Page 114 of Small Town Swoo
At the back of the house, I opened up the sliding glass door and stepped out onto the patio. Today had been hot and sunny, and the red clay tiles were still warm beneath my bare feet. I sat on the couch, propped my heels on the fire pit, and let the sound of her voice fill my head, trying not to think about the hollow ache in my chest.
“That’s great,” I said after she’d finished telling me about her dad’s progress. “So he can have the bypass by the end of the week?”
“Hopefully. The doctors think so.”
“I’m glad.”
Silence.
I opened my mouth to say a hundred different things—Imiss you, I wish you were here, I think I might be in love with you—but nothing came out. I was too afraid I’d make things worse, not better.
“I should go,” she said after a minute.
“Not yet,” I blurted. “Don’t go yet.”
“Dash.”
“I’m sorry.” My eyes closed. “I’m just not used to missing someone like I miss you. And I just fucking saw you this morning.”
“It will get better. It has to.”
“Come see me,” I said impulsively. “I’ll fly you out here.”
“I can’t leave the diner.”
“I hate this, Ari.”
She made a hiccupy noise that made me think she was crying.
“Fuck, I shouldn’t have called.”
“I called you, remember?”
Placing my feet on the ground, I leaned forward, elbows on my knees. “I’m sorry. I’m fucking this up. I just want to know when I’ll see you again.”
“I’m going to be honest—I don’t think visits here and there are going to work, Dash. I’ll start hoping for things that are never going to happen. I’ll want more.”
“You deserve more.” And she did. Someone who’d be there for her every day. To help her with the house and rub her feet and hold her when she was overwhelmed or sad or scared. To take her to carnivals and eat fried pickles and ride the Ferris wheel and taste her salty kiss as it descended. To remind her not to put herself last.
“And you deserve the chance to follow your dreams,” she said. “I would never stand in the way of that.”
I closed my eyes, swallowing hard. “I know.”
“Let’s just give it some time, okay?” She was openlyweeping now, and it broke my heart to think of her alone in that hospital hallway. “It will let up.”
“What if it doesn’t?”
“Then you find a picture of me and draw horns and a pencil-thin mustache on my face.”
I smiled, despite the open wound in my chest. “Okay.”
“But Dash?”
“Yeah?”
“I have to let you go.”
I wasn’t sure if she meant on the phone or in life, but I supposed it didn’t really matter.
