The bathroom fills with steam, the room as warm as the air passing between us, but the tile is cold against my back when Elliot pushes me against it. I commit every feeling, every action, every image to memory.
The glass shower door fogs up, blocking out the outside world and for a moment it’s just us.
“I love you,” I whisper, my voice practically lost in the sound of the running water. “You will always have my heart, Elliot.”
He pins my hands above my head, his face buried in my neck as neither one of us says anything more. We’re together in a peacefulness that feels like it’s about to disappear, like our relationship is about to take its last dying breath. He enters me and I gasp out his name. It’s a plea of desperation, a cry of knowing what’s to come.
The Über comes early, too early and too soon, and I want to beg him to stay, but nothing has been resolved. We tried to talk about it last night, discussing other options for us continuing this, but it all came back to my book and the subsequent tour. Elliot doesn’t see the need to share what has come of our story. I even told him it doesn’t have to be our story. In the end it’s fiction and I can write whatever ending I want.
“I support your career, but I can’t be a part of it,” he told me and I agreed. He doesn’t need to be a part of it, but I do need him to understand that people are counting on this story, including my agent and not writing it isn’t an option.
I have a contract to write the second part of our story and I owe it to everyone who bought my book to give them the ending they deserve. It doesn’t even have to be my real life ending and given the way things are going now, no reader will want this ending.
We walk out to the waiting car as if we’re two people who don’t know each other, silence bouncing off the space between us. We climb in as strangers and the driver, like us, says nothing only adding to the already awkward tension that beats heavily in my chest.
This is who we are now, silent and stubborn, allowing society to break our bond with its ideals and norms.
The ride is short and I want to call out to the driver to keep going because this feels like all we have left. I ache with pain, dull and constant at the thought of him leaving, and leaving this way. There’s so much that will be left unsaid, so much left unfinished.
But when the driver pulls up outside JFK, Elliot opens the door without giving it a second thought. He says he isn’t angry but his actions say otherwise.
He’s hurt and his hurt is masked in anger. I’m broken and disappointed, muted now because everything I want to say feels trapped on my tongue.
I follow Elliot out of the car, shooing the driver off even though I asked him to wait for me. This isn’t going to be quick and we already have the eyes of every traveler on us. We don’t need a bigger audience.
“I don’t want you to go,” I say, reaching for him, but he shies away, making me pull in a ragged breath.
How the hell did we get here so quickly?
We went from desperately trying to find each other to now behaving like strangers. Everything about it feels wrong.
“I don’t want you to write the book, but we’re still there,” he replies sharply and it’s like a slap in the face. His words are harsh and they make me hate myself just a little, but they also enrage me as if he’s trying to push me toward making a decision. Ultimatums are not a good look.
“I’m sorry, but that’s not what I hoped you would say,” I bite back, falling into the same trap we were in last night.
“Why are you sorry?” The sneer on his face says he’s ready to argue, his lips curled up, his forehead creased. But we can’t keep doing this. It’s not becoming on either of us and it’s ruining everything we’ve held onto for so long.
I don’t answer him, not needing to continue because we can’t walk away from each other angry. I pull him close, my hands on either side of his face, I kiss him, long and slow, and as our lips touch, they tell him everything we both can’t say to each other right now.
“Call me when you land,” I murmur, my head now resting on his chest.
“I will.”
“We need more than this,” I say, shaking my head. “We need more than a weekend, more than a few days to figure all this out.”
“We do,” he agrees, closing his eyes, a pained tension to his body now. “We owe each other more than just a few arguments before we decide this won’t work.”
“Let’s take a few days and decide what’s important—”
“I know what’s important, Nora. It’s you. It’s us and I’m determined to make this work.”
“Then you have to understand I can’t just give up my career because you aren’t comfortable with it,” I say, defending myself again, and I bite down on my lip, shaking my head.
“I don’t want to argue, Nora. Not when I’m about to get on a plane and be hundreds of miles away from you. We both need to think long and hard about what we want out of this and why it was worth fighting for in the first place.” He lets out a hard sigh and everything he says is right. We do need to think about why we spent all this time looking for each other if in the end we were just going to fuck it all off over a few arguments.
“All relationships take work and ours is going to take more than most. This is something I keep telling myself,” I murmur, almost as a reminder to myself rather than to Elliot.
Again we’re both nodding, the agreements passing between us, but the tension still lingers. Is it because he’s leaving? Is it the fact that we have no definitive plan for what our life together looks like? The questions are insurmountable and far too vast to answer on the sidewalk outside a bustling airport.
“This isn’t goodbye forever. It’s just goodbye to sort things out. I didn’t come here with the expectation we would be moving in together. I came because I needed you. Because my life isn’t complete without you.”
His words are all consuming and each one makes my heart feel as if it might shatter even more than it already has. We’re overwhelmed and influenced by far more than just each other.
“Neither is mine. Go, get on your plane and we can talk every night this week.”
“I love you, Nora,” Elliot says, my name something I’ve longed for years to hear him say.
“And I love you, Elliot.”
I can’t go home when I finally walk away from the airport. I waited for what feels like hours on that small strip of sidewalk outside the terminal. I did nothing but stand there. My thoughts blank and my heart feeling like it lost a piece of itself, like Elliot took it with him.
I take the subway to Alice’s despite not even knowing if she’s home. She owes me anyway after all those times I found her asleep on my couch.
Boy, how the roles have reversed.
I forget knocking and use my key, startling Alice a little when she sees it’s me coming down her narrow hallway.
“I thought you were James,” she says, going back to examining a proof sheet. “You okay?”
“No. Elliot just got on a plane back to Chicago and I have no idea what happens now. We had a fight. I mean it wasn’t like a knock-down-drag-out-screaming-match or anything, but I was stubborn and shitty. I told him I was writing the second book even if he didn’t like it.”