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Niles stayed in the doorway.
Dahlia and Max started up a conversation about the May Day parade, which Max was making some float for. Niles was pretty much never awake for the May Day parade, or if he was, it was because he was working, and therefore couldn’t make it. Last year, maybe he’d seen it through the windows of the sandwich shop.
Eventually, Max left, and it was just him and Dahlia again.
“Look,” said Dahlia. “I know we need to talk and everything, Niles, but I don’t really have answers for you, yet. I’m kind of figuring out a lot of things.”
“You could figure things out with me,” he said.
“I mean, I could,” she said. “But, um, I don’t know about that, because…” She furrowed her brow at him. “I feel like you have a vested interest in me being with you because you’re making me more important than I am.”
He folded his arms over his chest. “Okay, what?”
“That thing you said? About changing because you found the right girl? Because you found me?”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t know if I want that kind of responsibility.”
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Well, what happens when I disappoint you?”
“You won’t. You practically killed me and it didn’t faze me.”
She laughed. “What if I… I don’t know… what if I slept with someone else?”
He drew back, hurt. “You wouldn’t.”
“Well, probably not,” she said. “But I was just remembering how you said that when that girl in college cheated on you—”
“Yeah, but now it’s different. I’m not doing that kind of thing anymore.”
“Why not?”
“Because…” He furrowed his brow. He didn’t want to say, “because of you,” not if it was somehow the wrong thing to say.
“I think it’s because you decided to be different,” she said. “But you think it’s because of me.”
He thought about this.
“Listen,” she said, “I spent all this time thinking I needed Tommy. I never needed him.”
He let out a breath. “Okay, but people do need other people. We’re not all just individuals floating around needing to be entirely self-sufficient or whatever.”
“I’m not saying that,” she said. “I don’t know what I’m saying, Niles.”
“That you don’t want to be with me because you don’t trust me.”
“I want to trust you because you trust yourself,” she said. “Not because you need me to motivate you to be a better man.”
Oh, sacred teachings, when she put it like that, it made him sound pathetic.
She was still talking. “And also, I really don’t know what I want. I don’t know where I want to live. I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. I don’t know if I want to date you. I don’t know anything right now. I’m trying to figure it out, and that’s just going to have to be okay, because I cannot do any better right now.”
He nodded. “Obviously, it’s okay.” He backed up. “This was shitty of me to try to corner you and make you make a decision.”
“It’s fine, Niles, but it’s just indicative of you thinking you need me. You don’t need me. You could have done all of this on your own.”
