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“You’re not pathetic.”
“I don’t know how to make time for you—us—and help my mom,” she said, opening the lid. The spicy scent of the Tex-Mex food made her mouth water and her stomach roar. “I know I’m not being a good girlfriend, but it feels like if I am, then I’m not a good daughter. I don’t know how to be both.”
Blake didn’t say anything, and Gina unwrapped her plastic knife and fork and cut off the corner of the burrito. “Did you get your nachos?”
“I gave them to Daphne,” he said. “I didn’t know she was here, or I’d have gotten her something.”
“I didn’t see your text,” she said, then put a delicious bite of food in her mouth as she looked at him.
Blake nodded and looked over the dilapidated land and buildings surrounding them. “Gina, I…I don’t want to make you feel like you’re not being a good girlfriend. I don’t care about that. I just…”
“You do care about that,” she said. “We don’t spend hardly any time together anymore. I know that. I feel it. There’s this distance between us, and I don’t like it, Blake. I don’t.” She focused on her food again. “I just don’t know how to fix it.”
“You could not lie to me.”
She couldn’t defend herself, so she didn’t.
“You could let me bring dinner every single night,” he said. “I’d help with the chores too.”
“I don’t want you to,” she said.
“Why’s that?” he asked. “We’d be able to see one another. Talk. Spend all that time together. I could get to know your nieces and nephews and your parents. You wouldn’t have to do everything alone.”
“I like—” She cut off before she could admit she liked feeling powerful and like she’d done something all by herself.
“I know what you were going to say,” he said.
“No,” she said.
“I do,” he said. “You were going to say I like doing things alone.” He shook his head, obviously irritated. “I know you, Gina. You’re independent and strong. I like that about you, I honestly do—except for in times like this.”
He jumped down to the ground and turned back to her, dusting his hands together. “It feels like you’re pushing me away on purpose. So you sit there and you cry and you say you’re selfish, but it’s not that. You say you’ve put distance between us, but you don’t know how to fix it. You do, though. You just don’t want to, because you’re too proud.”
Gina glared at him. “I’m not the one who needs help.”
“Aren’t you?” He cocked his head at her, his eyes narrowing slightly. All of the scrutiny dropped from his face. “You’re the one who said you wanted to be in love with your best friend. This is me trying to be your friend, and you don’t seem to want it. It’s not about me being upset that you’re not a good girlfriend—whichisn’ttrue.” He folded his arms and gave her glare right back to her.
“Afriendwould come sit with you while you cleaned. They’d work alongside you. They’d bring dinner and offer all the coffee so you don’t have to shoulder everything alone.”
Gina’s throat constricted, and she didn’t know how to answer.
Blake shook his head, his frustration overflowing from him and filling the air around them. “All right, I’ve said everything I need to say. Enjoy your dinner.” He turned and started back through the weeds.
Stunned, Gina could only watch him for several long seconds. Then she jumped down from the fence too, saying, “Blake, wait.”
He’d gotten too far from her, and he didn’t turn back. She followed him, silently, until they got back to tamer land. He moved faster than her, and she stayed by the back shed with her amazing burrito as Blake went up the steps and into the sunroom.
The screens blurred the scene, but she clearly saw him hug her mom, shake her dad’s hand, and grin at Daphne. Then he left. Just like that, he left.
The sound of a truck engine filled the air from the front of the house, and then it drove away. Gina stood by the back shed, unsure about what to do now. Her pulse started to race through her body, because things between her and Blake had been tense before.
“Not tense,” she said. “Stale. Distant. You’ve been distant with him.” A relationship couldn’t grow and bloom with a thirty-minute lunch each day, where she barely spoke. Now, though, she had no idea if she and Blake even had a relationship anymore.
He hadn’t said he wanted to break up, and Gina looked up into the perfect summer evening sky. “I don’t want to lose him.”
Then don’t.The words entered her mind in a whispered voice that could’ve belonged to anyone.
You’re too proudstreamed through her head as she walked back to the house.Aren’t you?he’d asked her when she’d said she wasn’t the one who needed help.
