Infinite Us(87)

There were dozens of pictures, some I'd flipped through the first night I got it, smiling at all those images of great-grandpa and great-grandma Nicola when they were young. He was so handsome, his eyes bright even in the dull black and white photo. She'd never smiled as widely as him or laughed as much, but then her childhood and what her family had endured during the war was something not easily forgotten.

Among those pictures were others I hadn't had a chance to go through and letters, mostly from my great-grandmother's cousins in Poland after the war. There were pieces of jewelry, some that Gramps had made, others that looked store bought. At the bottom of the box was a small journal. Flipping through the pages, I caught sight of the dates, some going back as early as the late thirties, all in my great-grandfather's tight, precise handwriting.

I debated looking through it, despite all the noise around me and the activity of moving. The movers were nearly done and another small voice in my head told me to toss the box in the van, send it and the memories away to storage while I tried to run from them, from the dreams and from Nash. I stood up and a rush of emotion came over me, as I caught a glimpse of another picture, this one clear, the faces in it laughing. I knew one face. Had seen it before, months before when I moved to Brooklyn. He'd given me the key to the apartment. He'd swore I looked just like my mother …

"What are you doing?"

Nash's voice pulled me out of my shock and I blinked, squeezed my eyes tight to refocus as he moved closer. A swift breeze picked up and the smell of Nash's cologne whipped around me like a snake, firing up sensation and heat and all the things I was trying to avoid with this move.

"What do you want?" I asked him, closing Gramp's box and shoving it under the passenger seat of my car. I would shoot for aloof, impassive, I told myself. I would pretend that I wasn't affected by the heat from his body as he came up next to me or how the low, deep lull of his voice when he whispered my name didn't make my heart skip a beat or my palms sweaty.



       
         
       
        

"Willow." It was a low, sweet sound, like music. It remind me of the piercing moment in a chord change, when the saxaphone player took a breath, the way your body goes still, how anticipation keys up your senses until you arent' sure how wise it would be to wait for the next note.

"Nash, I need you to..."

"What do you need? Tell me. I'm...I'm sorry for leaving."

"Leaving?" I asked, stepping out from the car to slam the door shut. I fished my keys from my pocket and turned on him, not caring that the sidewalk was thick with people moving by us, that the movers had slowed to watch the exchange. There was a construction crew a few feet behind my car and the heavy scent of tar grew thicker. "That's why you're sorry? Because you got freaked out and left me out on the roof?"

"No. I don't mean … "

I hadn't realized just how much anger I was holding inside, but now that I let some of it loose, the rest couldn't be held back. "Not that you made me feel like I was insane for … " one of the movers took out a cigarette and lit it, his attention on us and not his co-workers who awkwardly moved a large chest of drawers toward the van. "You made me think I was insane for … thinking what I think. For believing what I believe in. You called me insane, you called me a witch, you pretty much told me I was fucked any way you look at it."

"I'm sorry," he said, holding up his hands. For a second I thought he might reach out, try to touch me and I prepared myself for it, ready to push him back. "I don't think you're insane. I don't. I just think there is a lot of … " Nash looked around the sidewalk, nodding me away from the car to get us out of earshot of the nosey mover. "There's a lot of things that can't be explained."

"They can," I said, a little louder, my temper returning with the frown he gave me and the stubborn way he looked away. "You just happen to call the explanations crap." A few small, indiscernible words came out of his mouth, but Nash didn't repeat them loud enough for me to hear.

"Can we go upstairs?" He nodded toward the building, even took a step toward it before I shook my head. "Why not?"

"I don't live here anymore." It was true. I'd sent Mom's university friend, Mr. Lewis my key that morning. The Super would find another tenant and I'd be gone soon, gone for good.

"Willow. Please. I don't like this … " he waved between us, finally scrubbing his face when I folded my arms over my chest. "Where are you going? How long … "