Chapter 28
CHAPTER
TWENTY-EIGHT
CLAY
I ’d rounded my third lap on the track when I saw her.
At first, the warmth spread in my heart as usual whenever I caught a glimpse of Ally. Even from a distance, I could see the blond escapees from her ponytail, which always made me think of little children misbehaving. The way she shoved them back into place and ignored them when they sprung free again brought a smile to my face even though I was burning through a six-minute pace.
I slowed a little when I came around the next bend, so I could intercept her as she came closer. On the off chance she hadn’t come out here to find me, I wasn’t about to let her get away.
As she drew nearer, I noticed an intensity to her stride, mirrored in the consternation on her face. I came to a halt just as she ducked around the bleachers and emerged at the side of the track.
“Hey, you okay?” I asked before she stopped in front of me and crossed her arms. “What’s wrong?”
I guided her to where we could take a seat, high up in the bleachers, which gave us perspective over the field. Maybe that would give her perspective on whatever was bothering her. It sometimes worked for me.
“I just had a conversation with Pin Dick,” she said, spitting out his name like a curse and emphasizing the end of his name with a hard k .
A bolt of panic stabbed at my chest. Even though I knew there could be a host of irritating reasons he’d come talk to her, she seemed upset and I feared the worst.
“Did he do something to you? Say something?” Maybe he’d suggested another one of his “lunch dates.”
She turned to me and I saw fire in her eyes. That was heartening. Better than an accusatory glare. “He told me you made a bet that you could get the Green Valley Spinster to fall for you.” She pointed to herself with both thumbs. I’d have laughed at the nickname—because it couldn’t be more ridiculous—except that she looked so upset. “Please tell me this is just Pin Dick being his usual douchey self. Tell me that’s not why you suddenly took an interest in me.”
My heart flooded with an unexpected tangle of emotions, but for once, I had no trouble finding words to express my thoughts. “Suddenly?” I shook my head.
I should have been honest with her from the beginning, but my paranoia had kicked in. I’d worried about drawing her in when I knew I didn’t deserve to have her.
“Did you hear this rumor?” she asked and shook her head. “You know what, this is stupid. I don’t care what Pin Dick said.” She huffed a laugh and shrugged. “Unless it’s true, obviously. Then I stand by what I told you weeks ago, that I’m giving up on my knight fantasy in favor of harsh reality.”
With her hands on her hips, she took on a fighting stance and I thought about everything she’d told me about wanting to be self-sufficient. I didn’t think she really believed something so ridiculous as what Pin Dick had said, but her comment about the knight told me she didn’t not believe it.
And there it was, the sickening pit in my stomach that I knew so well. It wasn’t sadness. It was fear mixed with self-loathing mixed with hopelessness. I knew it wasn’t rational. Depression wasn’t rational. But I felt it—all too familiar.
This was how it began after my ex left, and I’d forgotten how far down it took me.
Rationally, I knew this situation was night-and-day different, but again, rational thoughts rarely factored in when I felt the pull of depression. It was just a feeling. A dark feeling closing in.
But I gave it one solid effort to turn the tide. Maybe I could move the serotonin to where I needed it through sheer force of will and a good attitude.
“Alexandra, I would marry you today if it would convince you that everything Pin Dick just told you is garbage. Today.”
“Oh, no, I wasn’t trying to trap you into?—”
“Ally, if you only knew . . .”
It wasn’t the afternoon sunlight that made her squint at me. She had no idea what I meant. Of course she didn’t. I’d done too good a job of keeping my feelings hidden.
“Knew what?”
“How long I’ve fucking loved you. It wasn’t some crush all these years. I loved you,” I choked out, hating myself for having waited so long to tell her.
Her eyes went round in disbelief. “Clay . . . what?”
I knew I needed to do better than uttering confusing proclamations without anything to back them up. If one of my students turned in an English paper with only a topic sentence and no supporting details, I’d hand over an F without even reading the thing.
“Years. You’ve captivated me since the day I walked into the kitchen with your brother and saw you baking a cake when you were fifteen. You had flour on your hands and a stripe of it along one cheek, and you didn’t notice it. I had to ball my hands into fists to keep from reaching over and wiping it away. Then it was all I dreamed about for months—touching your skin. It was an obsession and I had to tamp it down.”
“How did I not know this at all? You were at our house all the time and you basically ignored my existence.”
I wiped a bead of sweat from my cheek with my forearm. “It doesn’t matter now. All the missed opportunities I had don’t matter.”
She wrapped her hand around my arm and nodded. “Exactly. We’re where we’re supposed to be now. So forget about what Pin Dick said. I shouldn’t have even mentioned it, but he just gets me so riled up.”
And therein lies the problem. “But you believed him.”
“No, I didn’t,” she protested.
The icy feeling of panic was spreading in my chest. I could see where my logic would take us, but I didn’t have another option but to pursue it. “Can you tell me there wasn’t a small part of you that wondered if he was telling the truth? Wondered about me and my intentions toward you?” I asked.
The dawning on her face told me my answer. “Clay...that’s not fair.”
“Maybe not, but I saw it. I saw how ready you were to believe the worst and lock yourself back down. Self-sufficiency above all else?”
“Come on, Clay. That’s not what I’m doing. I’m not running away.”
“Not today, but you can’t guarantee me that you won’t in the future.”
She came at me and grasped my arms with both hands. “Clay, listen to what you’re saying. Of course, I can’t guarantee that. You can’t guarantee that you won’t get hit by a bus tomorrow. No one can guarantee anything. So we try. We do the best we can and we try.”
I looked up at the sky as though some skywriter would have written instructions for what to do when you feel your heart breaking. I wanted to trust her. I wanted to believe that I could be vulnerable and it wouldn’t blow up in my face. But all I knew was the fear—fear of ending up back where I’d been with that pill bottle in my hand.
When I looked at Ally, she was shaking her head. “You’re going to sabotage this, aren’t you? Because of something Pin Dick probably made up. He’s getting exactly what he wants—do you realize that? And for what?”
I couldn’t come up with an answer. The feeling of defeat roared in my head and drowned out all rational thought. Even on meds, the depressive thoughts still had a stronghold.
“I don’t want to give up, but maybe I need to take a beat and get my head in order. Make sure I’m on the right dosage of meds. You deserve someone who’s ready to be vulnerable.”
She nodded. “I do. I do deserve that. And you’re the one who made me believe it. You’re the one who convinced me I could hold out for the knight. And now I want to convince you to hold out for me.”
“I want to . . . but right now, I can’t.”
“Try harder.”
I felt like a child being reprimanded by a teacher for adding two plus two on my fingers and somehow getting five. Right now, five seemed like the only answer. My brain couldn’t get on the same page as hers.
It was unwilling, too afraid of falling more in love than I already was, too afraid to make myself that vulnerable. It felt like too big a risk.
“I want to trust you. I want to be all in. I just don’t know how to get there,” I admitted.
“You do it by asking for what you want, regardless of the baggage your family has laid on you or your misguided perceptions of yourself, and making something of whatever you’ve got.”
I wanted to take her words at face value and believe she was correct. It sounded simple enough. But maybe I was too far gone to be rescued by words. I’d spent most of my life feeling broken and maybe even love couldn’t fix me.
“You were ready to give me my fairy tale, Clay. Why can’t you let me do that for you?”
I shrugged. “Because it terrifies me.”
“I know. I know it does. But I’m telling you that you can trust me. So come find me when you believe it.”
She began stepping down the bleachers, but not before I saw her eyes brim with tears that she wiped with her fingers. And then I just saw her back as she walked away.