Chapter 11 #2
We collect our phones and walk to a café down the street, one of those aggressively hip places where the coffee comes in mason jars.
Emmy insists on sitting next to me, which makes me feel like it’s my birthday.
She’s telling the server very seriously that her Uncle Jared is very old, while Jared protests that characterization.
“You’re ancient,” I tell him. “Practically dust.”
“I’m three years older than you,” he reminds me.
“Three years is forever. You probably remember when the pyramids were built.”
Emmy’s swinging her legs, accidentally kicking me every third swing, but I don’t mind. She’s coloring her kid’s menu with broken crayons.
“That’s really good,” I tell her.
“It’s you and Uncle Jared and Mummy and me,” she says, pointing at different blobs. “We’re at the beach.”
“Why do I have tentacles?”
“Those are your arms.”
“Right. Of course.”
Sophie’s watching us again.
“You’re good with her,” she says quietly while Jared’s distracted by Emmy adding purple spikes to everyone’s hair in her drawing.
Something tight in my chest loosens.
“She’s easy to be good with. She’s basically a tiny comedian with questionable fashion sense. We have a lot in common.”
Sophie almost smiles, but then something shifts in her expression, becoming closed off again.
Maybe it’s just going to take time for her to warm to me?
Rome wasn’t built in a day, and apparently neither is Sophie’s approval.
Maybe if I keep being good with Emmy, keep making Jared laugh, keep showing up, she’ll eventually see that I’m not going anywhere.
That I’m not just some guy taking advantage of her brother’s kindness.
She’s protective of Jared, which makes sense. Maybe she thinks I’m just another responsibility Jared’s taken on, another broken thing he feels obligated to fix. The thought makes my stomach churn worse than the time I ate that questionable sushi from the gas station.
Because I’m not, am I? I like to think that Jared and I help each other, that it’s not a one-way street.
The café staff brings out the cake then, and sure enough, it’s lit up like a fire hazard with twenty-eight candles. The whole café joins in singing happy birthday, Emmy the loudest of all, and Jared’s face goes red, but he’s grinning.
I love seeing him like this. Happy and relaxed, his smile reaching his eyes in a way that makes them crinkle at the corners, his hand casually resting on the back of my chair.
“Make a wish!” Emmy demands.
Jared closes his eyes to blow out the candles. When he opens them, he’s looking right at me. My stomach does a complete gymnastics routine.
Was his wish about us? Or am I just projecting because, right now, the greatest wish of my life would be to be in a proper relationship with Jared? Forever.
I can’t keep on going on like this. I need to talk to him about my feelings. About how I want so much more.
And okay, blindsiding him on his birthday may not be a great present, but I can’t keep pretending everything’s fine.
It’s going to turn into a disaster at some point if I’m not honest with him.
He needs to know how I feel.
Maybe talking to him on his birthday isn’t such a bad thing. Then at least he can decide whether I’m a good gift or a booby prize.
We eat the cake, and Emmy gets frosting literally everywhere. On her face, in her hair, somehow on her knee. Sophie’s trying to clean her up with inadequate café napkins.
“I’ll ask for some wet towels,” I offer, standing and heading to the counter.
I’m halfway there when an idea occurs to me. Should I ask for a takeaway box for the rest of the cake? But I don’t want to return with one and have Sophie think I’ve overstepped. I head back to ask her.
I’m a few steps from the booth when I hear my name, which makes me freeze.
“How can you stand looking at him?” Sophie asks.
My stomach clenches.
Then Jared’s voice comes, lower, harder to hear, but I catch it. “It’s difficult sometimes…”
I step backward.
Tears blur my vision. I press the heel of my palm into my eye sockets, trying to subdue them.
It’s okay. It’s okay. I’ll survive this.
I take a deep breath, but it turns into a sobby sort of hiccup.
This is why eavesdropping is never, ever, a good idea.
You never hear good things about yourself. I don’t think in the history of the earth, anyone has ever eavesdropped and heard “Oh, I just can’t decide what their best qualities are. There are too many of them.”
But knowing that doesn’t make it hurt less.
Jared finds it difficult to look at me.
Of course he does. I find it difficult to look in the mirror, and I’ve had a year to get used to this face.
I turn blindly toward the counter, staggering there on shaky legs.
The barista is one of those intimidatingly cool people with geometric tattoos and an undercut.
They hand me a stack of damp paper towels, and I lurch back toward the booth, trying to figure out what to do.
I can’t go back in there. I can’t sit across from Jared knowing he struggles to look at me, pretending everything’s fine while Emmy draws more tentacle arms and Sophie knows her brother is forcing himself to be with someone he finds it difficult to look at.
I live right down the hall from him. It’s convenient. We have fun together. But while I’ve built it up in my head as this fun tale of extreme compatibility and destiny pulling us together, Jared has apparently always been aware that it’ll never turn into something serious.
It’s not his fault, is it? I would have probably felt the same before my accident. I never would have dated anyone who looks like me.
My hands are shaking as I carry the damp towel back to our table, schooling my face into something that hopefully passes for normal.
“There you are,” Jared says, smiling at me with such warmth that it makes everything worse. How can he smile at me like that when he just told his sister I’m difficult to look at?
“Here are the towels,” I say, my voice sounds weird, too high. “But I just remembered I need to give Patches her medication. The vet said the timing’s really important.”
Patches doesn’t take medication. She’s disgustingly healthy despite her diet of eating inappropriate things whenever she gets the chance.
“Oh.” Jared’s face falls. “But we were going to—”
“I know. I’m sorry. Happy birthday though.” I lean down to ruffle Emmy’s sticky hair, avoiding looking at Sophie entirely. “See ya, Emmy. Don’t eat too much cake.”
“Bye, Felix!” She waves enthusiastically, flinging cake crumbs.
I grab my gift bag from under the table and thrust it at Jared. “This is for you. Open it later.”
Then I leave before Jared can protest, before his face can do that thing where he pretends he wants me to stay when he’s probably relieved he doesn’t have to keep forcing himself to look at me.
The wait for my Uber takes forever.
And once it arrives and I get in, the car window reflects my scarred face, a greatest hits collection of why Jared finds me hard to look at. By the time I get to my apartment, I’m exhausted from trying not to cry in public.
Patches meows judgmentally at me when I walk in.
“Not now,” I tell her. “I’m having a crisis.”
She follows me to the couch anyway, where I collapse and finally let myself feel the full weight of it.
Jared finds me difficult to look at.
After everything—after our intimate sex, after him calling me beautiful, after making me dinner and kissing my cheek like we’re a real couple—he still struggles with my face.
And the worst part is, I understand.
I really do.