Page 120 of The Wedding Forecast

‘I guess it is.’

‘You don’t sound happy.’

‘I’m happy. But…’ I chew on my fingernail.

‘But what?’

‘But it means I’m here long-term. For a year at least. Probably longer.’

‘Okay. I kind of thought you were anyway.’

‘Then what are we doing here? You and me.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Is this really just friendship to you?’

There’s a long silence on his end. I can hear traffic, his breathing, a door closing, and then the sound of footsteps. He’s walking up the stairs to his apartment. Has he been out to get coffee, or is he just arriving home from some woman’s place? Rebecca’s apartment?

I hate that I am immediately thinking about that.

‘No, it’s not just friendship to me,’ he says.

We shouldn’t be having this conversation while he’s in his stairwell and I’m overtired and still upset from my fight with Hayley and alone in the dark. But I don’t care.

‘Then what is it?’ I ask.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Well, that’s not good enough. I need an answer.’

‘I don’t have any answers,’ he says.

And that’s the crux of it. He has no answers for me, and I have been waiting all this time for him to give me one. I have held this belief he’s got a secret golden key that will unlock our problems. But he’s happy just going on like this, probably forever. Or until something better comes along. This is enough for him. This small piece of me is all that he wants. And it’s killing me.

‘I can’t keep doing this,’ I say.

‘Doing what?’

I don’t even know how to explain it. Squishing my feelings into a tiny little ball so I can push them deep down and not worry about what it’s doing to me. Living a half-life in the hope of a whole one. Holding on to stupid hope.

‘Spending all this time talking to you, thinking about you, not being with you, having no plan to be with you.’

‘Do you want to make a plan?’

‘What kind of plan would that be?’

‘I don’t know. You could come and visit again this December? I could come out next year maybe?’

‘And that’s it? That’s enough for you? Vague plans to see each other once a year?’

‘Do you want to…be together, to try a long-distance relationship?’ he says. He sounds puffed now, like he’s skipping steps, trying to get into his apartment where he can sit and think and calm this conversation down.

‘Yes. No. I don’t know. Do you?’

‘I’m scared.’

‘Of what?’