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“This probably isn’t the place to have this conversation,” I say.
“Why?” I can’t see his face.
I wish we were texting. Here in the dark, with my feelings wrapped around my throat, I can’t tell if he’s sarcastic. His voice gives me no clues.
His hand squeezes mine, hard. “Look. Maybe this isn’t the right time for us. Maybe you need to go across the country. I looked up the company. They seem interesting.”
Oh. My whole body feels light. That’s why this is happening. He’s breaking up with me. Finally something that makes sense.
“Maybe this isn’t the right time for us,” he says with a little more conviction, “but I’m pretty sure I just tipped my hand. You’re the right person for me.”
I blink. I turn to him. It takes me a moment to understand that he is not, in fact, breaking up with me. It takes me so long, in fact, that he keeps going.
“I don’t know what this means, except that I’m all in. If you move across the country and I only get to see you four times a year, I’m still all in. If you go to New York and want to call it quits, I’m—”
He pauses. I can see his lip curl in a thin shaft of passing light.
“No. I’m not really into that. I’m too selfish for that. But I’ll understand.”
This is the point where a response of some kind is socially expected. The only word that comes to mind right now, though, is, “Oh.”
Which has to be the worst response I could possibly give at the moment. It’s a shitty response. Such a shitty response. I know it, and he knows it.
He exhales. “Fine. You don’t want to talk about that. How about this? Your grandmother went to the hospital and you didn’t even text me.”
I shake my head. “You were on a plane.”
“You didn’t text me.”
“It wasn’t serious.”
“Maria, don’t tell me it wasn’t serious to you. I know what she means to you and how much it would scare you to have her in the hospital. You didn’t text me.”
“I didn’t want to bother you. I don’t want to ask you for things.”
He gives his head a short, sharp shake. “I’m serious about you, Maria. And I know you’re not there yet, and I know this is shitty timing. But I want you to have expectations of me. I want you to ask me for things. I need you to believe that I can be enough.”
I exhale. I can almost hear the echo of the words I sent him months ago. Your boundaries are hurting me. I can see that now. I’m hurting him, and I don’t know what to do about it.
I use my one word again. “Oh.”
Maybe he hears the shake in my voice, because he reaches out and touches my face.
“It’s okay,” he says. “I shouldn’t have said anything. Shitty timing.”
It’s not okay. The car exits the freeway, and I’m still stunned.
I remember this time our childhood cat caught a crow. It landed in our front yard, and the cat didn’t hesitate. He jumped on it. Crows are massive, but the surprise attack knocked it out, and the cat trotted it into the house. Where it proceeded to come to life and wreak havoc.
Jay can say that it’s okay, but saying it doesn’t make it so. If someone says “I love you,” there’s pressure. And I don’t know what says I love you more loudly than rescheduling a transpacific flight just to bring me soup, and telling me I should be able to expect that from him.
I don’t know how to expect that kind of care. I just understand that he needs me to expect it—just the way I need to go hide right now. Jay just attached a clock to our relationship. I can almost feel it ticking in time with my heart as the driver pulls alongside the curb of my house.
I don’t ask Jay in. I don’t ask him to spend the night. He changed a transcontinental flight for me, brought me soup, and told me he loved me. I should be delighted. Instead, I can’t feel my own emotions. Just the vise grip of something fierce and relentless crushing my chest.
The best I can manage to say to him, as I exit the vehicle, is this: “Thanks.”
He looks at me. He nods. This is the point where I should say something. Anything.
Instead, I don’t let myself look back. I escape into the house.
26
MARIA
“Hey.” Tina is still awake and up, waiting for me in the kitchen when I arrive. “How are you? How’s your grandmother?”
“Fine.” I can hardly manage eye contact at this stage. “It’s just a minor kidney infection. She’s going to be fine.”
“Oh, good.”
I stand at the edge of the kitchen, not wanting to engage in conversation. My room is downstairs. I want to go hide.
Tina frowns at me. “Are you sure you’re okay? You don’t look okay.”
“Fine.”
“You’ve used that word three times.”
I look over at her. She’s watching me closely.
“Honestly,” Tina says, “you don’t look like anything like okay.” She comes over to me and picks up my hand. My pulse is a rapid, staccato beat against her forefinger. “You look like you’re in shock.”
Huh. I consider this. My thoughts move at sloth speed.
“Come on. You’re freezing.” She pulls me into the living room and finds a blanket throw. I curl into a little ball underneath. She disappears for a moment, long enough for me to Google “symptoms of shock” and decide that Tina is wrong.
She comes back with a pile of blankets and a cup of tea.
“Look,” I say, holding up my phone. “I’m not in shock. WebMD says so. Without any kind of trauma—”
She waves my phone away. “It’s a figure of speech, not a medical diagnosis, genius. Come on. Tell me what’s wrong.”
Nothing’s wrong. That’s the problem. Nothing is wrong, and the thing about climbing to the top of the mountain is that it leaves you feeling exposed. Open. There’s no protective tree cover, nothing between you and the sky.
Nothing is wrong. And so instead of telling her about Jay, I tell her about another thing that is actually wrong.
“Anj wants me to go to her costume party dressed as a shark.”
Tina frowns. She looks at me. The best word I have to describe her is nonplussed.
“I don’t want to go dressed as a shark.” I’m aware that I am whining. “I hate her shark. Hate it. And if I don’t show up with fins, she’ll ask me why and I’ll have to tell her.”
“So. What if you tell her?”
I wring my hands.
Tina hands me the tea. “It’s okay to tell people when you’re upset.”
“Fine,” I snap out. “I don’t want to be roommates next year.”
She pauses. She looks at me again.
“You and Blake are together. Really together, and it looks like that’s not changing. Adam Reynolds shows up at random intervals. I just feel…weird, like I don’t even belong in here, and I hate feeling like I don’t belong in my own living space.”
Tina blows out a slow breath and hugs her knees on the couch. I didn’t want to upset her.
I shake my head. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“Why?” she asks. “You’d prefer not to say anything and just be miserable instead?”
“I wasn’t miserable. It’s more like a low-level discontent. A two-point-five on the misery scale. I can live with that.”
Tina looks at me. “But you don’t deserve a two-point-five on the misery scale. Why would you think I’d want you to live with that?”
I blink. I don’t answer. But deep down, I know the why. I just experience
d it with Jay. I’m afraid to expect care. I certainly don’t want to ask for it. I’m always afraid that one wrong move will disturb all the good things I’ve managed to find. Luck never lasts, and my friends are the luckiest part of my life. If I let them know what I need…
Maybe it won’t all end.
I exhale and choose my next words carefully. “Jay met me at the hospital.” It sounds like a non sequitur.
She blinks. Once. Then twice. “Isn’t he supposed to be in Australia?”
“Gabe texted him during his layover. He took a flight back.” My voice is trembling again. “His luggage is lost in limbo.”
“Okay.”
“He told me…” I almost can’t say the words. They aren’t bad; they’re great. “He told me he was all in on the relationship. On me. The only reason I think he didn’t say the l-word was because he could tell how much it was messing with my mind.”
Tina doesn’t say anything. How could she? You’re being a dramatic idiot is not the kind of thing a supportive friend ever says.
“It’s too soon,” I say. “We’ve been together for like, a month.”
“Kind of,” Tina says. “I mean, you two have been talking for…how long now?”
At this point, it’s been a little over two years. I wrinkle my nose.
“And you know,” Tina says, “even if it were true that you’d only been together for a month, it’s actually really believable to me that someone could fall for you in a month. You’re really great.”
I burrow into my blankets, hiding my face. “You’re just saying that because you’re my best friend.”
“You get your grandmother groceries when she’s on trial.” Tina holds up one finger. “You fix your brother’s PowerPoint slides. When I ruined my lucky sweater last year, you got it secretly dry-cleaned. You’re funny and you’re sweet and you care about the people you love so much. Anyone who doesn’t know you and love you is an asshole.”
I can feel my eyes stinging. A hint of hoarse congestion clogs my voice. “Shut up.”
“You’re all in for everyone else,” Tina says. “Always, all the time. I think you’re freaking out right now because the only person in your life you aren’t all in for is yourself.”
