“The funny thing is, I don’t love Ellie. I thought I lovedyou. How’s that for a punch line?”
He stills.
“You love me?” he asks, his words breathless, hopeful.
Except I don’t trust it. I can’t trust his words, his tone, anything. It’s so clear that every moment over the past few months was a carefully calculated manipulation.
And Idon’tlove him. I refuse.
I need to go. I need to get out of here. I need tobreathe.
I turn to make my escape, but despite the fact that we’re out in the open, Alex seems to take up every inch of space around me.
“Joey, please. Would you look at me?”
I can’t look at him, knowing what he knows. Knowing that he’s known this entire time. Knowing that I’m going to spend days recontextualizing every moment between us through the microscope of this new information. Moments when I thought I had control, but in fact I had nothing. Moments I thought we were getting to know each other, but he was just pretending.
What a terrible thing, to not be able to trust your own memories.
“You said you loved me,” he murmurs softly.
“No—IthoughtI did, but it was all a lie. You’re not who I thought you were. How can I trust you? Iknowyou. I know I can’t—”
“I’ve changed.”
“You haven’t. You haven’t changed at all. You’re the same man who—”
“I died at fifty-eight,” he says. “It had beentwenty-six yearssince I’d last seen you. Please believe that I changed, because Lord knows, I spent a long time trying to.”
Somehow that makes it even worse. Did I say he always has to be one step ahead? More like twenty-six steps.
I want to throw up.
“You have been lying to me—manipulating me—for months. Fifty-eight, thirty-two, eighteen—doesn’t matter. You are the exact same man you have always been. We’re done.”
I start to walk past him, but I’m stopped short by his scoff—so different from anything I’ve heard from him the past few months, but theexacttype of sound I would expect from the man I walked away from the night I died.
Maybe he hasn’t changed as much as he likes to think.
“I’mmanipulatingyou?Joey, don’t kid yourself. You were trying to manipulate me in equal measure—you’re just mad that I’m the one who came out ahead.”
“I wasnottrying to manipulate you. God, do youhearyourself right now? You’re like a cartoonishly evil villain.”
“?‘Why, yes, Alex, I think it would bewonderfulif you dropped your computer science major to become a film director. That’s in no way poor life advice, nor is it at all influenced by my hatred for people with money, despite the fact that I myself hadplentyof money,’?” he mocks, his voice flat to start but crescendoing to heated vitriol by the end.
“Excuse me for encouraging you to pursue something you’re actually passionate about instead of becoming a capitalist pig who pursues wealth for wealth’s sake, knowing no amount of money willeverbe enough.”
“Get off your high horse, Joey. You were a corporate fucking lawyer. That was the irony of it all—you treated me like Satan himself because I had money, butyou did too. You made your life choices the same way I did. You cared about money and comfort and stability, and you pursued them relentlessly. But somehow I’m the one who’s evil because, what, I did itbetter?”
“Great. Tell me more about how much you hated me, how little you thought of me. That’s making me feel a lot better, actually.”
I wonder how many times he’s had this argument with me in his head. He’s clearly put effort into taking account of my every flaw. Did hespend twenty-six years bitter that he never got to say it to my face? That I had the audacity to die before he could get the last word?
And then he died and finally got his shot.
Maybethat’sthe punch line.
“I never hated you, I wasin love with you,” he yells so forcefully that it pulls me up short and shocks me into silence. “I know we spent only one night together, but it’s true. I fell. I fell quick, and I fell hard. By the time I left your apartment that morning, I was in love with you, and you reduced me to nothing more than a ‘bad decision.’?”
