Page 63 of I'm Gonna Get You Back
I have to cut this all the way off.
My chest puffs with my inhale. “This is why I didn’t want to do this with you. You bring me here—here—and act like that wouldn’t hurt worse than my fucking knee.”
“I was just trying to help—”
“I don’t need your help, Clara. I can take care of myself.”
“But youdon’t.”
We become locked in a mutual glare.
“How long have you been injured?” she challenges.
I squeeze my hands into tight fists under the water. “Why does it matter to you? I’m recovering. It’s no big deal.”
“It’s a huge fucking deal!” she snaps. “You’re an elite runner, it’s who you are—”
“No, it’snot.” My voice comes out like a thunderclap, and she goes still.
I push a hand through my hair. It’s too much. The posts online, Olympic rumors—atattoo. The heat in my chest with nowhere to go. I jump out of the water, toweling off quickly before I wrench my shirtback on. The water sloshes behind as she follows slowly. But I can’t look at her. Not while she dresses.
Not until she says, “I didn’t mean it like that.” There’s a catch in her voice.
“I know,” I manage.
But everyone else does, and the frustration at all the limits it puts on me is getting harder and harder to push away. Worse that she gets that. Getsme. And I forgot how fucking good that feels.
After the way things ended, I expected her to be nothing but cold to me this weekend. But she’s been the opposite. Warm and funny and… open.
I don’t deserve it.
She steps closer, and all at once her arms are around me. Clara always preferred touching to talking. It was the way she softened to me. But the shock of her body against mine after all this time shuts my brain off for a second.
She nestles her face into the crook of my neck, where she always fit best. Confusing me more. Muddling everything. It feels so familiar, so right—sodeeplyunfair.
We weren’t supposed to get personal this weekend. But the lines are already blurring. Embraced like this, I’m too aware that I still miss her. That I’m still angry.
That I’m still so in love with her it hurts to breathe.
But I remind myself she wouldn’t even let me tell her how I feel. She never said one thing about the card I gave her on her birthday. Nothing’s changed. And I fucked up any chance of it changing the second I let Delaney stay over, anyway.
My heart is banging around my rib cage as I gently draw back so I can get the space I need.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
For so much.
“It’s okay. I get it.” She glides soft fingertips across my forehead to push my wet hair back. It’s such a girlfriend move, and I wish I could understand why she does it.
We pull on our shoes in silence. As I pick up the towels to head for the car, I realize I don’t know if I’ll get the chance to be alone with her again. It’s now or never.
“Look, I need to tell you something.” I turn when I don’t hear her following.
She’s crouched down, frozen as she stares at my phone in the dirt.
My stomach plummets at the look on her face. At the way her features slowly, purposefully smooth out. The only way to know that she’s upset is that her hands tremble as she gives me the phone.
“Is this why she’s been weird?” she says.
