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“Who says it’s a race?” I ask as a different fear overcomes me. Those currents are pulling him away from me, and I’m not sure there’s anything I can do to stop it from happening.
He waves a hand at the darkness in front of us. “They do. All of them. Everything in our society is set up as a race. Who can talk the best game. Who can make the most money. Who canliethe best. I’ll never be able to keep up. I was born missing something. I’m still missing it. I’llalwaysbe missing it.”
I tighten my hand around his so much it probably hurts. “Danny, you’re not missinganything. The people who told you that were wrong. You’re the best man I’ve ever known. So kind and smart and handsome, and it fucking sucks that you don’t see yourself the way I do, the way Ruthie and your friends do.”
I know immediately it was the wrong thing to say, because he snatches his hand back. His jaw tics. “What did Ruthie say about me?”
“She didn’t say anything,” I retort quickly, but it’s a lie and it sounds like one. “She told me a bit more about your parents. About what it was like for you, growing up with them.”
How they made you feel you weren’t enough. How they used you.
He gets up, pacing a few steps in the dark, and even though I know he’d never do such a thing, I feel a pulse of worry that he’ll walk away and leave me here with my crutches in the dark. But he turns back, his eyes shining. “You put me in the back booth at Glitterati because it was quieter and darker, didn’t you? And the music…Daphne said she remembered it being louder.”
“So what?” I ask, taken aback. “I wanted you to be comfortable there. I knew…”
“You know there’s something wrong with me,” he says. “You know I’m not the kind of guy who could go to a bar for a couple of hours without having to be alone for four afterward. That’s exactly my point.”
“So what?” I ask, fumbling with my crutches so I can stand too. “You have a problem with me trying to take care of you? You take care of me all the time. You think it’s easy for me to let you? It’s not. No one’severtaken care of me like that.” As I say it, I feel tears welling in my eyes—angry tears—and I don’t know who I’m mad at. Him. Me. His parents. The universe, maybe, for giving me this perplexing and intelligent and giving man and then tearing him away from me. For making someone so wonderful and skewing his perception of himself so much he can only see what he views as his flaws.
“You don’t get it,” he says, and there’s such grief behind those words that they feel like a sucker punch to the chest.
“No, I really don’t.”
“You were doing those things for me because I’m not normal,” he says, his voice rising. “I…”
“So the fuck what?” Even as I’m saying it, I remember what Ruthie told me. About the way his parents used to treat him. It must have slid under his skin and made him see himself this way—as someone who’s other. “You’re better than normal. Better than basic.”
“You think that now, but…”
I reach forward and shove him. Not an easy feat right now, but desperate times and all that. “Don’t you tell me what I think, Danny. You may be smarter than I could ever hope to be, but you don’t get to tell me what I think or how I feel.”
My hand is on his chest, and it occurs to me that it might be the last time I get to touch him there. I feel tears falling down my cheeks.
“It’s better this way,” he says, his tone softer now. “It was probably always going to happen like this, after you got better.”
It’s nothing I haven’t feared, but I didn’t want to hear it from him. He was the one who knew how to make things work. He was the one who was smart enough to figure it out.
I drop my hand as if the contact is burning me.
“You’re a coward,” I tell him, even though I know it’s not really true. He’s taught me that a person can be so many things at the same time—a coward and the bravest man I’ve ever known. The person who healed my heart and also broke it. Maybe I shouldn’t have followed him out here. Maybe he needed more time to process the bullshit that was just heaped onto him. But I did come, and all of this did happen, and now I’m starting to think I need time too. Because I can feel myself on the verge of falling apart, of crying and huddling into a little ball that’s not at all the strong woman I aspire to be. And I don’t want him to see me like that. Not right now.
I didn’t see our conversation ending this way. I wanted to tell him how I felt, and now I’m talking to a brick wall. “I’m going home now.”
“It’s probably better if you don’t stay at the apartment,” he starts. “They—”
“That woman left,” I say. “She’s gone, there’s a new security system, and Big Mike is a fucking police detective. I can’t think of a safer place for me. Ifyoudon’t want to come home, you don’t have to.”
He watches me for a long moment, his gaze tortured, and I realize I’m taking his home from him. But I don’t want to relent, not now. Because he’s the one who’s pulling away.
His throat bobs. “Okay. We can tell everyone we changed our mind about Thanksgiving. We can—”
“No,” I say, the word coming out sharply. “Iwillbe hosting Thanksgiving dinner. You can come if you’d like. Ruthie and Izzy too.”
He watches me. Nods. “I’m going to follow you back to the apartment to make sure you get there safely.”
“I can get back fine on my own,” I say, swallowing the tears.
His hands reach forward before falling to his sides. He looks devastated, but he’s not back-peddling. He’s not telling me that any of this is going to be okay. “I need my computer and some things.”
