Nina looks at me.
“But I knew if you tried to help me at all, you weren’t safe. So I decided it was much better for you to miss me and still be around to miss me…So before Max left and went back home, he’d invited me to come stay with him in Denver for a while if I wanted to. And I didn’t know what else to do with myself, so I got on a bus and I went. I’d written his phone number down on this little cardboard credit card thing that I’d been using as a bookmark but then I ended up forgetting it back at the Mothership, so when I got to Denver I didn’t even know where to go at first and I had no money and I lost my credit card on the bus and had to cancel it. I ended up at this tattoo place and I got this, in honor of Jason.” Nina leans forward and pulls the neck of her tank top down slightly, revealing three tiny numbers inked in black right over her heart. “Jason’s birthday,” Nina says, tapping it. “The way he was on this day, this is how I want to remember him.” Nina lets go of her shirt and takes a deep breath. “And then I ended up staying with the woman who owned the tattoo shop for like a week before I was able to get in touch with Max. After that I worked for her for a while. But it’s like here I was in Denver, pretending my head was screwed on to my body when it was floating a hundred miles up in the sky. I’d wake up every morning and forget where I was and who I was and that Jason wasn’t with me anymore. I just felt like I needed to do something, you know, like to really say good-bye. And I had the snowboard I’d given him with me, because I didn’t know what else to do with it. So I thought about how excited Jason had been to bring the snowboard to Big Sur and give it a trip down the mountain and how he’d always wanted to teach me to snowboard, so I decided that was something I could do for him, give the snowboard just one run, and then go live in San Francisco because he and I had talked about living there together one day, and it seemed like a good place to start over. So finally I made it all the way out to Big Sur. And it was this really perfect gorgeous day and the snow was pure white, just like the snow on the first night I met him. And I stood up at the top of the mountain on Jason’s snowboard looking down at all the trees I was somehow going to have to navigate my way around and I thought, I am insane, this is going to fucking kill me, I mean, I still had never even been on a snowboard before. But I said fuck it, and I just pushed off the top of the mountain, and I know this sounds crazy, but I swear, I could feel Jason with me, holding me up the entire way down. And by the time I reached the bottom, I felt him let me go. And I let him go then, too.” Nina breathes out. She reaches out and puts her hand over her heart. “I went to San Francisco after that. And I’ve just been there ever since.” Nina turns toward me again. “Belly,” she says. She’s staring at me. “Don’t think for even a second that I ever forgot about you or Mom. I thought about you guys every day and every time Max went to check up on you I just asked him to…”
“Wait,” I say. “What? ”
Nina looks at me, like she’s confused by my confusion. And then she nods. “Oh, right, I haven’t told you that part yet,” she shakes her head. “Max, Jason’s best friend and the guy whose number you found, has been checking up on you and Mom. You’ll probably recognize him when you meet him later.”
I stare at her, blinking. “You had someone check up on us?”
“Every month for the last two years.” She nods. “Max was surprised you didn’t recognize his voice on the phone when you called him, actually. He said you’ve talked to him at least ten times.”
I stop and look at Nina while I try and take all this in.
“So you really didn’t forget about us,” I say.
Nina shakes her head. “Of course not, not even for a second. And all along, I was planning on coming back, I just wanted to make sure I waited long enough that it would be okay for everybody. It’s funny, because just a couple weeks ago I started thinking that maybe it was time. And then Max called me and he told me what was going on, that you’d called him. It wasn’t until later that we realized who you were with, but by then it was too late. When I finally heard you talking to Sean in that motel room, that was the most relieved I’d ever been in my entire life, but then when I heard him almost…” Nina looks at me and just exhales deeply. “How did you pull that off?”
“It was open under the desk,” I say. “I kicked it there and then tried to talk as loud as possible so you’d hear us.”
“Well, it worked. As soon as I heard you through the phone telling him that you were going to look for me on Haight Street, I got my friends to go stand and wait for you guys at Golden Gate Park since I figured you’d have to end up there.”