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He smiled, but it wasn’t built on humor. It was wry and self-deprecating.
“I’d gladly take one”—he spread his arms—“if it gets me closer to earning your forgiveness.”
Her head had started to hurt, and her eyes stung. She wanted to cry. Then she wanted to lie down and pretend like none of this was happening. Like Walker Abbott had never come back to Greenbelt, and she’d never met him, and he’d never made her fall in love with him. His leaving wouldn’t have hurt if it hadn’t felt so much like abandonment.
“I don’t want to hurt you, Walker.… Don’t… I don’t know what the hell I want right now.”
“What if… what if I sat right here until you figured it out?” He pointed to the dirty linoleum floor next to her door. “I don’t care how long it takes. Hours, days, whatever. I’ll sit right here and wait for you. Just like I made you wait for me.…”
Torn between not wanting to let him in and not wanting him to leave, his suggestion seemed like the best option. Torturous, for sure, but maybe he was right. Maybe he did deserve a taste of his own medicine.
“Fine.” She nodded. “I’m going in now.… I’ll… we’ll see.…”
She didn’t stick around to watch him settle in, fearful that if she hesitated, she’d change her mind. She locked the door when she got inside, placing the cobbler box on her kitchen counter but making no move to open it.
Knowing that Walker sat right outside her door made it nearly impossible to focus. She tried to sort laundry but ended up abandoning the activity halfway through when the tedium of it became maddening. She sat down at her desk, figuring she could at least answer some work emails, but the walls of her apartment were thin, and she heard Walker shifting around outside, no doubt trying to get comfortable. It didn’t matter how loud she turned her music up, she was too aware that she wasn’t alone. Not really.
He was out there, so close but still far as hell, waiting on an answer. And she had no fucking idea whether she could give him the answer he so obviously wanted or whether her indecision would last so long, it would drive him to leave.
He did have a life to get to, after all. The thought tasted bitter even though she didn’t say the words out loud. Shame filled her, and her vision blurred from the force of it.
What had changed in the time since he’d left? What had made him come back, looking for her forgiveness? Maybe that was all he wanted. To assuage his guilt for hurting her. Maybe she was misreading the entire situation. What if it wasn’t love that had brought him to her doorstep but some misplaced sense of responsibility?
Her heart thudded. That was an entirely new thing, wasn’t it? Here she was, debating whether or not to reject his love when she didn’t even know if he had come to offer it in the first place.
Head pounding, she grabbed her phone and all but ran to the bathroom. She turned the shower on, as hot as she could get it without scalding herself, put one of her playlists on shuffle, and turned the volume all the way up. She needed to use as many of her senses as possible to drown out the turmoil in her head. She scrubbed her body with a cloth that was rough on her skin and soap that was so strong it was almost overwhelming. She stayed under the spray for nearly twenty minutes, then climbed into bed with her towel and shower cap still on.
When she woke up two hours later, it took her a few minutes into her lucidness to remember what had happened.
“Walker?” She called his name and waited to see if he’d answer.
He did almost immediately, his tone eager but muffled, like he was half asleep. “Yeah?”
“Nothing.” She threw herself back on the bed, relieved he hadn’t left, and stared at the ugly popcorn ceiling.
The second she thought he might have given up and left, her body had tightened up, heart seizing, tears threatening to spring up in her lashes. That said something, didn’t it? He’d been out there for four hours, sitting, waiting. No doubt as uncomfortable and unsure as she was.
She couldn’t make him sit out there forever. She had to make a decision. Time wasn’t going to stand still just because she wanted it to. She pushed up off the bed, slipping on a pair of leggings and a T-shirt and replacing her shower cap with a big satin bonnet. If she was going to get her heart broken, she at least wanted to be comfortable.
She opened the door hesitantly, something inside her breaking when she saw Walker’s long, lean legs splayed out on the floor. His back was up against the wall, his eyes were closed, and his lips were parted slightly.
She raised her voice. “Walker.”
He jumped awake, springing to his feet, chest heaving. She stepped back inside her apartment, leaving the door open and her hand on the knob. “Come in.”
Like the last time he’d been here, he took up a lot of space, not only with his body but with his whole way of being.
“Walker… what the hell are you doing here? I want the truth.” She found herself unable to hold back on what she was thinking. What would be the use, anyway? She’d agreed to talk to him when she’d finally put him out of his misery and let him inside.
“I spent the entire ride over from Gram’s tryin’ to think of what I was goin’ to say to you when I got here. I spent the last four hours sittin’ in front of your door, mullin’ the words over and over in my head like I was rehearsin’ lines. And now that I’m standin’ here in front of you, I can’t remember any of them.”
Her breaths came hard, lips trembling from building emotion. She tried not to get her hopes up. What kind of woman was she? So excited that the man she loved had come back to her that she was almost willing to jump into his arms with no explanation? Was she pathetic or did she just crave him so much that everything else felt inconsequential? Were those two things even mutually exclusive?
When she didn’t say anything, Walker took a deep breath, moving so close to her that she’d barely need to lift a hand to touch him. She clenched her hands into fists to stop herself.
“Aja… Aja, I’ve never had anything in my life as good as you. I spent the entire time we were together tryin’ to convince myself that I couldn’t have you because our lives didn’t match up perfectly. I only thought about the distance between Greenbelt and Charleston and why it could never work because of the baggage I’m bringin’ to the table. I tried to rationalize somethin’ that requires more faith than anythin’.”
He took a shuddering breath. “I’ve thought about all the ways this could turn out. The good and the bad. And in the end, all I can come up with is that it’s like that bingo call—you know: ‘either way up.’ Either way I turn this situation around, I win, because I get you. Whether just for now or for the rest of my life, I get you.”
