Chapter 47
“But I love you,” I say, and within two seconds, I already wish that I hadn’t. The words hang in the air in that constipated way they do when you know that you shouldn’t have said them. That you’ve gone too far.
I want to add something, to clarify, to backpedal, or more than that to take the words away.
I’d been so careful about not saying them, about saving them up for just the right moment, which of course was whatever moment followed him saying them first. I thought it would be tender and romantic.
But this was not tender. This was not romantic.
He texted me an hour ago, apologizing for being absent while he was on vacation and asking if I was alone and at home because he needed to talk to me about something. There was a stiffness to the text. A backslide into a formalness that we’d outgrown. My body already knew.
I paced around and changed into a jumpsuit and put on what makeup I could, one eye mascara’d when he knocked on the door. There was something in the knock. A resignation. My heart dropped out of my asshole. Still, I mascara’d my other eye.
He sat on the couch. He didn’t want a beverage. His speech was rehearsed. Staccato and even and with too many platitudes for a writing teacher. I’ve had a lot of time to think. Everything happens for a reason. I think we need a break. This space will be good for us.
I noted how he carefully avoided the word breakup, choosing instead to go for more open-ended words, softer words, curated words.
Break. Space. Process. Time. Friends. Recalibrate.
Words that I know better than to believe because I’ve heard Mom relay them to me dozens of times with wild, hungry hope behind her eyes.
“No, no, it’s not a breakup,” she’ll say to me. “It’s a break. Just a break.”
Or, “He said he still really wants to stay friends.”
Or, “He just needs a little space. Time to process. But he’s coming back. I know he’s coming back, Wally.”
And the worst part is he does. He always comes back.
That’s why he said those softer words in the first place.
To keep his options open. So that, when he gets especially lonely and horny one night, he has her, still hoping, still an option.
Her, receiving him with open arms and a steaming vagina.
Her, who he can come back to, cashing in on the empty promises of his softer words with a brief stint where he tries her on for size a couple last times just to confirm what he already knows—that he’s moved on and is ready to discard her.
But knowing better than to believe his words does nothing when you love the guy. If you love him, you just believe them. You believe him. You need to. You cling to his promises. You say stupid things. You say, “But I love you.”
Mr. Korgy rubs his hands back and forth and finally looks up at me, his face beet red and ballooning.
“Oh, Waldo,” he says, pleading.
And then he pops. His shoulders hunch over and his body twitches in tight convulsions. I hug him and his tears drip onto my chest. A long string of snot wobbles back and forth. He wipes it with his sleeve.
“Don’t say that, Waldo. Please don’t say that.”
“I can’t help it. I just do. I don’t think we should take space or a break or whatever. I can make this work. Because I love you.”
“I wish you didn’t. God, I wish you didn’t,” he sobs. “I’m a disappointment. To Gwen, to my parents, to myself, to you.”
“You’re not a disappointment to me.”
“I should be! Waldo, my hair’s thinning, my gut’s growing, and I’m sad most of the time.
My in-laws pay most of my family’s bills.
I’m a fucking high school teacher. Your high school teacher.
I should’ve walked away. I shouldn’t have caved.
I’m supposed to be stronger than that. Bigger than that. I’m supposed to be the adult here.”
“Hey, hey,” I say. “I’m glad you caved. I want this. I want you.”
“But you shouldn’t,” he wails. “This is unfair, what I’m doing to you. It’s not right.”
“How can it not be right? Being around you is the only thing that feels right. The only thing that’s ever felt right to me.”
“Things that are right shouldn’t hurt you. You’re hurting so much and I see that. I see the pain this is causing you. I’m causing you. And I need to stop it.”
He wipes his nose with his sleeve again and his crying steadies as I stroke his back. I pull him close and rest my head on his, tracing the back of his hand like he’s my child who woke up from a scary nightmare and I’m his parent gently soothing him back to sleep.
“Waldo, what we’re doing is wrong,” he says. “What I’m doing. I feel guilty about it every day. I have a family, a beautiful family who I can’t be present with for even a second because all I can think about is you. All I want is you.”
“You have me.”
He jerks away, his face twisting with self-loathing.
“But you don’t have me because how can you?
! That weighs on me, the things I can’t give you that I want to so badly.
I feel terrible. I’m taking something from you that you can never get back.
Your first experience of love. A thing that’s supposed to be special and delicate and wonderful. ”
“But it is all of those things with you. I promise.”
“Waldo, please, stop. You’re young and beautiful.
You have your whole life ahead of you. Eventually, you’re gonna resent me and you’re gonna say I robbed the cradle and you’re gonna regret me.
I’m scared of that. I’m fucking terrified of that.
I don’t want to be one of your regrets when you’re the best thing that’s happened to me in years. ”
“I’m not gonna regret you.”
“But you should regret me. I deserve for you to regret me. Do you understand? I do not deserve you. Do you hear me? You’re pretty and smart and capable and young.
Your life’s not made up for you like mine is for me.
You could have anyone, you could do anything.
You have your potential. Don’t waste your potential on me. ”
Mr. Korgy pulls me in and kisses the top of my head over and over again, smoothing my hair down between each kiss.
“I’m just…I’m so confused, Waldo. I’m so fucking confused.
No one tells you you’re gonna be forty and still so fucking lost. I need to make this whole situation better.
I wanna do right by you and the best way of doing that is to end things now, before they get worse.
This is what we need to do. I’m just trying to do right by you. ”
I keep hugging him and he keeps crying until he has to leave. The door shuts behind him and I stare at it. I was so caught up in his speeches and his feelings and him that I only now realize that, technically, he never said he loves me back.