Page 91 of In The Weeds
That was before, I want to tell him.Before I stood in your kitchen and watched you make pancakes. Before I sat on your back porch and listened to you talk about the stars. Before you trusted me with all of your smiles. Before you let me know you.
Before I fell in love with you.
“You’ll leave again,” he adds as an afterthought, his shoulders curling in. He looks exhausted, completely spent. Dark circles under his eyes and a strain in the lines of his body that I haven’t seen since that night at the bar, when everything was too loud around him.
“You’re gonna keep leaving, Evie.” His face twists in naked longing.”Why wouldn’t you?”
Oh, I think quietly.There it is.
“Then ask me to stay.” The words are out of my mouth before I can consider them. They hold in the space between us, impatient. Pleading.
His eyes meet mine and he shakes his head once.
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
He swallows hard, a catch in the strong line of his throat. He stares at me for a long time. So long, I think he won’t answer the question.
“I dreamt about you,” he says, his voice rough. He looks embarrassed to say such a lovely thing. “After those two night in Maine, I dreamt about you all of the time. When we ran into each other again that night on the street, I thought I had fallen asleep for a second. You were so beautiful.” He swallows again and looks down at his boots, gathering himself. He looks back at me, eyes bright. “Having you here has felt like that. A dream. But I think we both know it has to end, yeah? You’ve got a great big life outside this tiny town and that’s okay. That’s the best thing, really. You glow like—you glow like the fucking sun and you shouldn’t bottle that up here. You shouldn’t waste your light. I thought I could be happy with whatever pieces of you I got. I thought it would be enough. But then you left and I realized it—it won’t be. You’ll take a piece of me every time you go until I’ve got nothing left. I can’t keep standing here and watching you walk away from me.”
But I’ll bring your pieces back, I want to say.I’ll bring them back and give you some of mine, too.
Silence rings between us, a faint buzzing in my ears.
“How long have you been thinking about this?”
He looks so tired, propped up against the table. He drags his palm over his face. “What?”
“How long have you been expecting me to leave? After our date?” I swallow hard and will the hum in my blood to settle. “After we had sex?” He’s too still, over by the windows, the shadows twisting around his ankles and cloaking him in darkness. “You really thought I’d just leave, without a word? You think I could do that?”
He shrugs and averts his eyes to the floor. “I don’t know what you want me to say here, Evie.” He rubs his palm against the back of his neck. “I’m just—I’m just trying to hold onto what I can. Do you understand?”
I shake my head, a pressure behind my eyes. “I don’t understand.”
His hands fall limply by his sides. “I don’t know a better way to explain it to you.”
I take a step closer. “If I had waited for you to get back … if you saw my note … would you have believed me when I told you I was coming back?”
He doesn’t say a word. He sighs and closes his eyes tight and then meets my gaze. I see the answer in the lines of his face. In the sad, sad blue-green of his eyes.
“Why can’t you believe me?” I ask, my voice cracking at the edges “I want to be here.”
With you. With everyone else. Where I can breathe and rest and think. Where I can be whoever I want to be.
His mouth opens and closes. I wait for him to say something, anything. But he doesn’t. He snaps his mouth shut and looks at a spot over my shoulder.
“That’s it then?”
He glances at the empty pot on the table, the seed packets next to it. Everywhere, it seems, except for me. He sighs and scrubs his hand against the back of his head. A small shrug.
“You can—you can stay as long as you want. You’re always welcome here. I just think—I think maybe we should go back to the way things were before. I complicated it and I’m sorry about that.”
Like it would be that simple to untangle all the feelings in my chest. Like I could sit down in the seat next to him on that porch and not love him with all of my heart.
“You’re sorry.”
I don’t bother phrasing it as a question. He’s sorry for how he complicated things. My chest cracks right open. He hesitates, and then, “Yes.”
