I spend some time sitting in the car, my body feeling heavy with regret and fatigue. Besides no other woman holding a match up to Oakleigh, one of the reasons that I’ve been avoiding dating is the burden I would put on a woman. Hell, it’s part of the reason that I never tried anything with Oakleigh until now. Am I a burden? Yes, of course. Before therapy, situations like what transpired today were just the tip of a very jagged iceberg. I don’t want Oakleigh to have to deal with my shit.
I’m not embarrassed about earlier because we were around a shitload of people, but rather because it happened in front of Cherry. I don’t want her to think of me as weak or incapable. And my poor mother had to witness something that used to make her cry every time she saw it. Sometimes, I wonder if she cries because she’s thinking that this isn’t what my birth parents would have wanted for me.
A soft tap against the window drags me from my pit of self-deprecation. Oakleigh is bent over so she can see in the window. She smiles softly when I see her. With a harsh sigh and a shake of my head, I grab my car keys and step out of the car. Just like the night I drove her home all those months ago, Oakleigh doesn’t move, leaving us almost flush against one another. I tuck my hands into my pockets and wait for her to speak. She seems lost for words, looking down at the ground around us as if she’ll find them somewhere.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hi.”
She fiddles with her fingers and I’m seeing why she’s here. She thinks it would look weird to my mom if she didn’t. She’s here out of necessity. When I saw her, at first something in my chest had loosened. I thought she was here because she wanted to be, and now that warmth I felt is fading. The silence between us drags, becoming more and more awkward as the seconds tick on, leaving us behind.
“Where’s my mom?” I ask, no longer bearing the weight of this cursed quiet.
“She’s still by the food trucks. She’s just sat down eating something. I promised her I’d be right back.”
I nod slowly and lock my car. “Well, we best not keep her waiting then.”
I try to start walking, but Oakleigh doesn’t budge. I frown down at her. “Is something wrong?”
“I should be asking you that.”
“I’m fine.” I try and move around her, but all it takes is a hand on my chest and I’m frozen in place. I keep my gaze locked on the field of grass just over her head, using it as an anchoring point for my sanity and my fast-fading hope.
“I was worried about you.” She says it so quietly I’m not even sure I’ve heard her, and yet there’s nothing else I could have mistaken her words for.
That seriously can’t be all it takes. Surely, I need more than soft-spoken words and a hand on my chest to fold that quickly for her. Can I seriously be that far gone? Apparently, I can, because immediately after she says the words, I can already feel my face relaxing, my expression softening until I’m smiling down at her. She’s staring straight ahead at my chest, a frown marring the smooth skin on her forehead.
I tilt her head up with two fingers under her chin, my other hand slotting some stray hairs behind her ear.
“I’m here, baby. Nothing to worry about, I promise.”
Her expression goes from worried, to annoyed, and back to worried. I know why. She’s annoyed that she cares at all. She’d rather carry on pretending to hate me, and yes, I say “pretending” because she can claim she hates me all she likes, but with the way she reacts to me and the way she softens even when she doesn’t want to, tells me differently.
I leave a kiss on her forehead, my lips lingering longer than I gave them permission to.
“Come on.” I slide my hand down to her hand, clasping it tightly in mine. “You haven’t even tried to buy a single thing, and coming from you that’s just heinous.”
I drag her back and together we locate my mom who is stuffing her face with tacos. When she spots us, she looks guilty, but one kiss on her cheek from both of us fixes that.
We head back to the main path and stop by a few stalls. Mom stops us when we’re about to cross over to the other side to look at the stalls opposite.
“Wait! I want a photo of the two of you!” she squeals.
“Mom,” I chide, my cheeks heating up.
“Oh, please. The two of you together is the sweetest thing, I just have to! I have one of Wren and Gus, so if you think you’re getting out of this you’re sorely mistaken!”
With an incredible amount of reluctance, Oakleigh and I both plant ourselves in the middle of the path, another cherry-blossom arch standing not far behind us.
“Try to look in love with me, okay, Cherry?” I say quietly enough that my mom can’t hear.
Oakleigh stays staring ahead as she scoffs. “Have you ceased being an annoying asshole?”
“Hard to stop being something when I never even started being it.”
“Oh, please.”
Her arm snakes around me, her fingers only just scraping the side of my torso.
