26. Winnifred
C rew was acting weird ever since we left for the airport.
He still smiled, but it wasn’t his. It was that easy smile he threw on for everyone else when things were loud or chaotic or rushed or crowded. It wasn’t the smile he had been dolling out the entire time at Willow Creek. And it certainly wasn’t the one that I had dedicated as mine.
I first chalked it up to missing his family, maybe. He said that they weren’t far apart from each other for long, that he rarely ever missed a weekly family dinner. But something about that didn’t feel right either, considering he’d just said the night before that he adored his family but he was grateful for the space.
There was an obvious shift that I was missing out on, and my plans of asking Crew for anything more suddenly felt diminished entirely.
We both were sliding into his car in the parking deck outside of the airport, it was reaching half past six and I’d heard his stomach growling for the last hour as he brushed off my every offer of food.
“Do…you want to come over for dinner?” I stared at him, trying to pull any answer out. Anything more than just…this diluted version of my Crew. “I make a good meatloaf.” I nudged his elbow with a forced smile as he reversed the car out of the parking lot. “Or I might burn it entirely. But, we could just order pizza and hang out on my floor mattress?”
I kept my tone light as I waited for his response, and when it came back it was empty. Hollow. Dry.
“Nah, I’m not hungry, Win. Thanks though. Think I need some rest.”
My heart sank. I had done something. I had upset him.
“Crew…did I do something?”
“I- No, Winnie.” His focus remained entirely on the road in front of him, hands tightening around the wheel, knuckles turning white under my gaze.
“I think I did.”
He sighed with his head shaking back and forth. A humorless laugh came out of him, and it hurt worse than the fake smile ever did. “Were you ever going to tell me?”
“Tell you what?”
“That you’re leaving.”
My gut retched. He heard Lottie and me. He had to, it was the only explanation. And now that it was out there, in a way I couldn’t word it for myself, there was no putting it back in.
“I was, I was, Crew.” I heard myself sniffle, felt the tears forming in my eyes but I couldn’t let them fall. Not now. “But we had the competition next weekend and it’s been so nice with us I didn’t want to pop that bubble and…I’m so sorry. I was going to tell you. As soon as the competition-”
“As soon as you didn’t need me anymore?”
“What? No. No, no, no. I just thought it would make us both distracted.”
I had plans for this. I had this entire thing worked out in my head. I was going to tell him today, when we got back home, that we should stay together. That he was mine and I was his and that that was all there was to it. Then when we, hopefully, won on Saturday: I would tell him we could move. We could use the cash prize as a way to get us out of here and back down there where we were both free. And if he said no, if he couldn’t leave the rest of the Wells behind, then we could do long distance. We could make it work. I’d come here, he would come there. It would work.
“Okay,” Crew shrugged.
The rest of the drive was silent and extremely uncomfortable as I tried to form what would be a solid enough reasoning to get him to understand. To know that I didn’t leave him out because I felt like we were done. But by the finished look in his eyes, was convincing him even possible?
Crew pulled into the lot of my building, parking in the visitor area. In the farthest one from my spot.
“Well, I’ll, uh, see you Saturday then.” He shifted the car to park, his eyes never meeting mine. Never faltering.
My tears were falling, in big fat droplets that weren’t stopping anytime soon. “Crew, please, don’t do this.”
“I gotta calm down Winnie. You don’t get it. You don’t-” he took a deep breath and pulled at the ends of his hair. “If you leave I’m back to just, nothing.”
“Crew, that is not true. You are enough on your own. Your family loves you so much and I-”
“My family doesn’t need me, Win. No one does.” His voice was cracking now, his anger and sadness bubbling over and I couldn’t tap it down this time. I couldn’t save it this time. Because it was my fault entirely. And there was no returning from it.
“That’s not true, please just-”
“I have to go, I can’t be here right now, just…I’ll text you.”
“But what about Saturday?”
“I’ll be there. I said I would and I don’t back away from promises.”
It felt like a punch to the gut.