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I resisted the urge to bend over and pull his chair so that he was facing me. “Has Rita been okay at helping you up, or would both of us be better?”
He bounced his tennis ball. “It’s fine.”
“So you did your therapy this morning?”
He was quiet. “Yeah.”
“Have you gotten hold of your brother?”
“A couple of times. But I didn’t want to invite him over to your house.”
“You can if you want to.”
Luke sighed, as if he were tired of talking. “Sure, thank you for offering.”
My sympathy was running out again. I was trying, I was giving him a lot to work with, I was making it easy, and he was pushing me away. “Is there something wrong?” I offered.
“Nothing’s wrong. Thank you.”
That politeness again. It was like a screen. I tried again. “Is it money?”
“Nope,” he said, almost too quickly.
It wasn’t like we were best friends or anything, but he was so different from the Luke whom I had Skyped with, who had stories to tell, or even the Luke who’d sat next to me at the hospital cafeteria, the eager listener, or the person who made me feel like my ideas were magic. “All right, so, then, what’s going on?” When he didn’t answer, I raised my voice. “What do you need?”
He groaned, turning jerkily to face me. “I need to have never gotten myself into this situation in the first place. How’s that?”
“Well, I can’t help you with that one.” I grabbed my purse from the couch, heading toward the door. I needed out of this den of sadness, what used to be my haven. Where I was now apparently a situation.
“I didn’t mean you.”
“Right.” Before I slammed the door, it slipped out. “Enjoy wasting away.”
As I stomped down the stairs, I didn’t know if the guilt in my gut was stirring because it was a mean thing to say, meaner than his silence, or because I knew that no matter what I said, no matter whether he would respond in anger or just ignore me, I would always have the upper hand. I would always be the one to move on with my day, to try to forget and move forward, to slam the door and stomp down the stairs and get in my car and go. Because I could.
