The girl was giving me whiplash. Emotional and mental whiplash. I didn’t know what she wanted from me but I was trying damn hard to give it to her. One minute she was looking at me like she used to, like we were totally okay, and the next she was kind of cold-shouldering me, at least Pepper-style. The girl didn’t really have a cold bone in her body, so her version of being standoffish was simply not being as open as she usually was. And even though she’d let me in so much farther than I’d imagined she would just a year ago, I wanted more.
The night after we’d slept together, she’d texted and asked if I wouldn’t mind sleeping over for a few nights until her insomnia went away. Wouldn’t mind? Was she kidding? She didn’t make a move, and didn’t reach for me until she was fast asleep. At least, I was pretty sure she was sound asleep when she turned over and snuggled up. And that had been the routine now for weeks. I’d come over right before she went to bed, we’d fall asleep on opposite ends of the bed, and then she’d burrow into me in the middle of the night. Aside from that, there was no other touching involved.
My roommate, Frankie, wanted to know what was going on and he thought I was being my old evasive self, when I told him I had no clue. But it was the truth. Tonight I was determined to get some dialogue going between us. My, how the roles had reversed themselves. There was a time when she’d begged me for communication, and now I knew how frustrated she must have been when I’d avoided it.
We were lying in her bed, and she’d just turned off the light.
“You know, I’ve never actually hooked up with anyone else since you and I first got together your junior year in high school,” I said. It was an odd place to start, but if we could clear up some of the facts, maybe we could get to the rest later.
She was silent for a long time and I was worried she wasn’t going to respond. “You kissed Madeline Brescoll,” she said quietly.
“Yeah.” My voice was hoarse from emotion. “But that was it. I knew you were watching and as soon as we were in the other room I shoved her off me. I used her.”
“Used her? For what? You’d already dumped me.”
Just hearing her remind me of what I’d done made me cringe. I’d dumped her.
“I knew you didn’t think I was for real. I thought I could convince you that I meant it, that we were really over, and I didn’t want you in my life, if I did something outrageous and unforgiveable. And maybe I wanted you to hate me. I thought it would help me stay away.”
“It did,” she stated blandly.
“Yeah, I know,” I agreed.
“You weren’t very subtle about it,” she said quietly, but rolled over so she was looking at me. We were face to face, and my pulse quickened.
“I know. And I think you knew, all along, exactly what I was doing, didn’t you?” I asked.
“No,” she answered, actually laughing at the idea. “I definitely did not know exactly what you were doing.”
“You did, though,” I protested. “But that didn’t make it okay. That’s not what I’m saying. It’s just, I know you wouldn’t be able to forgive me now if you didn’t understand, if you didn’t know me like you do.” Shit, all this time waiting to talk to her, and I was totally screwing it up. This was way harder than I’d thought. There was so much I wanted to convey to her, and I sucked at words. I was trying to get better at translating it into sentences, but it didn’t come easily to me.
“Now, I do. After some time and some distance from how much you hurt me, I was able to look at it and see that you were hurting too. But no, it doesn’t make it okay. Not at all. You didn’t stop, Jace, you just kept on crushing me, and gave up on us, on everything. You gave up on yourself and you gave up on me, and I never want to experience that again.”
I was speechless. Her words weren’t unexpected, not at all, yet they robbed me of oxygen and my insides felt dry, like all the anticipation and optimism had been sucked right out of me. She sounded so resigned, having already accepted that we were done. We were over. I hadn’t accepted that, and I didn’t know if I could.