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“Me too,” says James.

“I thought you said you didn’t have to be at work until 2:00?” asks Max.

James’s shoulders stiffen, and he never looks back at me as he stands. “I have some stuff to do first.” Is he scared to even look at me? What am I, Medusa?

“What stuff?” asks Max.

“I just need to get out of here,” replies James.

We both watch him leave the room.

“I didn’t mean to run everyone off,” I say quietly.

“Don’t mind Dan. You know he’s shy.”

“James isn’t,” I counter.

“No,” muses Max with a slight smile. “He’s not. That’s interesting.”

Interesting is not the word I’d have chosen. Depressing, disheartening or shattering, maybe. But not interesting.

**

There must be a reason.

I know him. He wouldn’t treat me like some painful mistake he made.

He’s going to explain.

These are the things I tell myself all afternoon. And then I step into the restaurant that night and look toward the bar just in time to catch him turning away, his jaw locked shut as if he can somehow cage me out. If there were a noise associated with your heart breaking, I’d be making it right now.

All night he avoids me, and it’s so much worse than the early days when I felt invisible. Now it’s as if I am so noxious to him that he can’t stand to look. When I walk onto the deck later, after work, I’m not even in a chair before he’s rising to leave, mumbling something about going for a run though it’s after midnight.

I want to go back in time. I want to go back to a time before I knew he would reject me. Before I knew what it was like to feel him pressed against me, to imagine I heard raw need in his voice as he groaned my name. I want to go back to a time when he was a distant memory and not this thing I feel inside me, as real as the fists he’s clenched as he walks past.

In spite of everything that’s occurred, this is the first thing all summer that feels like more than I can bear.

“I think I’m coming home,” I tell my mother the next morning.

“Why?” she asks, sounding distracted. “You know what Bruce said.”

“Things just aren’t going well here,” I reply. My voice sounds tinny in an effort not to cry. There’s shouting in the background on her end, and I hear her whisper to someone. It’s for the best, perhaps, that she isn’t fully paying attention.

“You can’t be in DC,” she says. “It’s not New York, but you know that there are a ton of media types there. And Edward is on every cover this week.”

“I don’t care. I’ll stay in.”

She sighs. “Look, some friends of Tommy’s are staying at the house now anyway. If you still feel like this in a week, check back with me and maybe they’ll be gone.”

She hangs up, leaving me feeling more hollow than I did before we spoke. My mother’s helplessness always ensured that I’d be wanted somewhere, that I’d have something or someone to call home. I sometimes resented how much she needed me, but it’s only now – now that she no longer does — that I realize I needed her too.

Chapter 21

He isn’t working the lunch shift and it’s a relief. James, out of sight, is like a throbbing pain I can attempt to forget, while in person it becomes piercing, something I have to fight to move past. I make it through my shift and manage not to break anything, which makes it a highly successful day for me, at least in work terms.

I’m forced to use the outside shower when I get home because Ginny’s once again got the door locked. It seems to happen far more frequently now, and I can’t help but feel that it’s less about her needing privacy than it is her wanting to keep me out.

I finish my shower, wrap myself in a towel and step out only to run smack into James. Not a graceful collision but a full-on crash through which I barely manage to keep my towel around me. For a fraction of a second his hands are pressed to my bare arms, and I’m remembering the other night before I can stop myself.