Chapter 10
I made it through the rest of the week. It wasn’t pretty, and more than one regular customer asked me if I was ill. And I was. I was bitterly heartsick. Broken inside like a shattered espresso cup. Useless little shards of glass where my heart and brain used to be.
Finally, Suz cornered me after Friday morning’s rush. “Maybe you shouldn’t have walked away.”
“What?” She’d dragged the whole story out of me, of course, making soothing noises and telling me how sorry she was.
“I’m just saying . . . would it be the worst thing in the world to wait on living together? To keep dating? I mean, Robby, I’m in your corner here, but you’re miserable. And I saw him on the street yesterday and he looked gutshot—”
“You saw him?” My throat threatened to close up. I wondered where he’d been headed, if he’d been going elsewhere to buy his coffee.
“Yeah. He’s miserable. You’re miserable. And he didn’t exactly say no to what you asked—”
“He might as well have.” I surprised myself. A few weeks ago, I would have agreed with Suz. Would have accepted whatever David wanted to give me, anything to keep him around. A few months ago, I would have kept quiet, not finding the courage to speak up at all. But now I’d found a resolve I hadn’t known I had. I’d laid myself out there. I needed David to do the same.
He absolutely was a guy worth waiting for, but I needed to know we were at least headed to the same place. I couldn’t give David my heart and dream that someday, maybe, he’d give me a part of his life—the part he chose to share with me.
Sunday morning was even colder than the last two weeks. Good. It matched the deep freeze in my heart, gave me an excuse to sleep in. That’s what I did lately. I worked and I slept and I tried not to think about David. Tried not to check my messages eighty-five times a day. Tried not to look up at every person through the doors, hoping to see his dark head.
Maybe later I’d feel up to streaming some old episodes of Battlestar or Firefly. Do some comfort-TV wallowing. But right then, all I could do was stare at the cracked, chipped ceiling.
I had no idea how long I lay like that, adrift on my own thoughts, almost but not quite awake.
“Hey.” My roommate Seth pounded on the door. “You home? Your boyfriend is here.”
“What?” I managed to get off the bed and come to the door. He’s not my boyfriend. I had no idea what he was, but I did know that I couldn’t face him right then. My lungs seized like I’d chugged a quadruple shot on an empty stomach.
“Tell him—” I opened the door to tell Seth to make an excuse, but David was right there behind him.
“I’m gonna take off, man.” Seth gave me a mock salute as he backed up down the hall, almost tripping over himself to get away from us.
“Can I come in?” David asked all formally—like I was a coworker in an adjacent office. Unlike his voice, his face was uncertain—eyes weary, cheeks flushed. His hair was a mess and his usually perfectly pressed clothes were rumpled. Looked like he hadn’t slept since Monday. He shifted his weight from side to side, as if his feet were considering following Seth.
“Sure,” I said, only because it beat having this conversation in the doorway.
“I brought you some of the raisin toast you like so much from People’s Coffee.” He held out a small package, carefully wrapped in napkins.
Eyes stinging and throat tight, I accepted it. “Thanks.”
I had to perch on the edge of my bed because standing felt too strange. My hands flopped about as uselessly as my vocal cords. I felt as if I should be touching him but couldn’t, should be inviting him to get comfortable but couldn’t, should be shutting the door but couldn’t.
“I don’t know what to say. I rehearsed on the way here . . .” He plopped down next to me. He was too close. He smelled woodsy and freshly showered and my senses kept remembering what he’d smelled like sweaty and straining. My body wanted to push him down on the bed, forget everything other than the silky feel of his skin, while my mind wanted to run.
“This week has sucked,” I said, mainly to fill the silence stretching between us.
“I hate Craig.” David’s tone had surprising vehemence to it. “I hate him because he’s not even here and he’s ruined everything between us. And I hate . . .”
“Me?” I asked softly.
“No. Never.” He grabbed my hand. “But for a bit there, I hated us. I hated how what we had kept reminding me of what I’d never had with Craig. And I tried to pretend it was because of his job or our town or our families. . . .” His voice broke.
I squeezed his hand, lacing our fingers together.
“But instead I kept . . . I kept seeing everything he’d cheated me out of. We could have had this. We should have had this.”
“You deserved it,” I whispered.
“And when I could tell that you were wanting to live together. . . everything came to a head. All this . . . rage I’d been suppressing. And I was an asshole to you.”
“You were hurting.” I could see that now.
“And sometimes I get so scared.”
“Of what?”
“Of losing you. Of loving you and living with you and building a life with you and then you disappearing. Gone. Some nights I’ll lay awake worrying about what could take you from me.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” I wasn’t. “And I get scared too.”
I took a deep breath, searching for courage but only coming up with stale air. “I just worry . . . I’m not Craig. I’m not like him. I’ll never be him.”
“You’re right. You’re not him.” His voice was firm but not unkind. “You’re nothing like him. And that’s probably what I love most about you. Everything with you is different.”
“But you said it makes you sad—”
“It makes me angry that I wasted decades on someone who couldn’t give me even a fraction of what you do. It makes me sad that I never got this with him. It makes me sad for Craig that he never got to experience this.” He shook his head. “But you? You don’t make me sad. You make me whole.”
“I do?”
“You do. It took walking around this week like I’d lost a leg for me to realize it. But you . . . you’ve brought me back from a dark place.”
“I meant it when I said I love you.”
“I know. And I think that scared me the most. Too scared to get the thing I’ve always wanted.”
“I can see that.” My anger was draining away, like a river washing into the vast ocean of potential happiness.
“I don’t want to lose you, Robby.” He held both of my hands. “I’m still not sure what the next step is. But I love you. And I don’t want my fears to cost me you.”
“I was maybe rushing you a bit. We don’t have to decide right away about living together.” Talking to him made me see what a huge jump he had made coming after me. He loved me. I wasn’t fighting a ghost for his heart. Some things could wait.
“If it helps, my sister says I’m an idiot for not jumping at the idea.”
“You told your sister about us?”
“Yeah. I should have told her this weekend, but . . . I didn’t want to share you.”
“Share me?”
“Yeah. I know it sounds crazy. But what we have here is . . . special. Magical even. And I didn’t want to take it out and look at it back home. Like it would get mud all over what we share.”
“Are they really that bad?”
“Mel’s not. She wants to meet you. And my mom’s not so bad either. Talked to her too. She’s happy I found someone. Said I should bring you to Easter. But the rest of them . . .”
“My dad’s family is full of conspiracy theorists and has annual BB gun shooting contests. My uncle was on Punkin Chunkin’. Trust me, I can speak rural too. Why not ask me to go?”
“Ask you to drive ten hours to go eat bad barbeque and lukewarm potatoes?” He frowned. “And be around my redneck relatives, who will tell you how much they like sweet and sour chicken and compliment your English? Or the other ones who will ignore us both? No. I love you way too much to ask you to deal with that.”
“But I want to.” I squeezed his hand back. “Not for the relatives. For you.”
“Really?”
“I don’t only want to share the happy parts of your life. I want to share all of your life. Even the uncomfortable parts. Even the sad parts. Even Craig. You wouldn’t be here right now without him.”
“I should have been honest with you that I was struggling more with my grief recently. Maybe I should go back to that counselor . . . but I don’t think even I realized what was happening until you were walking away.”
“I’m sorry.” I kissed his neck. “I’m sorry for leaving.”
“No. You were right to. You say you want to share everything; I want you to trust me more. I want you to trust that you can speak up.”
He was right. I’d been so worried about him pushing me away that I’d kept quiet far longer than I should have. I’d tiptoed around subjects and left a lot of stuff unsaid. I had my own baggage and trust issues. I kept thinking he might bolt when I too had one hand on the door, afraid to come all the way inside.
“You’re not going anywhere?”
“I’m right where I want to be.” He leaned in to kiss me. And I let go of fear and doubt and indecision and met him halfway, my tongue snaking into the heat of his mouth, my heart fully opening for the first time.
I was more than a little groggy for work Tuesday. David had kept me up late, and my muscles protested the load of coffee beans I had to haul in. Suz kept grinning at me and teasing me her entire shift until I shooed her out at ten. I was pretty sure I still had a goofy smile on my face as David strolled in a little before noon.
He had to wait through a cluster of corporate women, all ordering skinny lattes and leaving even skimpier tips. We exchanged secret smiles over their heads, and my heart went gooier than my big bottle of dark chocolate syrup.
“Your usual?” I said as the ladies departed.
“I’ll take the special,” he said, leaning on the counter.
“You sure?” I hadn’t seen him glance at my sign. “It’s a Mexican mocha. Has a tiny amount of chili pepper in it.”
“I’m sure. I trust you.” Our eyes met and held and I felt the power of his trust.
I set about making his drink but looked up at a clanking noise. He’d dropped something in my tip jar.
“What’s this?” I set aside the drink to fish a gold object out from the bills and change. “A key?”
“To my place. I should have given you one a lot sooner. I just . . .” He shrugged. “Not good at figuring these things out.”
“It’s okay.” I smiled up at him, happiness lighting me up like the sunlight filtering through the atrium’s skylights. “I’m not either.”
“We can figure it out together.”
“Deal.” I slid the key from hand to hand, savoring the weight.