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“Thank you for coming,” I tell her. It sounds too formal.
“I thought about not coming,” she says. “But I didn’t seriously consider it.” She looks at my face, my bruises. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Remind me—what’s your name today?”
“Michael.”
She looks me over again. “Poor Michael.”
“This is not how I imagine he thought the day would go.”
“That makes two of us.”
I feel we’re each standing a good hundred feet from the real subject. I have to move us closer.
“Is it over now? With the two of you?”
“Yes. So I guess you got what you wanted.”
“That’s an awful way to put it,” I say. “Don’t you want it, too?”
“Yes. But not like that. Not in front of everybody like that.”
I reach up to touch her face, but she flinches. I lower my hand.
“You’re free of him,” I tell her.
She shakes her head. I’ve said yet another thing wrong.
“I forget how little you know about these things,” she says. “I forget how inexperienced you are. I’m not free of him, A. Just because you break up with someone, it doesn’t mean you’re free of him. I’m still attached to Justin in a hundred different ways. We’re just not dating anymore. It’s going to take me years to be free of him.”
But at least you’ve started, I want to say. At least you’ve cut that one attachment. I remain silent, though. This might be what she knows, but it’s not what she wants to hear.
“Should I have gone to Hawaii?” I ask.
She softens to me then. It’s such an absurd question, but she knows what I mean.
“No, you shouldn’t have. I want you here.”
“With you?”
“With me. When you can be.”
I want to promise more than that, but I know I can’t.
We both stay there, on our tightrope. Not looking down, but not moving, either.
We use her phone to check the local flights to Hawaii, and when we’re sure there’s no way Michael’s family can get him on a plane, Rhiannon drives me home.
“Tell me more about the girl you were yesterday,” she asks. So I do. And when I’m done, and a sadness fills the car, I decide to tell her about other days, other lives. Happier. I share with her memories of being sung to sleep, memories of meeting elephants at zoos and circuses, memories of first kisses and near first kisses in rec-room closets and at Boy Scout sleepovers and scary movies. It’s my way of telling her that even though I haven’t experienced so many things, I have managed to have a life.
We get closer and closer to Michael’s house.
“I want to see you tomorrow,” I say.
“I want to see you, too,” she says. “But I think we both know it’s not just a matter of want.”
