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“I’m trying to say that maybe is a selfish fucking thing to do to someone. Sometimes, just because you love someone, that doesn’t mean you’re supposed to end up together. You learn more from the things that end,” Alex said. “I don’t know what that guy thought or felt. But when you really love someone, you want them to be happy, even if it’s not with you. You deserve better than maybe.”

  “I know.” I swallowed hard against a fresh lump in my throat. “It was a good reason not to try with anyone else, though.”

  “It was a reason. Not a good one.” He looked fierce.

  I held up my hands. “I know. I know. Believe me, I feel like an idiot enough.”

  “You don’t have to give Niall another chance,” Alex continued. “I don’t know the guy. He could be a douchebag. But he apologized to you. Did you believe he meant it?”

  I hesitated but nodded. “Yeah. I do. He apologized and asked me what he could do to make it up to me, yes, but then he said he thought he could never make me happy, because he’s not into the submissive stuff.”

  “That’s what he thinks. What do you think?”

  “I think,” I said quietly, “that I was happy when I was with him. And that I don’t need cuffs and toys to be fulfilled. And I think it doesn’t matter, because you can’t make someone love you if they don’t. I kept thinking that we were going to work things out, that maybe...shit. I’ve spent years clinging to a maybe, Alex. I’m not going to do it again.”

  “So you’re just going to let him go?”

  I hesitated. “Yes. What should I do, chase him? Beg? I don’t do that. A fancy dinner and some flowers isn’t going to make anything up to me. A dozen orgasms won’t.”

  Alex grinned. “Yeah, but at least you’ll have a full stomach and a satisfied—”

  “Don’t!” I held up a hand to fend him off.

  “At least think about it. It’s clearly making you miserable not to talk to him.”

  I nodded, solemn. “I will.”

  “And that other asshole,” Alex added, cracking his knuckles. “Just tell me where to go to kick his ass.”

  “You’re not going to kick anyone’s ass!”

  He grinned. “Maybe not myself. But I got a guy. You want me to get my guy?”

  At that, I laughed. Then some more, until finally it sounded real. Alex left me alone in my office, where I logged in to my IM account and studied my contacts list, and the little rabbit there, for a very long time.

  42

  So you reach this moment where finally, finally, it all shifts, you find a way to open up your hands and let go. When what used to matter stops breaking you so fucking hard; when you accept that empty place in your heart will always be there because only one person can fill it, and you get up anyway because goddamn it, one person who does not love you enough should never make you incapable of moving forward.

  I knew what I should feel and think. I should stop being stupid, holding on to what didn’t serve me. No more maybes. No more clinging to the past. I had a small square of paper I’d printed out from the internet tacked up onto the bulletin board in my kitchen, one of those dumb forwards people pass around on Connex or emails.

  In the end, only three things matter. How much you loved, how gently you lived and how gracefully you let go of that which is not meant for you.

  I’d printed it out because of George. Because of how nongraceful I’d been about letting go of someone who was so clearly not and had never been meant for me. It had been meant as a reminder, the way the ink imbedded in the most tender part of my arm had been meant to remind me.

  But maybe, at last, I thought, it was time to stop remembering. Maybe it was time to forget.

  * * *

  “You sure about this?” The shop where I’d had the first tattoo done was still there, but the artist placing the template over the piece on the inside of my wrist was new. He looked up at me through oddly delicate reading glasses totally incongruous with his shaved head and biker mustache. “This piece is still pretty sweet.”

  He meant the rabbit, of course. I nodded. I’d picked out something from the book and had him customize it—it was not unique, but that was okay. I wanted something I wouldn’t necessarily want to look at every day, something bland. Something I would have to work to remember.

  “Yeah. I’m sure.” I lay back in the chair with my arm on the padded rest and closed my eyes.

  The burn of the needle in my skin transported me. The pain, clean and somehow sweet, and all of it over too soon. I wanted it to go on and on forever, but nothing ever does.

  “Hey,” the guy said gently. “You okay? You’re not going to faint or anything, are you? I have smelling salts.”

  I opened my eyes. “No. I’m okay.”

  I’d been weeping, and swiped at my eyes to clear them. I should’ve been more embarrassed. I looked at the spot on the inside of my arm where once I’d carried all I had left of him. The rabbit was gone, covered over by a red rose.

  “What do you think?” the guy asked.

  “It’s great.” I flexed, waiting for more pain, but it had faded for the moment.

  My mother had thrown a fit about my getting the tattoo in the first place, warning me I would regret it, but I never had. That small rabbit had become as much a part of me as the color of my eyes or curve of my smile.

  And now, it was gone.

  43

  “This is nice,” my mother said and beamed at me from across the table. She’d put on her reading glasses to look at the menu, but she would order the same things she always did.

  Then again, so would I. Breakfast, anytime. I wasn’t even hungry. The toast would be like sawdust in my mouth. I’d eat it anyway so she didn’t scold.

  “So,” my mother said when the silence between us had stretched on too long for her to be comfortable with it, which was about three and a half minutes. “What’s happening with the guy?”

  I gestured to the waitress and held up my iced tea. I’d considered asking for it to be redone, lime instead of lemon, but instead I asked for water. I didn’t have the energy to bother. I looked at my mother. “Nothing is happening with the guy.”

  “He was so nice.”

  I frowned. “I guess that was the problem, huh? Too nice for me.”

  “Bite your tongue,” my mother said. “You deserve a nice man, Elise Genevieve. Don’t you dare try to tell me you don’t.”

  I stared at her, remembering the woman who’d taught me to dance and not the one who judged my art. That was the mother I wanted. It made me sad.

  “I just want to see you happy. Your sister, she won’t ever be happy. It’s my fault. For the longest time I thought she’d be my only one, you know, and until you two came along, she was. I should’ve made it easier for her. She felt replaced. She was high strung as a baby, colicky. The two of you came along and you were such...joys,” my mom said almost in wonder, as though she could hardly believe it. “Such a pleasure, both of you. Never a tantrum between you. I shouldn’t have played favorites.”

  If either my brother or I had ever been my mother’s favorite, that was news to me.

  My mother lifted her chin. “Jill felt displaced. Left out. She was so much older than the two of you. You and Evan had each other. You never seemed to need your sister. It affected her.”

  My memories of Jill had always involved screaming, the taking of toys. When we were older, Jill had bitched and moaned until she got her way, and my mother had almost always sided with her. Out of guilt?

  “Ma, you can’t blame yourself because you had two more kids. Jill’s an adult. She really needs to get her shit together.”

  My mother nodded but looked sad. “She took your father’s leaving a lot harder than you and your brother did.”

  “She was twenty-two years old. She didn’t even live at home!”

  “She was distraught and made bad choices,” my mother continued as though I hadn’t said a word. She leaned forward to lower her voice. “Not like a tattoo or anything like that, tha