Chapter Seventeen #3
I hand his phone back to him. “I didn’t have St. Michel mail it, though. He wouldn’t have even had your mother’s address.”
“Right.” He slides his phone away and clears his throat. Stepping back from me. “I did that part.”
“Why?”
“I…I wasn’t sure…I wasn’t sure I was going to make it up there that weekend and I wanted to make sure she had her gift.”
This is news to me. All of it. “Going up for her birthday was always the plan…wasn’t it?”
“Yeah. Until…I actually had this different idea. Like…a surprise, I guess?”
He’s getting flustered. The words aren’t flowing, his brow is going down. He doesn’t know how to explain this to me.
“Just tell it linearly.”
His eyes shoot to mine.
“Don’t worry about getting any background in, or whatever. You can fill it in later. I’m listening. I’m not going anywhere until you’re done. Just tell it in the order it happened.”
He considers this, his eyes on the ground. Not being obstinate, I can see now, but slowly gathering thoughts, putting them in the right order.
“Okay. So,” he starts. “St. Michel called you a while ago to tell you that my mom’s gift was finished.
But you didn’t answer, I guess, so he called me to come pick it up.
When I got there, he was like, She always checks my work, so I opened it up to check.
” He laughs a little. “And then I saw the photo. The one you chose. And Roz…I hate that fucking photo.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry. I do. It’s obviously perfect and everyone else loves it, especially my mother. And I knew she was going to love it. So I had him gift-wrap it and mail it up to her house, but yeah. I hate that photo.”
“Why?” It’s lovely. Flattering. We’re all smiling. The angles hit. What could be wrong with it?
He pulls his phone out and brings up the photo of the portrait one more time, zooms in. Just looking at it makes his eyes sad. He lets out a long resigned breath. “Look at the way we’re standing.”
I narrow my eyes at the photo.
“The way we’re arranged,” he prompts.
The second I see it, I can’t unsee it, and all the blood rushes away from my heart. “Raffi’s standing between us,” I whisper.
He nods. “When I saw this, when I realized that of all the hundred photos the photographer took during that shoot, this was the one you chose, I knew we were in trouble.”
“I…I can see why you’d feel that way.”
He lets out a big breath that I realize now he’s been holding. He comes and drops down on the bed beside me, a respectful distance away, but his weight makes me bounce and I tumble into him.
“Oh!”
“Sorry,” he says on a little laughing grumble. But then both of his arms come up, around me, in a firm squeeze, his cheek resting in my hair. “But not that sorry.”
I mentally file away the information that all it took was me saying I can see why you’d feel that way for Vin to walk over and put his arms around me and his cheek in my hair, but for now, I can’t be stopped.
I need the rest of this story and I need it now.
I scramble up to a full sit, his arms fall away, and I arrange myself crisscross applesauce, facing him.
“So, you hated the photo…” I prompt. “And you’re there in St. Michel’s workshop…”
“Right. And…this idea came to me. I wanted him to frame a new photo. I showed it to him and he told me it was a terrible photo and it would take a genius to frame that and make it look like anything.”
I laugh. Because that is a very St. Michel thing to say.
“I wanted it done ASAP,” he continues. “But he told me basically that the fastest he could get it done was by my mom’s birthday weekend and that he’d be going out of town right after that. Marseilles?”
“Montreaux.”
“Right. So. Yeah. I thought maybe it was a sign. That I would physically have to be present in NYC to pick up the project that weekend. It was like the universe was telling me, Don’t go to your mother’s. Stay with Roz. Fix this…And from there, the rest of the plan sort of fell into place.”
“This surprise…”
“Right. Yeah. I…was going to pick up the new framed photo and give it to you. And then take you out to the beach for the weekend. Montauk. Just the two of us. That was the plan. To sort of get us back on track, after Raff moved out. But while I was waiting for the project to be done, things got even more awkward between us. Everything I was trying just seemed to make it worse. I just kept thinking, If I can just give her this photo…Honestly, this sounds fucking stupid. And it made me feel fucking stupid ever since then, but I just kept thinking that since I didn’t have the words to explain how I felt, if you saw the photo, then you’d just know, and I wouldn’t ever have to explain it. ”
“So…you waited.”
“I thought, I can’t just have this photo, because that whole thing, starting over, that’s what I want, but I didn’t want to, I don’t know, corner you?
I wanted to give you the ability to…decide.
If you wanted me, I wanted you to come to me on your own.
Not because I forced you. Which means I had to bring options.
One option of what I wanted.” He holds up one hand.
“The photo. Us getting closer. And one option of what you might want.” He holds up the other hand.
“Me moving out and giving you all the space you might need. And I wanted to show you that I was serious. That I was taking whatever you wanted seriously. So, in my mind, I thought that if I showed up with the photo and vacation in one hand.” His eyes hit mine. “And the lease in the other…”
“Then I could choose which one I wanted.” I hug my knees and try to bear this joyous pain. On one hand, oh, God, how did we ever end up in a place this mangled? On the other hand…He wasn’t secretly preparing to leave me. He was trying like hell to guess what I wanted and provide it for me.
This information unfolds inside me like a paper flower much too big for my chest. I feel every petal, every stretch, as it opens itself to the sky.
Vin hasn’t stopped loving me.
“Right. Like I said. Fucking stupid. I should have just…” He shakes his head.
“So, I got the lease, like, as a symbol to you, and left it in the guest room. But then I was out with Raff, and remember he was still on a month-to-month then? Well, he told me that he’d found the lease in the guest room and he went on this whole thing thanking me but he was going to find his own apartment when his short-term was up and I realized that he thought that I was renting this new apartment for him.
And then I asked him what he’d done with the lease, because I don’t know how, but I just knew that you were about to find it and misunderstand—”
“Which is exactly what happened.” I think of Vin’s face when he came through the front door that day. I’d mistaken that intensity for determination. I’d mistaken his commitment to me for commitment to leaving.
He’d been out of breath. Like he’d been running. Nothing ever in half measures.
“I got home and you’d put it up on the fridge.”
“Oh, Jesus.” Tears pinch my eyes so hard it physically hurts. “I acted like it was fine. Like I didn’t care.”
“Like it was natural, for me to leave.”
And I didn’t know you’ve been devastated, he said to me, earlier tonight. I guess this impression of myself is better than I thought.
I bite my lip. “You didn’t correct things. Or cry. You acted like it was fine, too. You just walked right back out the door. And every time I’ve brought it up since then, you didn’t explain!”
“I was scrambling, Roz. I thought…I thought you were mostly just mad that we hadn’t talked about it. That I made the decision unilaterally. I didn’t think you…”
“Were dying inside? Because yeah.”
“Oh, baby.” My hands are cupped in his hands.
“Seeing that lease on the fridge…I had, well, an epiphany, I guess. Sure, sure, actions speak louder than words, and that’s how I’ve lived my life.
But in this case, I was only ever using actions and never words and it meant that you thought I wanted to move out.
And…I knew I had to get a new skill set like fucking fast. So I walked out that night, yes.
And I walked directly to a therapist’s office. ”
“What? Are you serious?”
“Dead serious. I waited three hours until he could see me for an emergency appointment.”
“Did you go back?”
“Once a week since then.”
“You…” I am not breathing. “Are.” Still not breathing. “Seeing.” I might not make it to the end of the sentence. “A therapist.”
He laughs at my delivery, or maybe at the fact that I almost pass out at the end of it. “His name is Dr. Elias Colewood and he’s helped me a lot.”
“Wow.” I’m staring into nothing. “In that case, then you’re definitely earning a higher grade than I am at marriage.”
“Let’s start with not grading each other.” He can’t help himself anymore. He’s gathering me up like a rag doll, holding me so tight I have to tap-tap his shoulder when I need an inhale.
“This whole time…” My head is spinning a little. “I thought you were the one who needed space. But…”