Let Me Down

Caleb

My entire day consisted of stressing over Hannah leaving and wavering between telling her I don’t want her to go or staying silent. When I got in my car at the end of my workday, I wasn’t even sure where I was headed. But, I guess my heart decided for me, because I ended up in Hannah’s driveway.

Now I’m seated on her double bed with her parents still away, acting out the beginning of a teenage fantasy. A few adult ones too. Everything right down to her curled hair and flushed cheeks are things I’ve dreamed about.

Minus washing Akili’s skin wrinkles.

And while this might be how some of my fantasies started, I know it’s not going to work out the same way they ended.

“Your hair looks good like this. It’s… different.”

She sets the eye drops and wipes in a basket on her dresser, then starts straightening random items. “My friends came over today. Angel and Vida. They’re the ones with dogs that I said Sophie should tag along with.”

“Right. I did give her your number, but…”

“So you do still have my number. Yet you don’t know how to use it.” She spins back around to face me, having run out of things to tidy. “You didn’t answer my question, Caleb. Why did you come over?”

Thank God I did that one day of yoga, so I know how to take a cleansing breath. Maybe I need some more practice, because it doesn’t work all that well. “I called the executive chef of Ponderosa Pines today. To give him a reference.” I think I say it convincingly enough, I don’t betray how much I hate the possibility of her leaving.

Nothing. No change in her expression at all. Until she takes a deep swallow, steps back, and averts her eyes. “What did you say?”

“I told him you’re an amazing chef, and he’d be lucky to have you. That not only are you talented, dedicated, a great team player, and passionate, you’re strong, fierce, independent, and… beautiful.”

She lifts her wide hazel eyes to stare at me. “You did not.”

“Okay, no. I didn’t say the last few, but that doesn’t make them less true.”

“Caleb…” She lifts her arm behind her neck and sweeps all of her long, curly hair over her shoulder. That leaves her left shoulder fully exposed under the thin strap of her tank top. “I… I don’t know what to say.”

Sophie’s question from weeks ago keeps bouncing around in my head, seeking an answer. Am I okay with disappearing from her life again? Now that she’s here, can I walk away a second time? That answer, if it were just up to me, is an easy one. But I’m not the only one whose feelings are involved here.

I shift myself forward, adjusting Akili as I move. “Please don’t go. I told myself I’d never ask that of you. If you want to explore new opportunities, you have every right to go, but I can’t live with myself if I don’t tell you I don’t want you to leave.”

She plays with the length of her hair, twirling a curl around her finger. “Why?”

Apparently I haven’t been obvious enough if she doesn’t know by now. Or maybe she just doubts me too much after leaving her heartbroken before.

I lift Akili and place her on the bed beside me, then stand to approach Hannah. “You’re the best part of my day. If that’s not obvious by me showing up here whenever you have a day off, I don’t know what is.” I huff a laugh, trying to stop my voice from shaking. “I want you to be my sous chef. Jorge is going to be the head chef, and before you ask, it’s not because I don’t think you’re capable. It’s because I know your passion is in creating food, not directing people. So I want you to have that role and be able to keep living that dream.”

Hannah’s face falls and her shoulders drop. “You came to my home—to my bedroom—to give me a job offer and beg me not to take a different one?” She scoffs, then walks out the door, disappearing into the hallway.

I glance at Akili and swallow deep because I know I screwed this up again. I swear, when I look at her, she tells me to man up and say what I need to say. She doesn’t want to move to British Columbia because she could get eaten by a mountain lion or a grizzly bear.

“We can’t have that. Let me go try to make this right… again,” I whisper.

Hannah is standing in the foyer, holding my coat, when I reach the end of the hall. “If that’s all you came here for, Chef, I’d appreciate if you kept work talk between work hours.”

“Please, can you give me another minute? Let me try again?”

She glares at me, returning to the fire-breathing dragon Hannah I’m coming too familiar with. “Sixty seconds.”

I breathe a literal sigh of relief. “First, I only told you about the job because I don’t want you thinking you can’t have your dream job here. I wanted to tell you that first so you can decide if you want to stay for you and not just because you’re the best part of my day.” I’m not sure if she didn’t hear me when I said that earlier or if she wasn’t interested in that confession, so I feel the need to repeat it.

Her hand drops, letting my coat drag on the floor. “Are you offering me the sous chef position because you don’t want me to leave or because you think I deserve it?”

“Of course you deserve it. I wouldn’t even consider it if you hadn’t earned that spot, Hannah. There’s no one in that kitchen I trust more than you to deliver perfect food every time. No, I don’t want you to leave, but the job is not a bribe.” I step forward and take my coat from her hand, hanging it back on the knob in hopes she’ll give me more than sixty seconds. I’m sure that timeframe has passed already. “Your dreams are important to me. You are important to me, and I never want you selling yourself short or giving up on something you can absolutely achieve. Not for anyone.” Me included. Perhaps me most of all.

“I wouldn’t.” Her eyes flick over to my coat. She pauses for a moment before turning toward the living room, nodding for me to follow. “A dream job isn’t the only reason I applied somewhere else. I told you that already. This”—she wags her finger back and forth between us as she sits—“dynamic is hard to handle. My head is a mess, and my heart is…”

She stops herself short, but the mention of her heart being affected gives me hope that she has feelings for me, too.

I lower myself onto the couch beside her, intentionally not putting a full seat cushion’s distance between us. “At this point, I’ve been an idiot so many times in my life, it’s embarrassing. I could write a book about being an idiot, and the longest chapter would be about when I left you. But I don’t want there to be a chapter about how I didn’t tell you how I feel.” I hold her eyes, hoping to relay how genuine my words are. “I’m not the same stupid kid I was when I walked away the first time. This time, if you decide taking this new job is for the best, it won’t be because I was too much of a coward.”

“Why are you telling me all this?” she asks, her voice quiet and hesitant.

Mine couldn’t be more clear. “Because I love you, Hannah. I never stopped loving you.”