“Evie, open the door,” Doyle ordered.
Larkin shut off the tap. He wiped his mouth. A cold sweat had broken out across his chest, his back, his underarms. His stomach twisted, and Larkin wondered if he was going to be sick. He leaned back against the sink, wrapped his arms around himself, and hunched forward.
“Answer me right now, or I’m unscrewing the doorknob.”
Larkin slowly slid into a crouch against the sink cabinet. He drew his knees to his chest and started sobbing. “I can’t do this anymore,” he said again. “I can’t—I can’t live like this. I hate remembering useless, pointless information and forgetting what matters to everyone else. Who cares that the third button on Noah’s shirt had a stray thread and is coming loose? I mean,that’swhat I focused on?Who the fuck cares!People think my memory is a gift, but I’m sitting on the bathroom floor and I can’t stop crying and I miss Patrick and I miss Noah and Ihatewho I’ve become.”
On the other side of the door, near the floor, like Doyle had sat down, he said, “I don’t hate who you are.”
“Then you’re the stupidest fucking person on the planet, Ira.” Larkin put a hand over his eyes as another sob tore out of him. “I love Noah and all I did was ruin his life.”
There was a note of hesitation in Doyle’s voice, but he asked, “Do you want me to go downstairs and see if I can catch him? Or—give me his number, and I’ll call him for you.”
Larkin tucked his face against his shoulder to awkwardly wipe away snot and tears. He opened his mouth to speak, but the words crumpled like ash and he had to close it against another wave of cries threatening to come forward. He put a hand over his eyes again.
“People say things when they’re scared or confused, and they usually aren’t the right things to say,” Doyle suggested.
“But he knows it cuts me to the bone. He knows I won’t ever forget how it makes me feel. And it feels fucking awful, Ira.Awful.I’m one association away from crying in some other bathroom on a summer night, remembering what my soon-to-be ex-husband really thinks of me. And the worst part is, he’s not even wrong. I’ve refused to visit my in-laws for the last two years, knowing it was making the rift between us worse. I do stop listening, then miss important details I should be writing down. I haven’t been able to get an erection since January and I didn’t tell Noah it was because of the Xanax—I just made it worse by taking more and more.”
“Evie?”
“What,” he snapped.
“You’re not a cruel person. And I’ve never known you to make a decision without logical reasons to back it up. What you’re saying—those are symptoms of a bigger problem.”
Larkin snorted and wiped at his eyes. “If I’d just sucked it up and spent Christmas with his parents like Noah wanted—”
“But that’s not Noah’s choice to make,” Doyle interrupted. “I know these are sensitive topics. They would be for any relationship. But the world wasn’t designed with people like you in mind, and the only one who can advocate for your mental well-being is you. I know you speak in a very exacting manner, and that can come off as curt to some, but I… struggle to be entirely sympathetic to Noah’s hurt when he’s been made aware of your condition for a long time.”
Larkin looked down, placed his bare left hand on the tile floor, spread his fingers, and dragged them back and forth against the lines of grout. “Do you—” He stopped, cleared his throat, and tried again. “Do you think people can love each other and still not be right for one another.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you think I’m blameless in this breakup.”
“No. But I think you’re ready to accept your faults and Noah isn’t there yet.”
Larkin said, “Maybe he loves what I represented. Not who I really am. At least, not anymore.”
“Maybe.”
“Have you been in love.”
“Sure.”
“How’d it end.”
There was a pause before Doyle answered, “It hasn’t started.”
Larkin looked at the door. He didn’t think, didn’t calculate, merely moved on impulse, on instinct—shifting onto his knees, leaning forward to twist the thumb lock, and pulling the door open a crack.
Doyle sat sideways in the threshold, his back against the bookshelf. He raised his head, smiled softly, and said, “Hey.”
“Hi.”
“Are you coming out?”
“Have you ever had an epiphany.”
