It took a while, but she finally got a job at a dance studio. At first just helping in the office, but eventually she was allowed to teach a toddler class. Simple stuff, but she enjoyed it.
Tal would approve of this.
She thought about him a lot, didn't avoid it anymore. He had earned it. Earned all her thoughts, all her memories.
“Have you talked to him, sweetie?” her dad came right out and asked one night.
“Who?” she played dumb.
“You know who.”
“God, isn't this nice? An apartment with a terrace, I never thought I'd have one downtown,” she sighed, leaning back in her lawn chair.
“Baby. We're sitting on a fire escape.”
“Don't ruin it, Dad. It's gonna be bad enough when winter comes.”
They were sitting on a fire escape, looking across an alley at another fire escape. But it was late July and a heat wave was ripping through the city – Misch's new bachelorette pad didn't have air conditioning. So they were trying to catch a breeze, knocking back beers.
“Stop being squirrelly. Have you talked to him?” her dad demanded.
“No, I haven't.”
“But he's called.”
“How would you know that!?”
“Because I've talked to him.”
Misch sat up so fast, she knocked her beer over. She'd been home for almost two months, and she hadn't spoken with Tal at all. He'd called a couple times. She'd gotten a whole new plan, a new number, but of course he found that number. Not a shock. But he only ever left one message. One voicemail, and after that he never called again.
She still hadn't listened to the message.
“What!? When!?” she shouted, turning her chair to face her dad's.
“Oh, he calls every now and then, to check on me. Or really, you. But I haven't talked to him in a while, about two weeks. Usually I hear from him about once a week,” her dad said it all casually, like it was something they talked about all the time.
“What does he say? What do you say? How is he? Why is he calling you!?” she was baffled.
“We talk about a lot of stuff. Ball games and women and work, things like that. I think he calls cause, well, he doesn't have a lot of family he's close to anymore, I think he's the black sheep. And I think talkin' to me makes him feel closer to you,” her dad answered honestly. She got a warm feeling in her chest and she sat back in her chair.
She and Tal had talked a lot, so she knew about him feeling like a black sheep. Knew that he didn't get to see his family very often. It was a little weird, the dude she had an affair with that one time, calling her dad like he was said dude's own dad. But it was nice, too.
“Good. I'm glad,” she sighed.
“He does seem kind of sad,” her dad added on.
“He does?” she asked, keeping her voice soft. She'd worried about that, couldn't stand the idea of him hurting. Of him being sad. Of her being the cause.
“Yeah. Did you ever listen to his voicemail?” her dad questioned. She shook her head and took a swig of his beer.
“Nope.”
“You should, honey. What he did wasn't right, but you didn't do a whole lot right, either. Just hear him out,” her dad suggested. She shook her head.
“Don't you see? That's just it – we both did so much wrong. Both of us. And two wrongs certainly don't make a right,” she pointed out.
“This is love, sweetie pea, not physics. Pull your head out of your ass.”
She laughed at him.
They said goodbye after that and she walked him to the door. His words settled in her brain and she wandered through the apartment, thinking about Tal. She stretched out on her bed and stared at her ceiling. Remembered what it had been like with him, wondered what it would be like if he was there. She smiled. He'd probably be yanking and pulling at her skinny jeans, fighting to get them off her.
“God, why are they so tight!?”
“You love it when I'm in them.”
“Yeah, but not so much when I have to get them off. They're impossible to get over your clown feet.”
“I do not have big feet!”
“Don't worry, Boppo, I love your clown feet.”
She actually laughed out loud, remembering him. Remembering them. Then she remembered what happened after the skinny pants were gone, and she stopped laughing. Smoothed her hand over her stomach.
She hadn't had sex since Tal. Couldn't really imagine having sex with anyone else. She went to work and she went home, that was it. Her heartless, “I'm gonna find a man and fuck his brains out” mentality was all gone; probably because the man she'd found had gone ahead and fucked her brains out.
Her phone started ringing, startling her fingers away from the waist of her pants. She glanced at the screen nervously. Maybe Tal had psychically tuned into the fact that she was about to touch herself while thinking of him and he'd decided to give her a ring-a-ding.
But she was almost more shocked by the name she saw on the screen.
“Lacey!?”
“Can you meet me somewhere?” her friend whispered down the line.
“Of course. Please. Just say where,” Misch scooted off the bed and dashed around, looking for shoes.
“That pub we used to always go to.”
“When?”
“Is right now okay? God, you're probably busy, we don't have to, I can just -,”