When he returned from California, almost twenty-four hours after upending my world by telling me that he was made to carry my burdens, he texted to let me know he was back and asked if we could meet up. I stared at the message for hours, a dizzying kind of relief flowing through me in riotous waves that had nothing to do with his request to get together and everything to do with me being happy that he had come back. Too happy. Happier than a friend should be. Happier than a woman hellbent on keeping her life disentangled from the life of a man who’d hurt her numerous times should be.
