Worth the Trouble ✓

36 | betty

I BUS TO SUKI'S HOUSE, following the blue line on my phone's Maps journey planner.

My flat, a half-hour from Suki's new place, came pre-furnished. Mom and I checked it out online; it was one of three potential apartments I had in my pocket the day I landed at Seattle-Tacoma. I met the landlord, walked around the place in a video call with Dad, inspecting the taps and vents and carpet the way he requested, and then at the end of the half-hour I signed the lease and brought my luggage inside.

The first night I couldn't sleep. What the fuck am I doing here? I told Suki that I was staying in Washington this summer and hoping to stay longer. She was more than willing to show me around and introduce me to Cassie, but said we're going to have to talk seriously about the Future and Our Plans and I'm just scared shitless.

I know it seems like a very reckless thing to do, borrowing money from my parents, finally cracking open my meager life savings, packing up all my belongings and jumping on a plane to my ex-girlfriend's house. The last thing I want to be now is reckless. I can't put into words how determined I am to be controlled, patient, responsible.

I thank the bus driver when I step off, left on a tree-lined street of bungalows, bathed in sun and silent at two p.m. There's a yellow diamond School Zone sign at the end of the road. Ranscher is a neighborhood north of Seattle's CBD, which itself is a city that seems half given over to the forest.

Outer Carsonville was like that, too, but with different species of trees that turn different colors in the spring, with different hued streetlights that arch with a different slope from their telephone poles. It's the little things, the chill pine air, that make me feel like I've stepped into a new world.

Maps tells me this is it.

This bungalow is built with slats of white wood, topped with a slate gray roof and a TV antenna by a chimney top. The footpath turns right onto the porch, while a downhill slope leads to an open garage, where a wine-colored hatchback sits, and two muddy tracks lead to a grassy patch where another car must park frequently, because of the tire imprints, but is currently absent.

Even though we've coordinated this visit, part of me wishes Suki won't be the one to answer. I've imagined this moment so many times, starting from when I was sixteen and heartbroken and dreaming up heroic ventures to get her back, and ending this morning, drinking instant coffee in my studio with trembling fingers.

I raise my hand and knock. My heart hammers wildly in my chest, thumping so loud that I can barely trace the pauses between each beat.

Would she tell me to go fuck myself? Would she take me by the hand and lead me to Cassie's room? Would she invite me to join her and her roommate for dinner? Would she have me or would she let me down? The what-ifs plagued me ever since I decided to come here, but even they are sweeter than the potential rejection that lies behind that door.

Right now, this is the last time I can dream about what happens when Suki sees my face again.

She opens the door, grinning. "So you didn't get lost." Leaning to the side, she casts a glance down the porch as if she expected me to show up with bags.

"Technology is a marvel," I answer, smiling out of sheer anxiety, showing myself closing the Maps journey planner.

She's hugging me now, smelling exactly like she used to, but fitting differently. Before, she'd used to put her face straight into my heartbeat, but now she hooks her chin on my shoulder, staying friendly and platonic. "I can't believe you're here. Actually, I can't believe you wouldn't accept a ride. Whatever happened to the ego you said you had none of?"

I smell plum shampoo and laundry powder and kind of want to cry. "Did I ever say that?"

"I don't even know," she chuckles, shaking her head in wonder, gesturing me in.