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“I think I’m helping.”
“I don’t see why you’d want to.”
“Yeah, you do.”
“I told you I’d keep away from you,” he says. “I meant it.”
“Is that really what you want?”
I hear him swallow. I wonder if his throat is as sticky as mine. If his heart is beating as fast.
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
He doesn’t answer for so long, I think he won’t. But when he does, I wish he hadn’t, because all he says is, “What I did to you …”
Like fingers snapping—those words ignite my anger in an instant. “I already told you what I thought about what you did.”
“Right,” he says. “And it’s because of what you said that I knew to keep away from you when I came back here.”
“I never imagined you would come back here.”
“It doesn’t change anything.”
“For fuck’s sake, West, it changes everything!”
“It doesn’t have to, though.”
“What if I want it to?”
“Caro …” He leans closer. I think he’s going to touch me. All he has to do is reach out his hand—find my waist or my shoulder—but he doesn’t. He sighs. Descends a step. “It’s better this way.”
“I don’t believe that. For me, nothing is better.”
He crosses his arms. “It’ll get better.”
“You’re so full of shit.”
Then he’s quiet for a long time.
He looks at me hard and long, so I look right back at him. I wonder if my face is any easier to read in the dark than his.
I wonder if he misses me in his bed at night the way I miss him in mine.
I don’t understand what’s in his head anymore. What he thinks he’s doing and why he thinks he’s doing it. He pushed me away as hard as he could, but now he’s come back to Putnam, so why doesn’t he come back to me?
What I did to you …
That memory, so raw for me. I avoid thinking about it.
It must be the same for him.
But if it’s just that memory that keeps him from me—if it’s his sense of honor, as if I’m a princess in a tower and he’s soiled my gown so that’s the end of it—fuck that.
Fuck that with a tire iron, is my feeling. If he’s going to deny himself what he wants, deny me what I want, there’s nothing honorable in that. It’s just pigheaded stubborn idiocy, and I won’t stand for it.
Which is the sort of thing it’s easy enough to think. But what do you do?
