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“I’m going to take it over to Ianna’s this weekend.” Adrian’s raspy voice cuts through my memories.
Turning around to look at him, I see he’s wearing hisCorvin & Songray weathered t-shirt that stretches across his chest, faded jeans, and tan carpenter boots. He’s just gotten done with a job and he’s cleaning up for the night, and here I am to ruin it.
I miss the easy smile on his face that lights up his eyes, the relaxed way he always held himself, so calming. Right now his body is tense as he shoves his hands in his pockets, looking at me with trepidation. I hate being the one to make him feel this way, but it’s necessary as I stare back at him, stone-faced, trying so hard not to look at him like I once did, like he was the reason for turning on the light inside of me. It takes willpower not to reach up and touch his face, to feel the fine hairs lining his jaw that I know are soft and soothing.
“Her girls will love it.” I look back at the playhouse and wish that I had a do-over. Everything in my life seems to happen too late. My timing is perpetually off.
“You came here to say goodbye,” he confirms with a tick in his jaw, a sign of his frustration.
Turning back around, I look him in the eye when I say, “It’s not fun anymore.”
Adrian takes three strides to close the gap between us and places his hands in my hair, his face so close I can feel his breath against my lips. Closing my eyes I grip his wrists, and allow myself to be intoxicated by him this one last time. That’s exactly what he is, a human being capable of rendering me drunk, able to slip under my skin and travel like bourbon in my bloodstream.
“Don’t say that,” he whispers a plea.
“We both know it was never meant to last,” I say, opening my eyes and seeing him stare back at me with his beautiful brown eyes. When he lets go of me, it’s as if the fog has been lifted and we are left on opposite sides of a river.
“Why do you have to be so goddamn difficult?” His hands fall to his sides, balled into fists. “Is this about your sister? Or Taylor?” he asks, as if there is a simple answer and a simple solution… but there isn’t.
“No,” I explain. “It’s about us.” Narrowing my eyes sympathetically, I wonder why he can’t see this for what it is. “That was only the catalyst for the inevitable,” I say.
Nothing feels this good for the rest of your life. There is always a fall, one that makes your stomach drop and disorients you. I thought I was ready for it, but I’m not.
“You and I are in two different places in life,” I try my hardest to explain.
“This is you using my age as a weapon again.” I can see the frustration and anger in his eyes as clear as I can see the mountain range falling under darkness behind him.
“It’s not a weapon, it’s a fact. I’m forty-three years old, for Christ’s sake. I have an almost grown daughter, and I don’t want to start all over again. I don’t have the energy or the patience,” I say sadly. As much as I might have wanted it before, that is just another example of bad timing. “We want different things.”
“Do not pretend to know what I want when you’ve never asked me!” His anger surprises me, but it’s the truth.
“I’ve never asked because we were never supposed to be anything more than temporary,” I reply while biting my lip.
“The minute I saw you in the bar, Lake, I knew you weren’t temporary,” he says with such conviction, and I wonder how he could be so sure... because here I am, breaking his heart.
“I don’t want to ask you to give up something for me,” I explain, trying to make him see the bigger picture.
“You have no idea what I would give up foryou.” He pulls the bandana from his head in obvious frustration, and steps closer as if he’s ready to swallow me up along with the space between us.
“Why?” I ask, shaking my head in disbelief. “I’m broken.” I place a palm to my chest feeling each broken heart beat.
“We’re all broken, Lake.” Adrian shakes his head and holds onto my arms. “And we will break a million more times before this life is over.”
“We’re victims of bad timing,” I plead, raising my arms in the air causing Adrian to release me. “I never wanted permanent. I made that clear from the start. You changed the rules,” I accuse him.
“There are no rules. No one gets to decide who you love; not Laura, not Beth, and not even you, as much as you fucking try,” he says with such certainty that I almost believe him. “They didn’t like being lied to, but they’ll get over it. Everything else we’ll figure out because that’s what you do when you love someone. You figure it out,” he says angrily.
The wordloveswirls in the air between us like vapor. He’d said it to me before, using my reverse psychology.
Nu te îndragosti de mine,don’t fall in love with me.
But I didn’t listen, didn’t heed the warning, and now I’m paying the price.
“Don’t pretend that everything you have said to me was true because it’s not,” I say tilting my head memorizing him as if I even needed to. I’ve already done so countless times.
He shakes his head in disbelief. “How is it so easy for you to believe that everything I’ve said is a lie?” he asks, looking at me with such sadness, as if he feels sorry for me.
“Because that’s what men do, Adrian, whether they know it or not,” I explain, shoving my hands in the pockets of my jacket, feeling the chill of a Fall Phoenix evening.
