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He slides away from me and glances at the door like he's just remembered he's my boss. I hop off the table, find some paper towels, and clean myself up while he puts his pants back on.
“I want to know,” he says when I turn back around. “I care about you, and?—”
“No,” I say, too loud and too fast. “No, you don't care about me. Because all of this was pretend. Remember? None of it was real. It was just a way to have fun because it can't go anywhere. This just isn't going to be a thing.”
Griffin opens his mouth, but the door opens out front, and I know we're out of time.
“I have to get back to work,” I tell him, and leave him in the break room. And my heart stays back there, too. It must. Because for the rest of the night I feel nothing but hollowness, and for the first time with Griffin, like it’s a mistake that can’t be undone.
Griffin
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
I wait in the break room for ten minutes, trying to figure out what the hell I'm supposed to do. Renee's voice comes back to where I'm sitting from the front room. She sounds happy, and I know it's all for show. It’s fake. She’s pretending.
But that stuff she said just now wasn't pretend. She meant it. Or she was angry enough to want to mean it. Her eyes flashed when she told me that none of this was real.
Why couldn’t I just up and let it be? It’s what she asked. I had to go and ruin it.
With my hands gripping the edge of the desk, I sit there for another few minutes trying to decide what real is. Is something only real if the whole town knows about it? Is something only real if everybody in your family and everybody who drinks at your bar approves? Is it only real if you've never been somebody's boss?
Everything feels real to me. She’s real and so is her pain. Anger gets the best of me, and I throw the first thing I can get a grip on. The mug that was on the desk shatters against the wall and I don’t fucking care.
I love her. I fucking love her. I want her and I need her to know that it’s real for me. Why the fuck did I have to say anything? For a moment it was all okay. She was mine and I was hers and everything was okay.
I steady myself before I lose my goddamn mind over this woman.
I can't keep thinking about the what ifs anymore, so I shake it off and go back out to the front. Renee keeps herself busy, not looking at me while she chats with the guy at the bar. He looks tired, like he just needed a drink to finish off the day, and he doesn't stay long.
I feel like I can't breathe. I just fucked Renee in the break room while there were guys in the kitchen and the bar was still open. I don't know what's more real than that. I can still smell her on me. Every time I try to say something to her, the words get stuck on the way out.
I don’t know what to do if she won’t tell me.
We move around one another like we don't exist.
The guy at the bar finishes his drink, leaves a tip for Renee, and heads out.
With no one else here, Renee and I silently clean the bar for the next day and avoid each other. In the kitchen, the guys give each other shit while they wash everything down. I feel like I could cut the tension between us with a knife.
It only gets worse when I tell the kitchen guys they can head home fifteen minutes early. Every bit of emotion stays just beneath the surface. But not a goddamn word comes to mind to say. Every goddamn thing I do from the moment Renee left me in that room until now when I’m watching the last of them leave is pretend. The only thing that’s real is the tension between Renee and me.
The door closes with the kitchen staff leaving.
Then it's just us. In the calm after the storm.
She keeps herself even busier with all kinds of last-minute stuff, barely meeting my eyes. I get it. It hurts to look at her, too, because I don't understand where the hell everything went so wrong.
It matters more than anything, and it doesn't matter at all. I'm not going to fire her. I'm not going to make her stop working at the bar. If she wants to quit, she can, but it's not going to be my choice.
I swallow my pain while we close. Renee heads out before me. It's snowing again for the second time this month. That never happens in Beaufort.
And this? Falling in love with someone this hard? That never happened to me.
I lock everything up and make my way to the bar to tell her I’m sorry. Cause I can at least say that, but she’s already gone and is by her car.
I wait a moment, but she doesn’t leave. There’s a small chance. There’s the smallest shred of hope.
Renee's watching me from where she's standing at her car, her red hat setting off her pink cheeks, and gives me a slow, sad smile. And I feel like I already know what she’s going to say, and I don’t want her to. I don’t want this to be over.
