“Then why are you acting like someone who flew here for me?”
“I am acting like someone who still sees your toothbrush every night as he washes up, and still puts out two towels even though I don’t know when or if you’ll be back. I know you’ve been living without any trace of me, but I’ve been living with so many traces of you. I want to know what they mean.”
“I told you, Thor loves playing your music in the office. So I’m not entirely without traces of you.”
“How gratifying.”
“Just trying to support you with the fraction of a cent you get every time it streams.”
“Now look who’s paying attention.”
V shakes her head.
“What?” J asks.
“This is exactly how I was afraid it would go.”
“And how is that?”
“Infuriating.”
J allows himself a small grin. “Nice to know I can still infuriate you.”
He thinks they are falling back into their groove, their banter.
A good sign.
Then she pushes her chair back and stands up.
“I honestly don’t think I can do this right now,” she says.
And now it’s doubly frustrating. Because the artifice is gone. The politeness has been put back in a drawer. This is her raw, trembling self. And he still doesn’t understand it.
“Please,” he says. “Sit down. Let’s talk.”
She is still holding her napkin, and looks around as if she doesn’t know what to do with it. Finally, she puts it over her plate.
“I keep telling you, and you just don’t listen,” she says. “I’m hanging by a thread here. And you want to throw your weight on me, see if the thread will hold. But I’m telling you, it won’t. I can’t deal with you and everything else at the same time. I know you think this means I’m choosing here over you. And maybe I am right now. But I’m in it so deep that nothing feels like a choice. And I don’t think I can get you to respect that, or even comprehend it. You know how much I hated not having a job, when there was so much uncertainty. You know that nothing has ever been given to me, not by my parents, not by anyone. You know that I wasn’t expecting this job to become what it’s become. You know these things, but you can’t connect them to where I am right now, and what it means. One of the things I’ve loved about being with you is that you never get in my way. But I also feel I never really tested that. I think you want to be my top priority, and right now I can’t do that. When you said you were coming here, I should have simply saiddon’t. Because, believe it or not, I didn’t want us to do this. This is exactly what I didn’t want. I was hoping I’d see you and something else would happen, that it would be casual, low-pressure. But I don’t think you’re going to let us do anything other than this, so I need to go. I need to pretend you’re still over there.”
“Look,” J replies, “let’s just have lunch. You need to have lunch anyway, right?”
V takes her wallet from her purse, opens it, and laughs. “I don’t even have cash to leave you for the bill. I’m totally stiffing you here.”
“I don’t care about the bill. Please. Stay.”
But no. Instead of sitting back down, she reaches down and squeeze his hand. Once. Then she lets go.
Infuriating.
“For the record,” J says, “I very much would like to chase after you, but I don’t want to leave without paying, and I also think you would only hate me for following you.”
“For the record,” V says, “you are absolutely making the right call.”
She kisses him on the top of his head (infuriating!) and leaves.
J sits there for a moment, stunned.
Then the friendly waiter comes over, looking concerned.
