The Vanishing Year by Kate Moretti Page B

here. I will not be stagnant my whole life. You can’t keep me in this marble box of an apartment.” I speak slowly and clearly. I smart at his words, the woman who left you, but I won’t tell him that.
    We stand off facing each other, both of us in identical poses, his hands on his hips, for several minutes. His nostrils flare. The pizza is cloying, greasy and sickening.
    â€œI just want to be enough for you, Zoe. This is my biggest fear—that I’m not.” He drops his arms to his sides and turns his back to me. I cross the room and touch his bare back. His skin feels cold.
    â€œYou’re enough for me.” I touch my nose to his spine and inhale.
    â€œI’m not. I won’t be. You’ll leave. I’ll be alone.”
    â€œThat’s crazy.” I wrap my arms around his waist. “I won’t leave you simply because I find her. That’s crazy. I don’t even know if she’ll want to know me.”
    â€œSo this is Lydia, this is her idea. You’ve started mentioning Lydia and Carolyn at the same time. We’ve spent the last year in this world. It’s different social circles, Zo. She’ll drag you backward into her scene again.”
    â€œWhat? I have no mind of my own?” I pull him closer. “I love you.”
    He pats my hand, then pulls out of my embrace. He doesn’t turn to look at me and instead sighs. “Now. You love me now.”
    â€œHenry, love isn’t conditional on growth. If I make a new friend or find my birth mother, it doesn’t mean I’ll move on or outgrow you.”
    â€œYou’re an exotic bird, Zoe. You don’t see that.”
    â€œThis is crazy, Henry. I’ll love you no matter what.”
    â€œI’m not ready, Zoe. I’m not ready for us to reach back into our pasts. We’ve been living in this bubble, living in the present. I’ve loved it. I spent the whole year before I met you completely living in the past. I can’t look back. Not yet. Can you see that? Can you give me time?”
    â€œTime.” I repeat. The word seems senseless.
    â€œYes. Time. Let me figure it out. Then maybe I’ll even help you. We can do it together. But I just need to be ready. There’s a lot you don’t know about me. I know that and it’s my fault. I’ve kept myself from you, parts that I haven’t been ready to access. It hasn’t been fair, but . . .” he shrugs. “It is what it is.”
    â€œOkay.” I nod slowly. I don’t really understand but I know that real love is about sacrifice, understanding, giving when you just want to take. “I guess I can give you time.” Even though I have no idea what that means.
    He pulls me into a fierce hug, his arms around me like a vise. I can’t be sure, but I think I feel tears on my hair. “I won’t let you go. Not again.”

CHAPTER 7
    FEBRUARY 2013, NEW YORK CITY
    â€œYou have a date?” In my hands I clutched a fistful of wilting anthurium, with their veined, leathery leaf-like petals, a masculine flower. Phallic, really, the stamen popping out like a penis.
    â€œIt’s a corporate banquet.” Lydia’s eyes plead. “It’s a big date. You’ll be fine.”
    â€œElisa hates me. She’s going to hate this,” I grumble, pouting, smoothing out the last of the bouquets. Elisa criticizes the way I change water buckets. I picture her smooth blonde-gray ponytail swinging as she shakes her head, her lined mouth bowed down, as she ticks off on slender fingers all the things I should have done differently in her clipped, efficient accent. Elisa is five feet tall and sixty years old and my hands shake at the thought.
    Javi waits in the truck, honks twice impatiently.
    â€œThat’s why you’re not going to tell her.” Lydia kisses my cheek and pats my head. Like I’m a dog. “You were going to go with me anyway. Now you’re