Chapter 29 #2
His mouth hardens.
“In your family, you are muscle,” I say. “Not only muscle. I know that. You know that. But that’s the role that calcified around you. The man who gets things done. The man who is useful in one kind of way. The man no one imagines in a graduate program.”
He says nothing.
“That embarrasses you,” I add.
His eyes flash.
“Don’t.”
“Why? Because it’s true?”
“Because you keep saying that word like you know what’s in my head.”
“I know enough.”
He pushes away from the counter and comes around the island, stopping across from me.
Now we are close enough that the charge between us becomes electric. Not sexual—not at first, anyway. Something hotter and sharper. The kind of closeness that makes every word feel more personal.
“You know enough?” he repeats.
“Yes.”
“That’s a dangerous thing to believe.”
“I’m not saying I know everything.”
“No?”
“No.” I hold his gaze. “I’m saying you are not reacting like a man who doesn’t care.”
He leans both hands on the island on either side of me, trapping me in the cage of his arms.
“I care,” he says. “That doesn’t mean I want it.”
A better lie, but not good enough.
I shake my head slowly. “It does.”
His stare could peel paint.
I do not look away.
“How?” he asks.
I take a breath.
“Because if you didn’t want it, you could let it go,” I say.
“You could tell yourself it was a phase, a fantasy, a weird little private achievement, feel a bit prideful for having been accepted, and move on with your life. But you haven’t moved on.
You’ve let this thing haunt you. You’ve built your entire emotional crisis around it. ”
“That’s dramatic.”
“It is accurate.”
He scoffs and looks away toward the garden.
I soften my voice, just slightly.
“Vito.”
His eyes flick back to mine.
“You want to go,” I say again. “You’re just afraid that if you choose it, you’re choosing against everything else. But they are not mutually exclusive, these choices.”
He is quiet for so long that I briefly wonder if I have finally pushed him too far.
Then he says, almost absently, “It’s not just choosing against them.”
I still.
“Then what else?”
His jaw works once. Twice.
Then: “What if I go and I’m not enough there either?”
The words are so quiet I almost miss them.
For a second, I just look at him.
He looks almost startled by his own honesty.
As if the words escaped him without permission.
And God, there it is.
Not the family. Not entirely, anyway.
Not only the mocking and the laughter and the role and the image.
What if he gets there and fails?
What if the secret self he built in the dark can’t survive the daylight?
I feel something in me go very still.
“That,” I say softly, “is a different fear. And it’s a fear I happen to be an expert on.”
He gives a short, humorless laugh. “You? Miss genius who went to college at fourteen?”
“And you think that wasn’t terrifying?”
He looks at me then.
Really looks at me.
Not with that half-distracted, half-irritated expression he uses when he’s trying to figure out whether I’m about to psychoanalyze him into a corner. This look is sharper. More direct. Curious, despite himself.
I step into him and wrap my arms around his neck.
“You think I'm some sort of academic machine who was born knowing what she was doing? Well, I have a secret for you.” I lean in closer and whisper. “I don't know shit. None of us does. We just do things and hope they work out for the best.”
His mouth twitches faintly, but it doesn’t fully become a smile.
“You started college at fourteen.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re telling me you were scared.”
“I’m telling you I was terrified.”
He stills and actually listens instead of waiting for his turn to throw another objection in my face.
I continue before I lose the opening.
“Do you know what it feels like to walk into a room where everyone else is several years older, and seems more polished, more certain, and be completely convinced that the only reason you’re there is because someone made a mistake? And maybe that person is you?”
His eyes stay on mine.
I don’t know whether he’s surprised I’m saying any of this or just surprised I’m saying it like this. Not as a lesson. Not as a point-scoring exercise. Just honestly.
“Do you know what it feels like to realize everyone has already decided what you are before you even open your mouth?” I ask.
He says nothing.
That’s answer enough.
“I wasn’t scared of the schoolwork,” I say. “That part was the easy part. I was scared of being seen. Of being looked at and dismissed. Of being the odd one in the room. The little novelty. The freakishly young girl everyone either underestimated or resented before I said a single word.”
The memory of my first day in college.
Giant lecture hall, the chill of the over-air-conditioned building, the too-bright lights.
The looks.
Especially the looks.
I let out a breath through my nose.
“I learned quickly that being intelligent doesn’t protect you from humiliation,” I say. “Sometimes it paints a target on you.”
His brow furrows slightly.
That one, I think, he understands.
“I didn't have a single friend until I was getting my doctorate because everyone around me was always so much older. The only friend I ever had was my cousin, and he was in Texas and also older.
“But I had to keep walking into those rooms anyway,” I say. “Not because it stopped being frightening. Because I wanted what was on the other side of the fear more than I wanted to stay comfortable.”
He looks away at that, to the cutting board, to the sunlit edge of the counter, to anything but me.
And there's the truth right there.
It's not about comfort. It's about familiarity.
The prison you know.
I run my fingers through his hair, bringing his attention back to me.
That is the problem with us now. It keeps happening, even in the middle of these conversations. The tenderness sneaks up and tangles itself with everything else.
“And if that’s the real fear that you're dealing with, then good. We can actually work with that.”
He looks at me sharply. “Good?”
“Yes.”
“That makes me feel so much better.”
I nearly smile despite the tension. “You know what I mean.”
He gives me a look that says he absolutely does and is annoyed about it.
I go on anyway.
“If the real fear is failure, then we can talk about failure. If the real fear is ridicule, we can talk about ridicule. If the real fear is your father, then we talk about your father.” I pause. “But we cannot keep pretending the problem is whether you want this.”
The air condition kicks up on overdrive. Somewhere outside, a gull cries.
Finally, he says, “You’re not going to let this go.”
“No.”
He exhales slowly.
“No,” I repeat. “You brought me here to help you. This is the thing.”
He says nothing.
Then his gaze drifts toward the refrigerator, the marinated meat, and the cutting board.
Then back to me.
I say, more gently now, “Say it.”
His eyes close briefly.
When they open again, there is no anger in them. Just exhaustion. And something that looks suspiciously like relief.
“I want to go,” he says.
The words are so quiet I almost don't hear them.
But I do.
He said it.
He actually said it.
And hearing it now, after everything, after all the deflection and denial, the words hit me with a force I wasn't expecting. A mixture of triumph for him and a terrible sadness for the cost of it.
“Okay,” I say softly.
I brush my thumb over his jaw, feeling the rough stubble, the slight tremor in the muscle there.
I push up onto my toes and kiss him.
It's not a kiss meant to start anything.
It’s a kiss meant to acknowledge the words he finally let out.
It’s meant to say, I see you.
I hear you.
It's okay now.
I pull back after a few seconds, but I keep my hands on the back of his neck, my fingers sliding into the soft hair at his nape.
“Okay,” I say again. “Now we can really talk.”