Page 101 of What It's Like in Words
“Yesterday was a mistake. I asked you about Steph and you manipulated me and that’s what you always do when things don’t go your way.”
“I didn’t manipulate you.”
“You’re doing it right now! You’re saying that you lied because you didn’t want me to make a big deal about it. You’re trying to back me into a corner, so then when I react, you can say: ‘See, that’s what I was afraid of!’ We both know what you’re doing. I don’t want to hear your excuses. I just want you to leave.”
His face changes, and he leans back in his chair. “You only want me to leave because you know what’s going to happen if I stay.”
“You speak like we’re inevitable.”
“We keep ending up together,” he replies with a slanted smile.
“That doesn’t mean what you think it does.”
Shifting forward, he clasps his hands. “You can’t just turn off your feelings, Enola.”
I move back on my chair. “No, but I can change my actions.”
“You’re just angry because of Steph,” he says, shaking his head.
I stand and move into the living room. “Of course I’m angry about Steph! It makes me feel sick thinking about you together! You’ve lied to me countless times about her and—”
He turns in his chair to face me. “No, I didn’t lie! Not really. Not when it counted. It’s just complicated between her and me sometimes.”
I hate hearing that.It’s complicated between me and you.
Out the balcony window, red and green lights zip up and down the Shard like shooting stars. Or shooting pains.
“I know that you feel something for me, Enola.”
I turn back, hands wide. “Yes, of course I do. I love you.” This is only the second time that I’ve articulated it. The words feel powerful. “But it doesn’t matter what I feel because it’s not what I want.”
“And what about whatIwant?”
“I’ve been compensating for whatyouwant for two years. You don’t love me.”
“That’s not true,” he says.
I wipe a layer of dust off the orange spines on the bookshelf.
“It’snot,” he repeats emphatically. “Look at me, Enola.”
The turquoise Vonnegut is still in the wrong place. I move it back to where it should be.
“Look at me,” he says again, and so I do. He is resting his elbows on his knees, and his eyebrows are forcefully raised. “Enola, I”—my heart flips the way it did that night outside the beach house—“I do love you.” But after he says the words I have waited to hear for two years, he swallows and puts his fist to his mouth, grimacing in a way that implies it was last night’s alcohol he just regurgitated.
I turn back to the books.
“Did you hear me?” he says, voice croakier from the stomach acid.
It’s strange, but I always assumed it would feel like a victory when he said those words to me, like his love was a trophy I could win by running faster than everyone else. But now that he has said them, they sound unnatural, and I’m angry that he would be so reckless with my heart that he would fight to change my feelings knowing that his own might have changed by morning.
“You don’t love me,” I say.
He slams his hand on the table. “Howdareyou tell me how I feel?That’syour problem, Enola. You always assume that you know how I feel. Fuck me. You’re acting like you’re perfect. Well, let me tell you, you’re not fucking perfect. You’re selfish. Self-obsessed. Self-centered.”
I face him and shout: “All of those mean the same thing.”
“Yes, well, that’s how fucking self-absorbed you are.”
