The Bodyguard (8)

Oh, and I slept every night on the floor of my closet.

Those four weeks took a thousand years. And in all that time, I can only remember one truly good thing that happened.

Going through my mother’s jewelry box, I found something I thought was lost—something that would have seemed like junk to anybody else. Buried under a tangled necklace, I found a little silver beaded safety pin that I’d made at school on my eighth birthday.

The colors were just like I remembered: red, orange, yellow, pale green, baby blue, violet, white.

Beaded friendship pins had been big at school that year—we all made them and pinned them to our shoelaces—and so on the day our teacher brought in pins and beads, we were ecstatic. She let us spend recess making them, and I’d saved my favorite to give to my mom. I loved the idea of surprising her on a day she’d be giving me presents with a present of my own for her. But I never got to give it to her in the end.

Somehow, before the next morning, it was gone.

In the wake of that day, I’d looked for it for weeks. Checking and double-checking the floor of my closet, the pockets of my backpack, under the hallway rug. It had been one of those long, unsolved mysteries in my life—a question I’d carried for so long: How had I lost something so important?

But fast-forward twenty years and there it was, safely stashed in my mom’s jewelry box, waiting for me like a long-hidden answer. Like she’d been keeping it safe for me the whole time.

Like maybe I’d underestimated her a little bit.

And myself, too.

Right then and there, I’d looked through her necklaces to find a sturdy gold chain, then I’d clipped the beaded pin to it like a pendant.

And then I wore it. Every day after that. Like a talisman. I even slept in it.

I found myself touching it all the time, spinning the smooth beads under my fingertips to feel their cheery little rattle. Something about it was comforting. It made me feel like maybe things were never quite as lost as they seemed.

On the morning when Robby and Taylor were coming back from Madrid—a morning when we were having a meeting in the conference room where Glenn had promised to give me a new assignment, at last—I touched that pin so much I wondered if I might wear it out.

The point was: I was about to get an assignment. I was about to escape. It didn’t matter where I was going. Even just the idea of leaving turned my heart into a rippling field of relief.

Now I would disappear from here.

And then, for the first time in so long, I would feel okay.

All I had to do was survive seeing Robby again.

We’re very dismissive, as a culture, about heartbreak. We talk about it like it’s funny, or silly, or cute. As if it can be cured by a pint of H?agen-Dazs and a set of flannel pajamas.

But of course, a breakup is a type of grief. It’s the death of not just any relationship—but the most important one in your life.

There’s nothing cute about it.

“Dumped” is also a word that falls short of its true meaning. It sounds so quick—like a moment in time. But getting dumped lasts forever. Because a person who loved you decided not to love you anymore.

Does that ever really go away?

As I waited at the table in the conference room, the first person there by a mile, that’s what hit me: Robby leaving had felt like a confirmation of my worst, deepest, most unacknowledged fear.

Maybe I just wasn’t lovable.

I mean, yes—I was a good person. I had many fine qualities. I was competent, and I had a strong moral compass … and let’s add: I was a pretty great cook. But how does anybody just ever assume they’d be somebody else’s first choice? Was I better than all the other great people in the world? Was I special enough to be the one somebody picked over everybody else?

Not for Robby, I guess.

I didn’t want to see him again. Or think about it. Or have a self-esteem crisis.

I just wanted to get the hell out of Texas.



* * *



THE FIRST PERSON to arrive in the conference room was Taylor. My best friend. Freshly back from Madrid with my ex. Though that wasn’t her fault.

Her hair was shorter—a little European bob—and tucked behind her ears, and she was wearing mascara, which was new, and made her green eyes pop. I squealed at the sight of her and took off running, catapulting myself into her arms.

“You’re back!” I said, hugging tight around her neck.

She hugged me back.

“I killed all your houseplants,” I said, “but that’s the price you pay for leaving.”

“You killed my plants?”

“Didn’t you see the corpses?”

“On purpose?”

“By accident,” I said. “A combination of neglect and overattention.”

“That does sound lethal.”

Taylor gave me that big smile she’s famous for.

We’d talked on the phone much more this time than we usually would on assignment. Mostly because I kept crying and calling her.

She was good about it, she really was. She let me process and vent and agonize to my heart’s content—even when I kept waking her up.

Seeing her now, I realized how long it had been since I’d asked her about her.

“How was the trip?” I asked.

“Fine,” she said.