It clung like a spiderweb, invisible and impossible to extract myself from. And when I saw you stepping through those train doors this morning, my heart cracked even more because I realized the web was unbreakable. That you could walk into my world, at any time, and that love would still be there, clinging to me. That I’d still want to give you everything.”

  “You can’t give me everything, though,” Fab said, smiling ruefully. “We can give each other today. That’s what I thought when I saw you this morning. I ran into you on the first day I’ve had to myself in months. And you said that this is the first day you’ve had to yourself in months. Can’t really call that a coincidence, can you?”

  “I believe I told you this saying we have in Thesolo: Ingoka makes no mistakes.”

  “I don’t know about all that. But if this isn’t a mistake . . .”

  Fab leaned in and kissed her, a soft and tentative press of lips that reminded Likotsi that she wasn’t the only one with a broken heart. Fab whimpered, the sound one makes when holding their hands before a roaring fire after being lost in the cold.

  Likotsi tilted her head and pressed into the kiss, meeting Fab’s carefulness with her own deep and powerful longing. She wanted there to be no misunderstandings, in this one thing—Likotsi loved Fabiola, even if it was impractical to do so.

  They kissed, buffeted by the cold gusts off the Hudson that seemed intent on knocking them down. The gusts failed; nothing could have pried them apart as they relearned the feel of each other’s mouths and tongues.

  When they finally pulled apart, Likotsi was no longer cold—it might have been spring again for all she knew. Fab was warm in her arms; her heart was warm in her chest.

  All these months, even during their adventures over the course of the day, Likotsi had been able to tell herself that Fab was just amusing herself. That she was just a diversion. But now the facts had been laid bare—they loved each other—and it didn’t change a thing.

  “Do you really think we only have today?” Likotsi asked, anyway.

  Fab took a deep breath. “Do you want more than that? I’m basically a single mom working three jobs. You’re working some kind of fancy assassin or something and don’t live in the same country.”

  Likotsi started walking again, their linked arms ensuring that Fab was at her side. The goal of her reconnaissance mission had been achieved: she now knew that Fab had been miserable for seven months and three weeks, too. She’d thought that perhaps this would make her feel bet
ter.

  It didn’t.

  They walked on in silence, the silence of mouths and hearts bound by a problem that seemingly had no solution. Waves chopped in the river, high tide lapping at the edges of the walkway and splashing through the wrought iron fence posts.

  The strains of music drifted from ahead of them, and laughter. As they made their turn around an area reserved for yachts, Likotsi saw a small brightly lit area, the source of the merriment, and pulled her thoughts from the shadows cast by the immensity of the new problem she faced.

  Things seemed rather dire, but they still had today—and tonight. Wallowing would achieve nothing.

  “Spontaneity alert,” she announced, trying to infuse her voice with cheer. “Ice skating!”

  Fab leaned forward to peer around Likotsi. “Oh, I forgot they’d opened a rink here. That’s cute!”

  “Come dance with me again,” Likotsi said. “I can skate much better than I can dance.”

  “Look, you told me you couldn’t dance and I was ready to risk it all after five minutes on the dance floor. You better not pull out anything crazy on this ice rink because this is a family environment, okay?”

  Fab smiled, her sadness seeming to lift, and Likotsi felt her own unhappiness start to fade. Their problem hadn’t gone away, but she was literally paid to solve problems and bring order to chaos. She’d figure something out.

  “Come on.”

  They rented skates in their respective sizes and checked their shoes in, both of them sharing a worried look when the attendant shoved their shoes into plastic receptacles without the proper deference.

  Fab tied her skates quickly and then knelt before Likotsi, tugging at her skate’s laces to make sure they were secure before wrapping them snugly around Likotsi’s ankle and tying them into securely knotted bows. Likotsi cupped her cheek and Fab looked up. Winked.