Chapter XXVI. Things Beautiful and Temporary.
XXVI.
THINGS BEAUTIFUL AND TEMPORARY.
FRIDAY. TWILIGHT.
In between breaking down the set at the villa and dinner, Cecilia had approximately sixty minutes to head back to her hotel, shower, and catch a ride with the others up to the Querencia Bay Resort.
Jaya and Katrine had wrapped shooting and were flying out in the morning.
The remaining setups would be done by late afternoon, so this would be their final meal as a group.
It promised to be festive, indulgent, fun.
Cecilia had been looking forward to it all week.
The last thing she needed was an impromptu phone call from Lorry that left her sobbing and swollen.
“Cecilia…” he began.
And from that moment, she knew. No Ceece, no CeCe, no Boo. Cecilia. He was ending it. Maybe not at that precise moment, but inevitably. He was distancing himself before the kill.
“I was thinking that maybe we should give each other some space. Just for a little while. And see what happens. Nothing permanent but just … a breath.”
She had been brushing her teeth and had run out of the bathroom to answer the phone. She had half a mouthful of Colgate, and a toothbrush in her right hand. And so she was faced with the indignity of having to swallow it before speaking. What happened to the small talk?
“A breath?”
“Yes. I mean, it doesn’t have to be definitive, it’s just, a respite.” His voice croaked. Fatigued. She could tell he hadn’t slept.
A respite. He’d practiced this. He’d rehearsed.
Something in Cecilia’s chest fell. Like a valve in her heart or a lung collapsing. The pain was acute.
“Are you breaking up with me? On the phone? From three thousand miles away?”
He was quiet. She couldn’t even hear his breathing.
And it came to her in flashes then, memories of their past: the time he attempted to teach her to fly-fish in the river next to the organic farm where he worked that summer in Brewster; the daisy that he’d plucked from his parents’ garden and gifted her the first time they’d made love; the many Friday evenings that she’d bolted early from work and taken the train to Greenwich to attend Shabbat services with him at his family’s temple.
So much warmer and welcoming than her own family’s Catholic church.
And even as she grasped for them, she could feel them slipping away.
Like snowflakes on a windowpane. Things beautiful and temporary.
“Is that what’s happening? Lorry? Are you there??”
“I’m here,” he said, soft. “Do you think I’m the kind of person who would break up with you on the phone? Cecilia? Do you really think so little of me?”
She was the one who went silent then. Her mind scrambling to make sense of his words. Wasn’t that exactly what he was doing? Wasn’t that the purpose of his byzantine letter? To end it, from a distance. Not only could Lorry not say it to her face, he couldn’t take responsibility for it.
Cecilia shivered beneath the temperamental air conditioner, her hair still wet from the shower. A threadbare towel wound tight around her torso. Her purple toothbrush still in hand. She was going to be late to dinner. She was going to miss her ride.
“Cecilia—”
“Stop calling me that.”
Something in her had shifted.
“Okay, umm…” He trailed off for a bit, and then, “Look, I just … I didn’t sleep last night.
I couldn’t stop thinking about a million different things, and why I’m feeling like this.
And I think of what you’re doing now, and you not being happy.
And if I’m being honest with myself, and if you were being honest with yourself, you’d realize I’m holding you back.
You, in this maybe glamorous but kind of shitty job, when you should be traveling the world making your own art.
Or apprenticing for someone cutting-edge in Europe.
But not there, working with people who make you feel bad about yourself while waiting for me to finish college and figure out what it is I’m doing with my life.
You should be thinking about your legacy. ”
Cecilia’s cheeks were wet. She could not recall at what point she’d started crying.
At what point it had all fallen apart. But there she was, in a crappy Mexican hotel, wet and sobbing, and clinging to her towel and her toothbrush and her sanity, wondering how the boy from the train had led her to this point.
And why she’d allowed herself to become invested in someone so young.
“I’m holding you back,” Lorry repeated then.
“Which is why I think it would benefit both of us if we took a breath. It’s just a respite, Cecilia.
A few days, maybe. Maybe weeks. Maybe not even that.
I don’t know how I’m going to feel in a few weeks.
Or months. Or a few years, even. I might want the world from you in eight years.
I might not. I don’t know. I’m twenty-one. ”
Cecilia did not know quite what to do with that. But she knew the others were waiting. And she knew Anouk was among them.
“I have to go,” she said.