The Regrets by Amy Bonnaffons

Author:Amy Bonnaffons
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Tags: None
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2020-02-03T16:00:00+00:00

That night, we didn’t have sex. Exhausted, he fell asleep as soon as he hit the pillow; I lay awake longer, turning the day’s events over and over in my mind, then finally drifting into a restless, prickly slumber.

The next morning, I woke up feeling the itchy, ominous kind of uneasiness you feel when you know you’ve forgotten to do something but can’t remember what. Thomas was still sleeping, so I decided to go for a walk. I wrote a note: Gone out 11am, back soon, R.

As I left the building, I suddenly realized I was ravenous, which came as a relief: my hunger might give purpose to my wanderings. I could go to Brooklyn Provisions and return with unnecessarily fancy sandwiches, or perhaps a wheel of cheese and some rosemary crackers—something to affirm our bodies’ material instincts, to remind us that there was more than one reason to feel good about being alive.

But as soon as I entered the store, I froze in my tracks: someone had spoken my name.

“Rachel!” said the voice again. I turned in its direction.

It was Samira. She’d been standing right by the door, by the refrigerated case holding designer sodas and kombucha; the only reason I hadn’t recognized her was that her hairstyle was different. Instead of the long corkscrew curls, her hair was now cut short, forming a black cloud around her face. In a rush I remembered the kitchen fire, the singed tips of her hair; I recalled that I hadn’t seen her since then.

“Oh my God!” she cried, embracing me. Samira was known for her ardent, clutchy hugs; they always made me feel both affirmed and vaguely oppressed. Weakly I moved my arms around to her back, gave it a half-hearted pat. I felt my heart pounding against my ribs.

“It’s been forever!” she murmured, releasing me and holding me at arm’s length, searching my face. “Where have you been? Are you going to Claire’s brunch? That’s where I’m heading now—I told her I’d bring a baguette.”

“Oh,” I said, pulling away. “No. I can’t go. I have…another thing.”

She folded her arms. “Jimmy told me you have a new guy.”

“Yeah…well.” I felt myself blushing. “It’s been kind of intense.”

“Intense how? When do your friends get to meet him?”

It would have been easy to make up an excuse, but I found myself speechless. Looking into Samira’s face, its wide-open candor, was doing something to my insides—making them quiver as though I’d burst open from the middle. I froze in place, immobilized by the presence of alien warmth, trying to still my trembling long enough to respond to her question.

Samira’s warmth should not have been alien; it was deeply familiar to me, a specific warmth I’d known since our freshman year of college—since we’d whispered from adjacent sleeping bags on our orientation hike, giggled while squatting together behind a bush. Why was it so threatening now?

She reached out again and laid a hand on my arm. “Are you okay, Rach? You look kind of—”

I didn’t hear the end of her question; I had already whirled around and pushed my way out the door.

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