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Suddenly my anger fills me, fills this tiny apartment. My hand shakes on the lock as I flip it. I swing open the door, my heart pounding. I cry, immediate and hard when I see him. The gut-wracking kind of sob that makes it hard to speak. That makes it so I can get only this out: “No. I don’t want to talk to you. Ever again.”
Jesse is blank. Way beyond Grump Face. He’s blank as he steps back, turns his back, walks away. But then he turns around and part of me, a very stupid part of me, is so relieved. He’s coming back.
“You’re not being fair,” he says, and his face is blank but his voice is hard. It’s something I’ve never heard from him before; at least, not directed at me. “Don’t I get a fucking say in this?”
“You got your say. You said nothing.”
“I’m not like you, Lulu. I can’t just jump headfirst into something and hope for the best.”
“I don’t do that.” I cross my arms over my chest. Do I?
“I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. I’m just saying I can’t do that. What happens if we try to be more than friends and then it doesn’t work out? Are we just going to go back to being friends again?”
“I didn’t think about it, I guess,” I say quietly. I feel like I’m being chastised.
“I never said you weretoo much.” He throws up the most sarcastic air quotes I’ve ever seen. “I said,it’stoo much. What I feel for you is too much.” He presses his fist to his chest. “What’s going to happen to me if you decide to leave? Or if you just get tired of me.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” I yell. “You’re acting as if I’m a flight risk.”
“Yeah, well, you’re acting as if I’m just like everybody else who’s made you feel bad about yourself. I’m not Brad or Brent or whoever the fuck.”
“Brian,” I whisper.
“I know his name,” he snaps. I had no idea Jesse had this level of hurt inside him. “I’m just refusing to say it. I’m not Nora, either,” he says, calmer.
“I’m... I...didn’t realize.” A fresh wave of tears starts and I dash at them, suddenly embarrassed to be crying in front of Jesse.
“No, you wouldn’t. You spend so much time trying to get all these other people to like you, Audrey and Miranda and everyone in the study. You can’t see me standing right in front of you.”
Much like the last time we stood in this doorway, facing off, Jesse has said the wrong thing, but I’m pretty sure there was still nothing he could have said to make this better.
“I can’tseeyou? Jesse, you’re all I see. But maybe that’s the problem.”
He frowns. “What do you mean?”
I shrug, trying to fake flippancy. I’m not even sure that I mean what I’m saying. I’m just sad and mad. “We joined this stupid study to make friends and we just have sex with each other instead.”
“Fine,” he says, and there’s something resolute about him. He’s calm while I’m a storm; he’s safe. “That settles it, then. We end this. So we can make friends.” He says the last words through his teeth.
My arms ache to wrap around him, to go to him. I want to go back to this morning when I was asleep in his bed, start this day over. But he’s blank again. He’s the Jesse I first met, a man who would only give the bare minimum.
Even though it’s a terrible idea, even though I know—Iknow—what the answer will be, I pick this scab. I ask, my voice high, “Can we still be friends?”
He shakes his head once. In the dark, the only light from the security lamp overhead, his eyes are glassy. “No.”
I slam the door. Slam it in the hopes that the sound will act like a Band-Aid, a momentary distraction from the pain in my heart. The pain that registers distantly as the loss of him, all of him. His friendship, his love. Everything.
The door shudders in the frame, like he’s pressed his weight against it. His voice is closer now, as if he’s speaking right into the seam where the door meets the wall.
“I’m sorry,” he says. He sounds it.
“I’m not.” I gasp the words that are more fiction than truth. But I can’t see past the anger, the pain, the embarrassment of being hurt by him and loving him all the same. “Just go, Jesse,” I say, taking a deep breath. “Please.”
The door shudders again under one, singular knock; the gravel under his feet clatters gently as he steps away from the door. I press myself against the wood, trying to hear more of him, hating myself for it.
The moment he’s gone, I wish he was here. I wish he never left.
I cry against the wood until my legs can’t hold me up anymore.
