Page 96 of Two-Step
Why did I think I could be cool? I can’t be cool. Not with his eyes on me like that. My first impulse is to make a joke.
Of course you’ll see me again. On Monday for dance lessons.
But even in my head this doesn’t sound the least bit funny. Just juvenile. Beau deserves better.
I inhale a deep breath. “I want to see you again…” I squeeze his hand, having trouble continuing.
His left brow lifts slightly. “Why do I feel like there’s abutcoming?” I expect to see bitterness in his eyes, but I find only patience. Kindness.
I swallow. “I hate that there’s a but coming, but here it comes.” Cold sweat mists the back of my neck.“ButI’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
Beau’s mouth tightens, and he frowns just a little, but the softness in his eyes doesn’t change. He nods once, and then his hand slips from mine.
And you know what? It feels awful.
He puts both hands on the steering wheel and makes the turn. The cab is silent.
I hate the silence. I hate it. But I have no idea what to say. Actually, I have too many things to say, but I don’t know if any of them will make this better. As the forest disappears behind us, I feel like I’m leaving the happiest version of myself behind.
And worse than that is the version of Beau I imagine leaving behind. The one who laughs at my absurd comments, invites me to hold nothing back, and, hell, just wants to be with me.
I feel like I’ve ruined everything precious about this day.
Maybe that was inevitable. Maybe it’s a good thing that we’re leaving those ideal versions of ourselves behind now before anything else has a chance to happen between us. Maybe—
“Why?” he asks, yanking me from my heavy-as-lead thoughts.
“Huh?” I’ve sunk so deep I’ve lost the tether to our conversation.
“You want to see me again, but you don’t think it’s a good idea. Why?” he asks, dividing his attention between me and the road, his gaze sharp but still not bitter. “Why isn’t it a good idea?”
As far as I’m concerned the answer is obvious. This can’t go anywhere, so why take the next step if the road ends just on the other side of the next rise? But this wouldn’t be the first time I’ve gone three, four, even ten steps ahead in my mind before other people—just because I can’t shut the thing off.
“Because things could get…” I try to choose my words carefully. I don’t want to seem presumptuous and sayserious. “Complicated.”
He nods, and that same self-containment that makes him so beautiful—so alluring—rides on his shoulders like a mantle. When he looks at me, all I see is acceptance and understanding.
“I get that.” Then, as if he’s talking to himself, he says softly, “I don’t blame you.”
He accepts. He understands. He doesn’t blame me.
Great.
Good.
Okay, then.
Why the hell do I feel so disappointed?
Chapter Nineteen
BEAU
“We aren’t seeingthe same positive results we were three months ago.” Sherry Trahan, Mom’s memory care therapist, slides a page covered in bar graphs across her desk. This is our fourth meeting since Mom moved into assisted living, and the results on the page are the worst yet.
“You can see that when Gina came to us, her cognitive functioning score on the MMSE was a fifteen, which is ten points below what we’d see in, say, a healthy fifty-year-old woman.” Sherry taps at the first blue bar on one of the charts before moving to the second. “In November, after three months of therapy, she was at a seventeen—still below that benchmark, but noticeably improved.”
I can read the graph in front of me, and I don’t need her to state the obvious, but she does.
