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“That would be good,” he agreed, nodding. Just like I’d already known, he fully understood and hadn’t even flinched.
But now was the bigger part.
I took a breath. “But here’s the thing. I’m going to be gone for about a week. So we have to press pause on this for right now. But I’d really like to pick back up when I get home.”
I considered going about that in a more delicate way, maybe even flirty, but now didn’t seem like the appropriate time for that. Instead, I went at the reality of it all headlong. All I could do was hope he wanted the same thing.
Gerry’s expression didn’t falter. He didn’t pull away from me or look like he was trying to come up with some kind of gentle way to tell me that he thought it would be better for us to just drop things where they were and not think about them again. Instead, he pulled closer to me across the couch and took hold of both of my hands. He brought them up to his lips to press a kiss to my fingers.
“I am absolutely fine with that,” he said.
A breath I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding gushed out of my lungs, and I nodded. I’d been worried if me having to pick up and leave so soon after we’d started our little affair would give Gerry reason to give up on me again. But he was still here, still willing to do this.
We exchanged a kiss, then decided to go make something easy for dinner. It was nice being in the kitchen with him, and we had a good dinner, but it felt a bit more subdued. For something I was so excited about, I wasn’t looking forward to heading to the doctor and having to be away from Gerry.
24
GERRY
That was not how I envisioned the evening going.
Saying goodbye to Malia, just as things were starting to look like they were going to kick into overdrive and jump straight from casually seeing someone to a full-on relationship, and damn the torpedoes, she was leaving. I had just seemingly accepted that my own feelings weren’t going to go away. She wasn’t too young for me. We could make it work. The chemistry was off the charts.
So, naturally, she had to leave. It just fit my life story to a tee. We spent the evening having a subdued dinner, and now I was finding myself waking up in my own home, alone. Alone aside from Captain Clovis, at least. The cat, who was currently making biscuits on my chest with his claws only out just enough to make the pinching pain annoying while still looking adorable.
“Let’s not,” I said, picking him up by the ribs and causing him to sink the claws further into my T-shirt. “Ah, yeah, that’s it. Dig a little deeper.”
With a scolding meow, he jumped down off me and sauntered his way out of the bedroom. I always admired cats for that ability. They could saunter away from a nuclear explosion that they caused and still look cool doing it.
I reached over to the nightstand and pulled the phone off the charger. I knew it was going to be a stressful and possibly painful few days for Malia, so I decided to be the jester for a little while. Cueing up a stream of GIFs to send along in our text messages, I metered them out over the course of the day. She wasn’t saying much in response, but sent emoji reactions to a few of them, which let me know she was probably busy.
I tried to understand. She had big things going on, and I didn’t want to be needy. I was just so excited by the connection we had made, and the energy it had put into me, that I didn’t want it to stop. Any connection I could have with her and keep that feeling going was my top priority.
By the second day, the old fears had resurfaced. A nightmare that reoccurred every so often brought me out of my sleep in a sweat, and it took a few minutes to realize I wasn’t at the bottom of the stairs, staring up at the hulking shadow of my biological father. I couldn’t smell the damp mildew or the musty cardboard boxes of the basement, nor feel the slick, cold concrete of the ground below me. Or hear the shrill scream of my biological mother, shouting about things I didn’t understand, internalizing them only as anger at me for existing.
As soon as I was awake and figured out it had been a dream, I reached for my phone. I opened up the message to Malia and then stopped, my thumb hovering over the box where I could type.
Something in my brain cast a pall over me, and in that instant, I just knew she was never coming back. She was going to realize while she was gone that I wasn’t right for her. That I was someone to abandon and throw away. Someone unwanted.
