Chapter 67
“I can’t do this anymore,” I say. My tone is flat, my eyes glazed over with an eerie distance. Inside I’m still. There’s no urgency, no ache, no chaos.
“What are you talking about?” he asks, a hint of a smile in his eyes. He’s more amused than hurt, which is telling. He thinks I don’t mean it. That I’m just a little girl with a skinned knee and he can kiss it better.
I used to be that girl but I’m not anymore.
She seems to have disappeared overnight, kidnapped from her bed.
I woke up this morning from the light coming in through the curtains, and even though the sun was right in my eyes, I didn’t squint.
I showered, changed, and put on my makeup with a robotic evenness.
I drove to work, listening to nothing. As I pulled in to a parking space, the thought entered my mind.
Today is the day I break up with him. There was no charge to it.
No fear. No vengeance. No drama. No emotion at all.
It was plain. It was simple. It was what I was going to do.
“Baby? What do you mean?” he asks, a nervous tickle in his throat like he’s starting to believe it. He sets his tea down on the coffee table, not bothering with a coaster. I don’t mind. Our table was seventeen bucks from Goodwill. It is ugly.
“This is not working for me anymore,” I say, the words coming out rote. “I can’t keep doing this.”
“But…things have been going well…I mean, I always wish we had more time, of course. Did you sleep okay last night? Are you tired?”
Mom used to say that to me. When I was a kid, six or seven, if I’d chuck a toy at the wall and scream that I wanted attention.
Or if I’d hide in the corner of the bathroom in the hope that she’d come looking for me because she missed me, but then I’d watch the clock tick by—ten minutes, then twenty, then thirty—and she’d never come looking for me. I’d come out of the bathroom crying.
“You didn’t even know I was gone,” I’d say.
“Aww, are you tired?” she’d ask. And I hated her for it. I wasn’t tired. I was a lot of things, but I wasn’t tired.
“I’m not tired,” I say to him. “I’m resentful. Or, I was resentful. But I’m not anymore. It went away. Now I’m just…nothing. I’m clear.”
“But you haven’t communicated any of that. You have to tell someone when you’re upset, or when you resent something they’re doing, so they have an opportunity to fix things.”
“You saw that I was hurting,” I say plainly. “But you pretended you didn’t because that would have made your life more difficult. Because then you would’ve had to actually do something about it.”
As the reality of the situation finally sets in, the begging begins.
The repeated nos and pleases and I love yous, the promises of a better tomorrow.
He rattles off the mistakes he’s made and how he plans to make amends, and all the great ideas he has for ways he can be better to me, ideas that I don’t hear because the words sound muffled and underwater.
The way words do when you stop believing them.
“I’m gonna talk to a lawyer,” he says, his jaw setting with confidence, sure this will do the trick.
“I—I’ve been thinking about it for a while.
I didn’t want to say anything until I knew exactly how and when I’d do it, but fuck it.
I’m gonna talk to a lawyer about leaving my marriage.
I want to be with you. I have to be with you.
And I can. We can. We can do it now. You’re graduated now, I’m not your teacher. ”
“We both know you’re not leaving your wife and kid for an eighteen-year-old,” I say, my voice distant and measured.
“Let’s be realistic, alright? This was an escape for both of us.
An escape from the shittiness of our regular lives.
But it’s not an escape for me anymore because now I know that I’m pursuing something I’ll never have.
Kinda takes the fun out of the chase. So let’s just shake hands and accept that it’s time to move on. ”
He cocks his head and his eyebrows bend in, like he doesn’t recognize me.
I’m sure he doesn’t. I don’t either. I stare at him.
Unblinking. Blank. His expression caves in on itself and instead of shaking my hand he collapses into me, telling me how determined he is to make this work, and how he won’t be able to handle it being over, and how much he needs me, and how much he loves me. And still, I feel nothing.