“I just need you to sit there and listen to me for a minute, okay?” I told her when she called. I was pacing my living room, heart thundering unsteadily. “I know you’re scared of us, of what we’ve been in the past and what we might not be in the future. I know you’re standing on your own for the first time and you’re proud of that, hell I’m proud of that too, but I can stand with you.”
“Jamie—”
“And I know long distance freaks you out,” I continued, because I knew if I let her stop me, I’d lose my nerve. “But we’ve made it through the summer practically as a long-distance couple, even if we didn’t title it that.”
I took a breath, knowing that that fact alone strengthened us. We’d been through so much already. I had no doubt we could survive anything.
“I’ve been thinking,” I told her. “Your internship is almost over, and I’ve been looking at some publishing places in Miami. A lot of them are hiring, and you have experience now. Your classes are online, B. You could come home, we could be together.”
“Jamie, I—”
“No, just let me finish,” I pleaded, glancing at my laptop on the kitchen table. I had tabs and tabs of publishing jobs open within an hour of where I lived, a document with all the links ready to send her the moment she said yes. “I know this is a lot to ask. You don’t owe me anything, and the fact that I’m asking you to uproot yourself and move back for me is selfish as fuck. But I realized last time you walked away from me I didn’t ask you anything at all.”
That sentence hit me harder when I voiced it out loud, because as much as I wanted to be angry with her for those three years of silence, I’d let her walk away. I hadn’t told her that I needed her, that I wanted to be with her through it. Maybe if I had, things would have been different…
“So this time, I’m putting it out there,” I said. “I’m letting you know what I want. I want you. I want you to move back, hell, to move in.” I laughed, something between insanity and love flowing through me like a tidal wave. “It doesn’t have to be complicated. We can do this, B.”
“I’m staying.”
“Jenna’s here, too. And your mom. And—”
“Jamie, I’m staying in Pittsburgh,” she said louder. “They offered me a full-time job. Today.”
I paused at the top of a breath, the air filling my lungs, until what felt like a needle prick had me deflating like a helium balloon. I sank in on myself, frowning, sure I didn’t hear her right.
She was staying.
She got a job.
She was staying.
“Okay,” I finally said. “That’s okay. We can see each other once a month, take turns flying, and eventually we’ll figure it out.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” B said, her voice breaking a bit.
My heart cracked.
“You have your dad’s firm there. And I have my life here.”
I swallowed against the emotion threatening to suffocate me. “That doesn’t mean we can’t have a life together, too.”
I wished I could see her, then. I wished I was right there in her apartment with her, holding her, looking into her eyes when I told her I believed in us.
“But it kind of does, Jamie,” she said after a moment. “It all sounds so easy when you say it over the phone, but a long-distance relationship is hard. It’s complicated and messy, and neither of us needs that right now, not when we’re both just getting started in our careers. It’s just not the right time for us… it’s never the right time.”
I shook my head, over and over, disbelief strangling me. How could she push me away like this? How could she ignore everything I was saying, dig her heels in so deep on the fact that we couldn’t make it long distance without even trying?
“That’s not fair. You don’t understand this, B — any of it,” I said. “When you left Alder, you got to leave it all behind — the places we went, the memories we made. But I lived there. Without you. For three years.” I paused, my chest heaving. “And then, when I found you again, everything seemed right. The timing, the way we both felt. I finally got an answer from you, why you stayed away all those years, and I got it, B — I really did. I understood. You were broken from your father’s death and you needed time and space. I gave that to you. Happily. I didn’t know if I’d ever have you again, but I didn’t care because I knew what you needed from me.”
Tears welled in my eyes, my nose flaring at the memory of what it felt like to think I’d lost her forever.
I didn’t know if I’d survive that again.
“But now, you’re telling me it’s still not there — it’s still not the right time. You couldn’t be with me when you were broken, and now that you’re standing on your own, you still can’t be with me. So if I can’t have you at your worst, and I can’t have you at your best, then when do I get you, B? When does the timing line up for you to stop fighting what we have between us and just let me in?”
B let out a sob at that, and it damn near broke me, because I hated that I was hurting her. But goddamnit, she’d been hurting me. And I couldn’t take it anymore.
“What happened to one day?” she asked softly.
I swallowed. “Well, I need one day right now.”
“And I can’t give it to you, so where does that leave us?”
I chewed my cheek, shaking my head, not willing to admit it yet. “I don’t know.”
B was silent for a long while, the truth of it all sitting between us like a bomb ready to explode.
“Listen, I have a really big event coming up and tomorrow is going to be a long day…”
I closed my eyes at the sorry excuse, letting one cooling breath flow through me.
This is it, I thought. This is the end.
“Yeah, okay.” I let out a breath, and my heart clamored in my chest, begging me to try one more time. “I just…”
But I stopped there because what else could I say?
“Goodnight, B,” I said, instead.
When she ended the call, I dropped to my knees, and I cried.
• • •
I let her go after that.
It killed me to do it, but it killed me even more to try to hold onto someone who wasn’t holding onto me.
The first few weeks were the worst. I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t keep myself from pulling up her number and staring at it. I never gave in, though. I never called.
But what hurt me more than anything was that she never called either.
I had regrets in those first three weeks. I regretted the way I came at her, regretted that I didn’t congratulate her on getting hired when she’d worked so hard for it, regretted that I’d had that conversation over the phone instead of flying to her.
But soon, those regrets became too much to hold, so I let them go, too.
Santana flew in from New York after about two months of me moping, and together, she and Sylvia got me out of my funk. They made me hit the gym with them for a week straight, took me out surfing, got me back out and around friends, and by the time Santana flew back to the Empire State, I felt like I could finally start over.