Wish You Weren't Here

Chapter 46

James

I’ve wanted impossible things before. As a boy, I wanted my mother and father to show up for the second grade art show that I’d won. That blue ribbon dangled from the bottom of my watercolor savanna on Nonna’s fridge until the day she passed, but neither of my parents ever saw it.

I’ve wanted to chase the dream of photography as far as it could go, see my pictures on the walls of galleries or on the glossy covers of magazines, see my work elicit emotion. But unlike my second grade self, as an adult, reason has always kept me grounded enough to let that want stay locked in its cabinet where it can’t hurt anyone.

But Ava and this impossible technicolor future I can’t stop envisioning with her—no amount of reason is squashing that. It’s too bold and bright. It’s blinding.

The lights from the lanterns alongside the windows of the buildings that flank the tiny canal flicker and sway in the wake of an out-of-sight boat. I lean over the stone balustrade of the tiny bridge. Nearby, our apartment sits empty and waiting for the night I had planned that will never come to be. I can’t go back there yet. The ornately decorated space was so perfect with her in it, asking me to kiss her. But now it will only feel garish and wasted.

How could I have possibly misunderstood the situation between us this badly? She was so clear about what she wanted from life—her plan. The success, the fiancé, the status. But somewhere along the line it had changed. She had softened, like frozen cookies in their fifth minute in the oven. Or maybe that was me. Maybe I projected all of it onto her.

The water beneath me is so dark it looks like an oil slick. The boats are all tucked against their buildings, ropes anchoring them in place as they knock against the stone. Clicking and clacking more rapidly now though no wake pushes—

“James!”

Ava appears from the shadows like she’s been teleported. The only evidence that she hasn’t is her heavy breathing and the way she puts both hands on the stone balustrade of the bridge as she catches her breath.

“Why—where did you—” She rests her forehead on her arm.

She’s flushed and her skin glistens along the back of her neck. I look back out toward the water, avoiding every beautiful detail of the woman I’ll never have.

“Why did you leave?” she asks, pulling herself upright.

“I think the answer to that is pretty obvious.”

“Clearly it’s not or I wouldn’t be asking,” she says, pulling my arm off the stone so that I’m forced to turn and look at her.

She’s got her arms crossed beneath her chest, her shoulders puffed up. Peacock Ava.

“You are either seriously overestimating my threshold for torture or grossly underestimating how I feel—”

“James, I said no.”

She steps forward, holds up her hand to show me that it’s bare, and my mind refuses to believe her. I shake my head.

“Of course I said no,” she repeats in a whisper, reaching out and putting her hand in mine.

“But your plans—”

“Changed,” she interrupts. “They changed the moment some asshole picked me up an hour late at the airport.”

“You said no.” My voice sounds like I’ve been hypnotized.

She nods up at me with a small smile playing at the edge of her mouth.

She said no.

I pull her into me, lifting her chin so I can kiss her. This kiss is deeper—more frantic than before—filled with the fear of what could have been and the jealousy I felt watching that man nearly take her away to a life without me. She lets out a soft moan into my mouth and I pull back and stare down at her. She’s as out of breath as when she arrived after sprinting through the alleys.

“Take me home, please,” she says.

“Gladly,” I tell her.

Then I lead the way over the bridge, through the darkness of the alley, back toward the apartment, my fingers laced so tightly through hers that nothing could force me to let go.