Yerba buena

by Nina LaCour

How easy it was to forget the rest when they were small and safe in the woods.

She had left home and she felt she might leave her own body, too, whatever that would mean. Surely, by the time they reached Los Angeles, she would feel like someone new.

She drove to Yerba Buena feeling as though she were visiting an old friend who loved her. Time had passed and they hadn’t called each other as much as they should have, but they still knew each other well.

“I think it’s … like, when you’re a passing person, other people believe what they want to about you. Whatever is easier or better for them. They see what they want to, in you. So if you don’t really know what you want—or if you know what you want, but it’s bad for you—you can veer off in the wrong direction.”

She wanted a physical pain to match the grief. Wanted to be marked, changed forever.

She made a cherry shrub, sampled mezcals to find the right degree of smoke. She chose an amaro, and Green Chartreuse.

I am craving Sara’s cocktails

And yet it frightened her when it was over. No emptiness this time. It frightened her, how open her heart was.

But no, she thought. It didn’t need to be over. It was just the two of them now—herself and the house—as night fell and the breeze picked up, knocking the screen door around, rustling the magnolia leaves. There was an intimacy to the moment, not a loneliness. “Talk to me,” she said.

So this was how it felt—to be dealt a blow, to pause, to keep going in spite of it. Not to start over but to continue.

“Nearly everything. But that’s the way it goes. I lost nearly everything, and then I built something better.”

She recognized a love letter when she saw one.