She finishes her cigarette and tosses the butt out the window. I rest my hand on her knee and force her to look at me. “I loved him more than anyone else in the world, Niki. But he was wrong about a lot of things. Including me.”
Nikita nods and her bottom lip quivers. For an instant, I don’t see the proud, beautiful, grown woman sitting across from me; I see the annoying little child who pulled my hair when I wasn’t paying attention and looked at me like I hung the stars for her with my own two hands.
“Do you think that maybe he wasn’t wrong about either one of us?” she asks softly. “Maybe he was right—back then. But when he died, he took the good parts of us with him.”
“Or maybe we’ve forgotten who we were because he isn’t around anymore to remind us.”
“Well… maybe we can remind each
