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“What are we doing?” she asked. “You and me.”
I frowned. “What do you mean, what are we doing?”
“Us,” she said. “Whatever it is that we’re doing together. I’ve never even had a steady boyfriend, did you know that? The longest I’ve ever dated someone has been a week.”
Something went cold in the middle of my back, moving up the back of my neck.
“I’ve never even owned a cat,” Tessa went on. “I got my GED by the skin of my teeth when I was twenty-one. All I own is a few garbage bags full of clothes and that’s it.”
The cold had traveled to the pit of my stomach. “Tessa, what are you saying?”
She looked at me. I’d never seen her look quite like that, like someone had stripped the skin off her and left her raw. Not even when she’d banged on my door and told me her deepest secret.
“I’m saying I don’t think I can do this,” she said. “I thought I could, but I can’t. I’m not a strong enough person.”
Now the cold was in the back of my throat. My hands were like ice on the arms of my chair.
Dumping me. She was dumping me.
Part of me had expected it. What was she doing with me, anyway? I’d never figured it out. I was used to people leaving. I was too much, I knew. I was too difficult. It was all too fucking hard.
And still it hit me in the chest like the slice of a blade.
Through the numbness working its way through me, something crossed my mind. She hadn’t been like this this morning; she’d been flirty and relaxed when she left, her usual self. “Something happened,” I managed to say. “While you were out. Something happened.”
“I did some thinking, that’s all,” Tessa said, but she looked a little panicked. She was a terrible liar, at least with me. “I just… thought things over.”
“No, you didn’t.” I put my hands in my lap. “You overthink everything, like I do, but that isn’t what this is. Something happened that made you do this.”
She shook her head.
And then it came to me. My brother, telling me I didn’t know Tessa, that she could be anyone. Then quietly picking up his things and leaving, the argument over. “It was Nick, wasn’t it? Nick got to you.”
Panic again. “Andrew, no one got to me.”
“Bullshit.” The word came out harsh, like sandpaper. My brother. My fucking brother, the person I relied on most in the world. “You were fine this morning. You were fine last night. You were a strong enough person then.”
She flinched, the expression moving over her beautiful face. Pain crossing her blue eyes. She may not have been good enough for L.A., but I had never seen a woman as beautiful as Tessa. “What are you suggesting we do, Andrew?” she said, her voice raw. “Are you suggesting we become boyfriend and girlfriend, when neither of us knows how that works? That we move in together, get married, have kids? Are you suggesting we follow the script? Neither of us knows how to read it.”
“I don’t follow a script, and neither do you.” My own voice was rough with pain. In a way, she was right. We’d never be a normal couple, starting with the fact that I couldn’t take her on dates. My own fucked-up failings. “We can make our own script. Both of us do that already. We make this, whatever it is—we make it what we want it to be. We make the rules ourselves, and fuck whoever doesn’t agree with them.”
“Great,” she said. “And then something bad happens. You have a bad day, or I do. Or both of us. And when that happens, I’m going to say the wrong things and make you angry or hurt your feelings. And I won’t know how to handle any of it or what to do. I won’t know what you need or how to give it. I’ll be clueless and stupid. And I’ll fuck it up.”
“You’re doing it right now,” I said. “What did you and Nick do? Meet up somewhere I couldn’t see you? Talk about me like I’m a kid you share with your ex? Figure out what’s best for me?”
She let out a little sound in the back of her throat, halfway between a moan of pain and a growl of frustration. She ran a hand through her hair and pulled away from the doorframe. “I have to go.”
“You don’t have to, you want to,” I said. “Let’s be clear on that at least, Tessa. You’re leaving because you want to.”
“I don’t know what I want.” She walked toward the door. “I’ve never known, Andrew, and you haven’t cleared things up at all.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I have to go,” she said again, like it was something she was repeating to herself, and the door closed behind her.
I didn’t have to turn on the security feed to know she was walking back across the street to her own house, going in and closing the door. Shutting me out.
I sat there for a long time, the silence ringing loudly in the room. Taking one breath. And then another.
