Love Me Broken Read Free Page A

cities with good public transportation. We don’t talk about any of it. That’s how we’ve managed to stay friends. Nicole likes to chatter, but she knows when to keep her mouth shut.
    “Okay,” I say when I’m normal enough to walk. She smiles, excited again at why we’re here. She loops her arm through mine and she skips alongside me as we make our way to a blue mailbox. She hands me the envelope, and I quickly throw the letter into the mouth of the mailbox and let it slam shut.
    I let out a sigh of relief.
    It’s done. There’s no taking it back now. In three months I will leave this town.
    At my side, Nicole says something I don’t hear, and we cross the street the way we came, then walk two blocks to the coffee shop where Nicole works. It’s a small hole in the wall, but it gets steady business. As I choose a table, my body feels light, almost like I’m floating.
    For a minute, it feels like I might not be there at all.

 

    I’m momentarily distracted by these two hot girls crossing the street. It’s not just that they’re attractive, wearing tight sleeveless shirts that show off their fit bodies, but also that one is leading the other by the arm, almost like her friend is blind. Only she’s not. I see this at once as she reaches the other side of the street and leans against a post. She looks like she’s going to puke, and I continue on before I have
that
image stuck in my head.
    This town looks so much like a movie, I feel like I’m walking onto a set. I got off the Greyhound bus about an hour ago and stopped off at this restaurant by the harbor with these great big windows that looked right out onto the ocean.
    Not the ocean. The river. Although it’s so immense it
feels
like the ocean. There are even seagulls, and I heard some seals barking in the distance. I’ll have to check that out. But first I need to find Levi.
    I readjust the duffel bag over my shoulder and pull out a paper from my pocket. It’s got his address on it, along with directions I’ve scribbled down. My handwriting’s so bad though that I’m not sure if I’m going the right way, and, not for the first time, I miss my iPhone and its mapping applications.
    But I left that behind. I picked up a cheap throwaway phone at a gas station back in Sacramento, and it has nothing but an address book in it. I only put in two numbers, neither of which I’ve called, and only one of which I’d be willing to call: Levi’s. And no one has my new number.
    As far as the world is concerned, I don’t exist. And I want it to stay that way. No one can come after you if you don’t exist.
    I continue down the street, taking in this little place called Astoria. I’ve never even been to Oregon before, so this is doubly new. The air smells cleaner here than in California, and the colors look more vibrant. There are trees everywhere. I wonder if the people I’m passing appreciate this place. Probably not. People don’t appreciate things until they’re gone.
    It’s less than a mile of small blocks before I find the street I’m looking for. I turn left and start walking uphill, away from the water, away from the shops and into the residential neighborhoods. The houses are older, and very different from the cookie-cutter tract housing that has taken Southern California by storm over the last few decades. Each house here is an individual, with towering three-story monsters next to dinky little cottages, and I wonder what Levi’s house will be like. He said not to expect much.
    I turn another block and the road gets especially steep. I can feel my lungs working overtime and my bag is feeling heavier and heavier. I imagine myself collapsing with a heart attack, and laugh bitterly at the image. After all this, to have it end that way would be a cosmic joke. A real joke.
    But I’m too young for heart attacks and I make it up another few blocks. I’m near the underside of the huge steel bridge that crosses the water to the Washington side of the