Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
harrison
I stared at him as his dark, defined eyebrows moved so expressively; they rose, they fell deep, they curved and contorted, and he moved his head to one side, then cocked it the other way, and his lips moved with force and speed, too.
He shook his head, locks of hair flapping around his ears.
He moved some off his brow with one hand absent-mindedly, fingers slim and long.
He made a guilty expression, then, eyebrows lifting high as he finally focused his darting, wandering gaze on me. “…now that I’m hearing myself, it wasn’t the best…”
I didn’t hear much of the rest. I didn’t want to either. I’d been so absorbed in telling him about seeing Metropolis in Berlin, and he’d kissed me at the perfect moment, wrapping his hands around my heart and squeezing it so hard it stopped beating for a while.
It was all play. All an act. It was fake.
It was fake by my own design, a perfect fake relationship run that I had architected from the start and began to believe in.
It was my own fault, but it was Taylor who had kissed me so tenderly, so sweetly, so convincingly.
Was I really the only one at fault, then?
“Yeah, good,” I said, cutting him off with a wave of my hand. “Fine. Maybe dial it back down in the future.”
His face was vacant, empty, and devoid of feelings, and his gaze simply remained on my face.
He searched it, then waited. I didn’t know what he was waiting for.
A joke to break the tension? He wasn’t getting it.
Something more understanding, more casual, that would convince him that kissing me randomly was just fine? Never gonna happen.
“Let’s not do that again,” I said.
Taylor nodded, but he still looked at me with the same weight of expectation. “You’re angry with me.”
“I’m not angry,” I said.
“You are. I took things into my hands, and you could have been talking to Emma, and I ruined it.” He blurted the words so messily, but they were precise and somehow completely off mark.
I resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of my nose and sigh.
Instead, I locked my gaze on his eyes. “Maybe I just don’t want some random guy kissing me.
” My voice was cooler than I’d intended, cool enough that Taylor winced.
“Look, maybe seeing Emma here wasn’t a good idea.
I’m so full of doubts, I don’t even know why I’m trying. ”
“I’d say it worked,” Taylor said. “She…well, she saw what I did and…and she left.”
I wished I could be hopeful. I wished I could feel the resolve I’d felt a week ago when we’d started these crazy things, when I’d had the intention to carry it out and see it through. I had none of it. “Taylor, I don’t know what I’m trying to do anymore.”
He held his breath, pressing his lips together tightly and not blinking. He just looked at me, and he looked like he was sad for me.
Don’t, I wanted to tell him. Don’t pity me. It’s so much worse if you pity me.
“I need to grow up,” I said. At that, Taylor’s face turned a little more hopeful, but I didn’t tell him the rest. I didn’t tell him anything except that it was all fine. We were fine. I’d see him later. Maybe.
It was late evening when I returned to the corner café on Whitmore Street, its interior bathed in golden and amber lights, its wooden tables aglow with melting candles in brass candelabras.
I sat down and ordered myself a sandwich and a decaf latte because I still entertained some wild ideas of catching a few hours of sleep tonight. I picked up Lord Tennyson and leafed through the pages more for comfort than any real desire to read.
My order was prepared by the time Emma entered the café.
My heart sank into my stomach as I looked at her beautiful face and the softness in her gaze.
What had she meant to tell me earlier? What had she wanted so badly that she would step across the room to tell me after months of silence?
And what was so personal, so important that she couldn’t speak in the presence of a beautiful man who had just kissed me?
She’d texted back quickly after I’d asked her to see me. I didn’t know if that was good or bad or if it meant anything at all. I knew nothing about anything.
Emma waved at me as she made her way to the small bar in the back, where she made her order, smiled, replied to some question, asked one of her own, then listened intently to the words the barista spoke back. She was like that. She listened to you, heard you, and she was there.
She came to my table and leaned in just as I rose. We hugged lightly, and she kissed my cheek before sitting down across from me. She didn’t say it if she’d noticed it, but this was our spot. Our spot, to which I had brought Taylor once on a rainy day last week.
“You look good,” I said. “Your hair…”
“You too,” she said.
We were silent then. We were silent so soon. I licked my lips and took my coffee to keep myself occupied for a moment, drank a little from the big cup, and set it down. “So I hear you were at the gallery today by the silo. I didn’t see you.”
“You were occupied,” she said softly with just a tinge of mischief.
I could still feel the heat lingering on my lips, still feel the surprising softness of Taylor’s mouth on mine, and the urgency with which he’d kissed me. I could also feel the sheer feeling of stupidity that followed. I had believed his need to kiss me had been such that he couldn’t contain it.
“Who is he?” Emma asked.
I shook my head. No one? They seemed like the words I was supposed to say, but I couldn’t get them over my lips. “A friend,” I said instead.
“More than a friend,” Emma said. The waiter brought over a small tray with a teapot and a cup, steam curling in the candlelight. “Right?”
I gave a small shrug, as if to say, “We’ll see.” Instead, I asked her, “How are you?”
“Oh, you know,” she said.
I didn’t.
“Overall, I’d say I’m doing well. But it’s never that simple.” She opened the lid of the teapot and stirred the tea infuser, then replaced the lid again. She poured it into the cup and leaned closer to take in the scent of it. “What about you? Are you happy?”
Was I still trying to make her jealous? Was I still trying to make her feel hopeless and lost and alone because I had moved on with some guy she couldn’t compete with? Or should I tell her the truth? I didn’t know what the truth was, so I just nodded. “As happy as you’d expect.”
“Come on, Harrison,” she said, sharing a smile. “He’s very cute, and he has heart eyes for you. That’s gotta count for something.”
And he has heart eyes for every crafty girl at the market, I thought. I’d even bought him a token to remember her by. Silly me. “He’s a sweet guy. And Michael? How are things?”
Emma didn’t answer right away. She held my gaze. The candlelight flickered in her irises. “He’s very caring.”
“Was I not caring?” I asked, then wanted to scream at myself.
Some of the spark went out of her eyes. “Oh, Harrison.” The tiredness in her voice cut me deep. It was the same tiredness that I had seen on the day she had told me things weren’t working well anymore.
“Let’s just give it more time,” I’d said. “Maybe try harder. Or try not trying so hard. Whatever you think is better.” Please. But she’d only shaken her head and told me that she’d been thinking about leaving for so long that she realized she was already out the door.
“I’m sorry,” I said firmly. “That was a stupid thing to say.”
“I don’t get it,” Emma said. “You’re not an insecure guy. Of all the people I’ve met, you’re probably the only one who knows exactly what he wants, what he likes, and where he’s headed.”
So what was I lacking, then? But I didn’t ask that question. I knew better now. “Maybe I’m not so sure beneath the surface, Emma.”
“And if you’re not, I’m sorry,” she said. “Truly, Harrison, I’m sorry if I misjudged you or handled it poorly or hurt you. I only did it the way I knew how and because I thought you felt the same.”
“I don’t know what could have made you think that,” I said, not accusingly at all. Emma didn’t flinch at it. She knew this wasn’t a fight. I needed to know.
“Your confidence,” she said. “Your sense of self. Your sense of your place in the world. Your drive. You are so much more, so much of the time, than most people are. I never knew how to match it, Harrison.”
I wanted to laugh. So I was just too good to be with. What a useful load.
“And sometimes, people just don’t want something,” she said, lifting her cup and drinking some of her tea.
“I’m not asking. Not really.” I held back a disappointed sigh. I’d hoped that she would tell me…well, I’d hoped that she would tell me life hadn’t been the same and that she’d reconsidered and that she was hoping we could find a way to work things out as I’d suggested.
But if that couldn’t happen yet, then I hoped to hear a reason why she’d walked away from two years of building something together just to later say she was moderately happy. Where was the romance? Where were the dreamy looks, sighs, and glances at the mere mention of Michael’s name?
We sat in silence for a while longer. Emma finished half her cup, and I was down to foam in mine. My sandwich sat untouched on its plate, going cold.
“Today,” I said. “At the gallery. Taylor said you were walking toward us.”
“Yes,” she said. “You seemed so…relaxed. Happy. I wanted to say hi to you both.” She paused and moved her fingertip over the rim of her cup. “I also wanted to ask if you’d seen the film my friend had shot for the exhibition. I thought you might like it.”
I had forgotten all about it. After walking through the trance of feeling that followed Taylor’s kiss and his request to trust him—trust him?
Trust him with what? With the wisdom to perform a kiss for my ex?
With my feelings? A likely story—I hadn’t even paid attention to much of the exhibition later.
“Yeah, it was good. Good cinematography, great composition.”
“Oh, she’ll be so glad to hear that,” Emma said, giddy.
That was, it seemed, the best I could do for Emma. I could lie to make her happy over something inconsequential.
“And are you? Happy with Taylor, I mean,” she said.
Ask me something easier, I wanted to say, but somehow, those words belonged to Taylor, not anyone else. So I gave a noncommittal nod and smiled. “He makes me laugh a lot.”
Emma’s eyes widened exaggeratedly. “He does? Must be very funny.”
I wasn’t that difficult to make laugh. We had just never struck the core of each other’s sense of humor, Emma and I. Though it was me who’d felt okay with it, while Emma had only gone quieter.
“Michael’s waiting for me,” she said. “We’re having a picnic in the morning, and we need to buy some things before we head out.”
I nodded with more confidence. There was no point in wallowing in my grief and self-pity, and definitely no point in trying to get her to stay a while longer. “Yeah, Taylor’s probably wondering already. We have plans later.”
For one moment, I wanted to tell her about the solar eclipse.
It would be a rare total eclipse visible from here, and if Michael drove her out of town and to the hiking trails around Alderman’s Ledge, they could look west at twenty minutes past three and witness a once-in-a-lifetime cosmic event.
And if they played Pink Floyd, it would be the most romantic moment of their lives.
But I was going to take her there. Had been going.
“Have fun, Harrison,” she said as she stood up. There was no goodbye kiss this time, but I didn’t stand up to offer one either. So, after a minute, I was sitting alone with Lord Tennyson, a cold sandwich, and nobody waiting for me once I stepped out of here.