HATELOVE

2

Things had been amazing for us ever since we'd gotten past Sadie's brief moment of crazy insecurity. Thats not to say she didn't still have moments of doubt, but she was beyond wanting to break up over it. I was in Toronto for five weeks straight with only a few overnight trips to New York, so we were able to spend lots of time together. She had school and I was writing music, but otherwise we were focused on each other.

I'd convinced her to quit her job at the paint bar, and I put her on my payroll as a caretaker for my condo. Obviously this was a bullshit position that I created so that she'd have more time for me. She stayed at my place while I was away, and I paid her much more than she made at that job she hated. Lil pretty much lived with Owen, so it was nice for Sadie to stay at the condo instead of her tiny empty apartment. She'd invited Kyrie over a few times so that she had company when I was gone. I laughed at the thought of the place that was once my bachelor pad, and home of many hook-ups, was now being used for slumber parties.

We'd had one stressor in our relationship, besides her insecurities. The whole decision about where she would apply to jobs had been a hard one. She'd planned to start applying to engineering firms in January but kept putting it off. I tried not to put any pressure on her to stay in Toronto, because that would just add more stress to her life. Something happened that helped her make up her mind about that, though.

Before I left for Malibu in mid-February, we'd spent the day with my family in Pickering. They adored Sadie, probably because they recognized how good she was for me. When we were at my parents' home, she was completely at ease with them. I loved how she jumped in to help with meals or the dishes. She made a point to spend some time focused on just Aaliyah. They'd go up to my sister's room to talk behind her closed door. I'd ask later what they'd been whispering about, but she always said it was between them. I suspected she was giving Aaliyah sisterly advice about things like boys. I really didn't need to know that stuff, since it freaked me out, but I loved that Sadie was able to give the sisterly help that I couldn't.

So after the visit in February, we were driving back to the city around 9:00. Sadie had chosen a Lenny Kravitz playlist off her phone, and we were holding hands as we made our way down the highway on that moonless winter night.

It had snowed the day before and then melted a bit that day, which often happened in Canada during the winter. The temp dropped after sundown so there were patches of black ice where the thawed snow had refrozen.

What happened next played out in mere moments, but it felt like it happened in slow motion. The car next to me hit a slick spot and slid towards my Jeep. I reflexively jerked the wheel to the right and also hit ice. In an instant, we were doing a 360 on the highway. My car came to a stop on the side of the road, just grazing the guardrail. Sadie and I sat there in stunned silence as we both realized how much worse that could have been. What if one of the 18 wheelers that was whizzing by us right now had plowed into us as we were spinning?

"Oh god, I'm so sorry," Sadie whispered.

"What? Why are you sorry?" I asked, totally confused.

"You were holding my hand. If you'd had both of yours on the wheel, maybe you wouldn't have spun out."

I grabbed her hand and squeezed it. "I agree that it was dumb to drive with one hand knowing there was ice, but how is that your fault?"

"If I wasn't in the car, you would've had your hands on the steering wheel."

"If you weren't in the car, I might have been messing with my phone to pick some music, since you wouldn't be here to do that.I could have ended up mangled and dead in this Jeep."

"Don't say that!" she said anxiously. "I can't stand the thought of that."

I looked at her and could see how upset this made her.