Just Remember to Breathe (Thompson Sisters)

nothing else, it will give you some insight into the crazy shit going on in his head.”
    He took out his phone, and I could see him paging through it. “All right,” he said. “What’s your email address?”
    “Um… AlexLovesStrawberries, all one word, at yahoo.com.”
    He grinned. “That’s hilarious. Okay. Just… delete these or something, okay? I shouldn’t be sending them to you at all. But… look. He’s my friend. And it’s killing me seeing him do this to himself.”
    My phone chimed a second later. I checked, and there were the emails from Sherman.
    “Thank you,” I said.
    “You going to be okay?” he asked.
    I shrugged. “What’s okay, when your heart is breaking apart? I’m not going to go kill myself, if that’s what you’re asking. But no. I’m not okay.” For the first time since the talk with Dylan, my voice broke. “I’m not okay at all.”
    There wasn’t anything else to say. I asked him how long he was staying in town.
    “Couple weeks. At least that was the plan. I don’t know if Dylan’s going to want me around, but all my crap’s at his place. We’ll see what happens, okay? I’ll keep you in the loop. If nothing else, I need to try to keep him out of jail.”
    I swallowed, then said, my voice very quiet, “Thank you.”
    We stood, and he gave me an awkward hug, and I began to trudge back to my dorm. I could see Dylan in my mind: lean, exhausted, pale, leaning his head against the wall. Telling me that he had to protect me from him , that he was ending it, because he wasn’t good enough. The heartache and pain in his eyes as he pushed away from me.
    If I had any doubts whether or not he loved me, they were gone. But maybe love just wasn’t enough.
    I didn’t realize it when I started crying. Not until the guy who ran the flower shop at the corner of West 109 th and Broadway saw me. He stared, then pulled a single rose out, and said, “Hey, girl. This is for you. Whatever is making you sad… I hope this makes it better.”
    I stopped, stunned, and took the rose.
    “Thank you,” I said, and started crying harder. “I really appreciate it,” I said, wiping my face and feeling like a complete idiot.
    He literally bowed, then backed into his shop. I walked on, arriving at my dorm five minutes later. But I wasn’t ready to go in and face Kelly, so I kept going, turned right on 103 rd and walked down to Riverside Park. It had been quite a while, but I used to sit on the benches here—sometimes alone, sometimes with Kelly—and watch the river.
    In fact, Kelly and I used to picnic over here on the weekends last year, sometimes with Joel. We hadn’t this year, and not only did I wonder why not, but I also wondered why, when Dylan asked me about my favorite thing to do in New York, I never included our times down here.
    Of course, the answer was simple. I spent most of last year pining for him. Worrying about him, knowing he was in danger every day in Afghanistan. Then, not knowing anything at all, except that his name had failed to appear on the lists of soldiers killed-in-action—which I checked every day—but that he’d disappeared all the same.
    My whole life was wound up in his.
    So I sat by the river, and I thought, and I remembered.
    I remembered the first time we kissed, halfway around the world from here.
    I remembered sitting with him the night before we left Israel. He was wearing his black trench coat, both of us on a wide balcony, facing each other.
    I’d asked him what he wanted. Did we want to commit to each other? Was it over when we returned to our respective homes? Would we stay together, even with the distance? What did he want?
    He couldn’t answer.
    I remember slapping him on the chest, and crying out, “Why won’t you tell me how you feel?”
    He couldn’t. “I don’t know how to answer that,” he said. “I think we just need to see what happens.”
    So we made no plans at all. It was all muddled, no commitment, but we still loved each other. Both of us broke it off with the people we’d been dating back home within days of our return, but even so, it was still just so unclear.
    To think that less than nine months after that, he told his drill sergeant that he intended to marry me. Why the hell couldn’t he tell me that?
    “Hey baby, why you crying?” asked a guy on his bike, stopping in front of me. “You need some comfort?”
    “Oh, fuck off,” I replied.
    “Bitch,” he said, then rode off.
    I took a deep breath. I was