“I wasn’t distant,” I told him. “I wasn’t going through the motions. I promise. I just couldn’t make myself come. I still felt connected to you. Intimate with you.”
He sighed. “This is so crazy, Ash. What are we doing?”
Immediately, the panic set in. This had been my fear since Florida. That we weren’t strong enough to sustain this distance. That he would become frustrated and ultimately bored with our relationship. That he would want to cut the strings, which, right now, were strained between us. Strained, but still holding. Or at least I thought they were.
“This is getting too hard. You want out,” I said, feeling the punch in my gut. “You want me to let you go, but I won’t. I can’t.”
“I don’t want out.”
He said it, but I didn’t know if I believed him.
“It’s not about that. It’s about...fuck, if I know.”
“A couple more months,” I pleaded. “That’s all we’re talking about. You’ll finish your degree, and then nothing can stop us. No threat Arthur can hold over us. I’m asking you to fight for that long. For me.”
“That’s my point, Ash. This shouldn’t be a fight. This should be as easy as two people dating. For most everyone else on the fucking planet, it is.”
I shook my head. “I don’t believe that. I think people fight every day to hold on to what’s precious. Make sacrifices. What do you think should be easy?”
“Us. I think we should be easy.”
I felt the nerves immediately settle in my stomach. Marc wasn’t walking away. He wasn’t getting frustrated with me. He was angry at the situation, and that was a very different thing.
“We will be. Someday.”
“You honestly believe that?” he asked.
Simple answer. “With everything I have inside me.”
Another sigh. “What if you’re just some crazy stalker chick I can’t shake loose?”
I smiled. “Then you should call the police. Oh, wait, you can’t, because you got arrested once for resisting arrest and missed my prom!”
“Oh, yeah,” he said dryly. “That’s right. I forgot. When are you coming back from Arizona?”
“Monday. Why?”
“Because we need to figure out a way to see each other so I can smack your ass and pay you back for faking an orgasm by giving you a real one.”
I smiled again. “That sounds like a plan. My flight leaves early on Monday. The plan was to Uber home. You could skip class, meet me at the airport, we could spend the day together, and then, after, you drop me off at the airport and I Uber home later. If anyone asks, I’ll say the flight was delayed. That should give us hours. Can you skip your Monday class?”
“I can make it work,” he muttered. But he wasn’t happy about it. Not happy that he couldn’t simply take me to the estate, like any boyfriend might be able to do.
I fell back on my bed, my phone still pressed to my ear. “I know this is not you, Marc. I know sneaking around and coordinating plans must seem like too much effort. I’m sorry I can’t be any different.”
“I’ll see you Monday.”
I sighed, knowing his non-answer was a confirmation I was right.
This sneaking and hiding wasn’t him, and I was pushing him into a situation because I hadn’t wanted to wait any longer for us to be together. Really together.
This had never been the plan. The plan had always been to wait until he graduated. To wait until we were both independent adults, making decisions about our lives.
Then he came to Florida, and the thought of what we’d had there…the image of him having that experience with someone else... it was like glass exploding inside my stomach, cutting me from the inside with a million different slices.
He had to see it. He had to know being with someone else was never going to be like being with me.
Or maybe he couldn’t know it until there was someone else.
“Goodnight,” I said softly.
“Goodnight, Ash.”
I ended the call and squeezed the phone tight in my hand as if I could will Marc, from a distance, to understand. To have patience. With me. With the situation.
Shit. I hated even having the thought, but maybe the right thing to do would be to end this. For now. Let him finish his degree, get away from my father, and in five years or so I could search for him. Find him again. Remind him of the bond we had.
Then it would be like he wanted. Easy and normal. Although I suspected there was no such thing for Marc. Not when he had as much anger inside him as he did. Anger he didn’t even realize I helped to dissipate.
It would be the risk of a lifetime. He could move on from me so completely, the bond we shared would ultimately break. Worse, though, was holding on to him as hard as I could, only to watch him grow apathetic toward me.
That would be unendurable.
Monday, I would see him.
The right thing to do was to make the offer. To swallow my heart and tell him he was free. Of me. I couldn’t keep him tied to me. The strings that held us together had the potential to snap if he tugged on them a little harder. I could feel it.
I could feel him tugging.
If we were ever going to make us work, he had to believe in us like I did. He had to see, as clearly as I did, we were meant to be together.
Through the fog of the drama I’d created with all our subterfuge, he couldn’t.
The separation would hurt him. My absence would be like a constant toothache with no source for him to fix. I knew that, even if he didn’t. But maybe this was what we both needed. To understand the power of what we had, maybe we both had to lose it for a while.
It would hurt. His toothache would be my constant heartache, but only for a time.
Only for a time.
9
Newark Airport
Monday
Marc
I was going to break up with her.
That I had to skip two classes to sneak around with her for a few hours, only to drop her off back here at the airport instead of at her house, made me see that what we were doing, what we were trying to do, wasn’t going to work.
This wasn’t a real thing. This was some clandestine fucking and late-night calls, and it had to end. For both our sakes. Ash had to go to school, she had to finish growing up, she had to—
I stopped myself because the thought hurt. But I couldn’t look away from the hard truth.
She had to fuck some other guy.
I couldn’t be what she needed. I’d already told her that. I wasn’t going to be someone who would profess love and forever after. I was an asshole most of the time, and an asshole to her almost all the time, and, in the months since we’d been together in Florida, it was becoming harder to see how this would end well.
I parked the car, and walked into the airport with a sense of determination. But as soon as the sliding doors closed behind me, I was reminded of the time I’d dropped her off to go to Switzerland.
How strange it had felt then to finally acknowledge she was important to me. To have this feeling like I was putting my right arm on a plane and sending it across an ocean.
She wasn’t any less important to me right now. Breaking up with her wasn’t about who she was to me. She’d would always be Ash.