And I hate him even more because I fucking fall for it.
“Wow,” I say. “Low blow, thanks. Easy for you to say considering your family welcomed you back with open arms. At least you get to have a family. I went with you to North Carolina to face them, for your father’s funeral, and back then it was okay to sleep with me. So what does that make me? Your security blanket?”
I pace the brief distance to my bed and back, wishing I could stop myself from crying. But unfortunately, the old angry cry is back again. It’s a curse.
“Fuck you,” I mutter. “Fuck you, fuck you. Fuck all of this.” The tears are coming too fast to stop now. I wish Wyatt would be decent enough to turn his goddamn back.
So convenient, Wyatt’s boundaries. All firm and self-righteous, right up until he’s all fragile and needs some warm human comfort.
Wyatt has the decency to look hurt by what I said, and for a second I regret it. He’s given me no reason to think he isn’t full of shit, but that’s…It’s so inconsistent with the man I know. The man I thought I knew, at least.
Maybe I’m the problem—maybe it’s the same story playing out over and over again. It’s not even about me being his student at all. It’s just me. Maybe it’s the same thing Chaya said: that I’m too intense. I’m too much for anyone—no one can stand to be too close.
And I’m too cowardly to face the consequences of my own mess.
I swipe both hands across my wet cheeks, furious with myself for not seeing it sooner. I’ve been humiliating myself this entire time, throwing myself at him repeatedly. He doesn’t want me. He pities me.
“I’m not trying to hurt you.” Wyatt’s voice is gentle, as if he’s trying to calm a wounded animal. “I know it doesn’t seem like it right now, but I promise this is the best thing for both of us.”
I snort. “And you would know all about that, right? Just go. Just…leave. Get out.”
But he stays where he is, shifting his weight from side to side. “Ely…”
“I said get out!”
Wyatt shakes his head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea right now, do you? You’re upset. You’re angry…. You just had a relapse. Someone should be here to make sure you’re okay.”
It takes every ounce of self-control I’ve got not to literally scream at that. “And you think that person ought to be you, huh? Can’t be Ophelia, or Diego, or my own goddamn sense of self-preservation. Nope. It’s gotta be you, Wyatt Cole, white knight and Most Responsible Man in the World. How long is it you’ve been sober for again? Ten years? Don’t know how I could forget considering you bring it up all the fucking time.”
He flinches as if I’ve physically struck him, recoiling back toward the shut bedroom door. And every part of me wants to dig in deeper, peel back layers of skin and fascia until I know he really, truly hurts. Until he hurts like I hurt.
“Get the hell out,” I say, and this time he listens.
34
I do my best not to speak to him for the rest of the summer.
It’s easier than it sounds. Turns out, most of the time random professors have no reason to speak to random students that aren’t in their classes. Which I could have told Wyatt, of course, if he hadn’t been so keen on keeping his head shoved in the sand.
I still see him. Hard not to, in a program this small. We pass each other in the halls, and I avoid his gaze even when I can feel him trying so hard to catch mine. If I enter the darkroom and he’s in it, I leave. I time my coffee breaks to avoid his. I don’t linger late after class finishes anymore; I go home, where sometimes I find Diego popping open a fresh bottle of wine that I never drink or Ophelia scribbling furiously at her tablet—or, some days, I hear the muffled sounds of her crying from behind her shut bedroom door. Diego insists that she’s fine, that it’s some dramatic, overemotional artist thing, and I’m enough of a dramatic, overemotional artist myself to know he might be right. But still, I worry. I know better than anyone that “tortured artist” isn’t always a joke.
I throw myself into working on my capstone project. Partly to prove Wyatt wrong but mostly because I have to: The end of the program is coming up fast, and the last thing I need is to miss my deadline on top of everything else. The photos for my capstone are turning out even better than I’d hoped, with or without Wyatt’s help. I find myself looking at them even when I’m not working—or maybe it’s just that work-life balance has ceased to mean anything because all I want to do is work. I have pictures from so many different streams of Jewish life now—secular, Chassidic, Reform, Open Orthodox—both Ashkenazic and Sephardic, from every borough in New York.
I don’t really fit in at any of them.
With one exception.
Michal’s invitation, as it happens, is open-ended. And she replies to my text in approximately half a second when I ask, saying that I’m welcome at their place anytime, and my camera is just as welcome as I am.
It feels odd, to be there again without Wyatt. Which doesn’t really make sense, because I’ve only gone to a service with Michal’s friends the one time. Maybe it’s just that Wyatt feels integral to the memory, as if the place and the people and the feelings wouldn’t exist without him.
But they do, it turns out.
I start off on the sidelines, trying to get the shots without interfering too much with the service itself. But between the verses of one of the Psalms, Michal appears at my side and loops her arm through my elbow, tugging me in to stand between her and Kinneret where I don’t have to zoom in at all to catch the joy on people’s faces.
It’s so much like and unlike what I experienced growing up. It’s the same songs, the same prayers, the same delight at welcoming the holiday that comes every week. But if growing up I used to count down the minutes until services would end—no matter how much I loved Shabbos, no teenager wants to sit through hours of listening to men pray from a balcony behind tinted glass—tonight I never want to leave. Even after my job is done, my camera packed away so I can focus on actually experiencing the holiness of Shabbos, I linger over the oneg table picking at what’s left of my challah so I don’t have to go.
“You should keep coming back,” Michal tells me as we walk back to her place. “I can tell how much you like it there.”
“I should,” I say, surprising myself. “But I live in Queens. If I decide…. That is, if I ever want to be shomer Shabbos…I mean, to be observant again…. Well. I can’t exactly avoid violating all the rules against using money or carrying things on Shabbos to come all the way to Brooklyn. I have to get back home somehow.”
She shakes her head. “Taking the bus here is better than not coming at all. And you are always welcome to stay here for Shabbat. Shoshana and I would love to have you. Anytime.”