Karla nibbled on her bottom lip. “Can I ask you something?”
“Anything.”
“Why didn’t you come to look for me after you moved back to Chicago?”
Anything but that.
My gut felt a punch with her question. I’d thought about it for a long time, and I knew my reasons. I just wasn’t ready to bring those reasons up and share with her. I tried so hard not to think about that period of my life. I couldn’t go back there. Not now.
“Karla...” I whispered with a slight head shake.
She frowned but shifted. “OK, new topic.”
I thanked her for that as I began preparing drinks for us. Ineeded more alcohol because I felt my thoughts building more and more. I handed her the drink with a smile.
Karla tilted her head and stared at me with a look of wonder in her eyes, but she didn’t say anything else. She was reading me.Geez, Karla, please stop reading me.I didn’t need her to see how messy my pages had been.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“What’s what?”
She pointed toward me. “That! There it is again.”
“There what is?”
She shook her head. “Never mind. Sorry.”
I downed my drink. I picked up my fork and sliced off a piece of the brownie in front of me. I shoved it in my mouth, trying to get the heavy thoughts sitting in the back of my mind to retreat further back. But there was something about Karla that made me feel things deeper than I’d felt in a long time.
Just being near her made me feel more alive. I was debating if that was a good or bad thing.
“There it is again!” she exclaimed, clapping her hands together.
“There what is?”
“That.” She said, pointing toward my face. “What is that?”
I wiped at my beard. “Do I have crumbs?”
“No. Not that.” She pointed again, higher on my face. Toward my eyes, maybe? “What’s that?”
“What’swhat?”
“The sadness in your eyes,” she replied. “Where’s that coming from?”
And there it was—her seeing me. Fuck me, I didn’t want to be seen so deeply so soon. It had already been a bad week. We’d just reconnected. I wanted to pretend that it would be easy. I wanted to make believe that when Karla looked at me, she sawme like the rest of the world. Like a man who was content and doing OK. That I was fine. But she didn’t.
She saw the shadows and called them out.
Why did you have to do that, Karla? We were doing so well.
All we had to do was eat some dessert and be light. I didn’t sign up for heaviness that evening.
I broke our eye contact and glanced at my watch before standing up. “Shit, sorry Karla. I have to feed Rolls before he gets pissed at me. I forgot to refill his feeder. Plus, I also have to work early, you know, and if I want to get a workout in before my shift, I should at least get a few hours of sleep,” I rambled as I gathered myself. “Thanks for having me over, though. This was nice. Real nice. It was nice to catch up, and we’ll have to do this again at some point.” I didn’t look back at her.
I couldn’t.
“I’m sorry, I, uh, did I do something to offend you?” she said, a slight choke of hurt coming off her tongue.
