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I'm not afraid of whatever secret she's keeping, or whatever she's sad about. Things happen to people in their lives. People have rough patches and dark moments and things they carry around like a burden that sometimes only gets put down when they're posted up at a bar. I'd carry Renee's burden, no matter what it was.
I am afraid of losing her though. Either from me asking too many questions or because she breaks herself down. “I'm not pushing.”
“It seems like you might be,” she says lightly, and turns back to the show but leans less on me, literally putting space between us.
“Renee.”
“Yeah?” She glances at me out of the corner of her eye. It's a guarded look. Her eyes are still rimmed red, and her cheeks tear stained no matter how much cold water she splashed on them.
“I like kissing you. Do you know that?”
There’s a small reprieve in her stare. Renee gives me a breathy laugh. “You've said that before.”
“I used to wonder what it would be like to kiss you all the time, and then I found out. It's hard to stop thinking about it.”
She turns her face another inch toward me, the TV reflecting in her eyes. “Is there something you want to ask me, Griffin? Something different from…the questions I don’t want asked?”
There are tons of things I want to ask her. The questions pile up and I shut them all down.
Instead I pretend we're back at the drive-in movie, and I'm just flirting with her because it's date night. I pretend because it’s what she asked me to do.
“Would you mind if I kissed you now?”
Renee shakes her head, and I swear I watch her walls fall down around her. Just like that night in the break room. Just like that moment at the bar.
I reach over and take her chin in my hand, then pull her face toward mine. Touching her is a balm to the pain that I can’t stop. Renee leans into my arm around her shoulder and lets me tip her face up and kiss her. Deep and slow. The warmth is overwhelming.
She needed this. Hell, I needed it too.
She tastes sweet and a little salty, like some of her tears got on her lips and dried there. It takes her a minute to let me in, and then she kisses me back slow and deep. Her arms come up and circle my neck, and I tip her against the arm of the couch and hold her while the show plays on in the background. She tastes so damn good and feels perfect in my arms, and at the same time, I keep thinking this is wrong. There's something wrong. She's hurting too much for one person.
There has to be a way to get her back.
I keep kissing her until she gasps and leans her head on my shoulder, and then I just hold her.
“I'm really tired,” she says, after a while. “I think I need to go to bed early tonight.”
“Do you want to take tomorrow off?” I ask her. “Sleep in, rest up?”
I expect for her to argue with me because she's always looking for extra shifts. Renee almost never turns them down. I know she's saving up and trying to get ahead, but she can’t come in like this.
“Okay,” she agrees.
We finish the episode of her show, and then Renee walks me to the door, saying she needs to sleep. When I ask if she wants me to stay, I already know she’s going to say no before she does. I don't want to leave, but I don’t want to push. She’s so close to the edge already. I bend down to kiss her on the way out, and I get a glimpse of Renee's eyes with an emotion in them I can't name.
She gets up on tiptoe and kisses me on the cheek. Renee makes a little sound as she lowers herself back down, one that might mean she wants more, but she turns away and closes the door behind me.
Renee
I'm so emotional that I can barely sleep, and when I do, I sleep way too late and wake up with bright winter sunlight coming through my window. I know I've screwed up my sleep schedule already, but I really needed to sleep without dreaming.
When I get to my phone, after a bit of coffee, I have a missed call from my mom and three text messages. They're all about the divorce lawyer, so I get out of bed, shower, and rush through getting ready. The second meeting is almost as bad as the first. My mom looks tired with her lips in a thin line.
I keep thinking…she’s not going to go through with it. I’m back and forth with hope and hopelessness. Everything inside feels empty when I look at her. Her black eye is only a rim of darkness now. But she looks worse off now than she did when I first saw her.
“Do you want me to talk to Aunt Laura about coming with you?” I ask when it's over.
She shakes her head. “She already has to live with me while I'm dealing with this. I don't want her to have to see all the dirty details.”
