17. Josie
JOSIE
“Don’t.” I get it out before he’s even all the way to me. “Don’t you dare say my name like that right now. Like it fixes something.”
“Josie, just let me?—“
“Let you what?” I spin around and it comes out of me loud—way louder than I mean it to, loud enough that somebody smoking over by the fence looks up.
I don’t care. Whatever part of me spent all night keeping my voice down died at the drink table.
“Let you talk? You had all night to talk. You had three weeks to talk. Where was all this talking three weeks ago?”
“I know.”
“Did you fuck her in our bed?”
It’s ugly and I want it ugly. I want it to land somewhere soft in him and go off. My whole body’s shaking now, hard enough my teeth actually chatter on the last word—June night, and I’m freezing from the inside out, like all my blood’s been swapped for well water.
“No. Jesus, Josie, no, it wasn’t?—“
“Wasn’t what? Wasn’t in our bed? So that’s supposed to make it better?” My voice cracks up into a register I don’t recognize, too high, too loud, and I let it. “You want me handing out points right now? Is that where we are?”
“That’s not what I?—“
“Then what, Levi? Say the thing.” I shove both hands into his chest—not hard, not really, just enough to feel him there, solid, real, still his, still warm, still mine, except maybe not, maybe not ever again—“Say the actual thing instead of half a sentence!”
He catches my wrists.
Doesn’t grab them. Just holds them there, flat against his chest, and under both my palms I can feel his heart going as fast as mine, slamming away in there like something in a box, and that almost breaks me worse than anything he’s said, because that’s his body telling the truth the way his mouth won’t and it’s still not enough, a scared heart isn’t an answer?—
“Let go of me.” My voice comes apart on it.
He lets go like I burned him.
“Did you sleep with her?” I say it plain this time. Cold and clear and level, and that’s somehow harder than screaming it. “Three weeks ago. Whatever happened, that everybody but me gets to know about. Say it out loud.”
And he goes still, and his jaw works once, and he says:
“Yeah.” Rough. Barely a word at all. “Once. Three weeks ago. Jo?—“
The car catches me.
I didn’t know I was stumbling backward till the door handle bites into my back, cold through the thin of my dress—and the cold does this thing, this horrible sideways thing, because the last time a car was cold against my back it was his truck, second month we were together, the night he pulled me up against the driver’s side door outside the Stockman laughing at something I’d said, both his hands in my hair, kissing me like he’d been thinking about it for a hundred miles, and his hands were shaking then too—I’d felt it and loved it, that a man like him shook wanting me—and that shake was want, that shake was the beginning of everything.
And this one, the one running through me right now against a different cold car three years later, this one is just my body trying to hold itself together in a gravel lot while he stands there with nothing left to say.
Same cold. Same man. That’s the whole distance of it, right there against my spine.
He just stands there after that. Jaw working, a muscle jumping in it.
Big dumb hands hanging at his sides like he doesn’t know what they’re for anymore—and normally I love his hands, I think about his hands more than I’d admit to anybody, three years of those hands meaning safe, meaning home, meaning wanted—and right now I hate them.
I hate looking at them. I hate what I now know they’ve done, and I’m crying, really crying, ugly gulping breaths I can’t get ahead of, mascara burning the corner of one eye, and I hate that too.
“I thought we were basically done,” he says, finally, rough. “That week. You weren’t even looking at me.”
“So it’s my fault.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You basically said that. You just said it with extra steps.” My voice cracks and I hate it, hate that he gets to hear it crack, I want to sound like I don’t care and instead I sound like exactly what I am—a girl in a gravel lot finding out the man she’d have followed anywhere thought all of it was disposable enough to trade for one night with his ex the first time things got hard.
“That’s not fair.”
“None of this is fair, Levi!” It rings off the clubhouse siding, actually echoes. “You don’t get to stand there and tell me what’s fair!”
“I’m not trying to?—“
“Say something real.” It comes out of me low and shaking, one last door held open. “Right now. Not sorry, not it didn’t mean anything—something real, Levi, one thing, or I swear to God?—“
And I watch him reach for it. Watch this man I’ve loved for three years stand in a gravel lot digging through himself for one real thing with his whole face working—and come up empty.
Mouth open. Nothing. Three years of loving with his hands, and the one night I need his mouth, the register’s empty, and that emptiness answers a question I’ve been asking since our fourth month, and the answer breaks something in me that the cheating didn’t even touch.
“I have loved you so much it’s actually humiliating.”
It just comes out. Ugly and true, my chest heaving so hard the words come in pieces.
“You have no idea. I have loved you so much more than you have ever loved me back, and I told myself that was fine—I told myself that’s just how he is, he doesn’t say it, he doesn’t have to say it, he says it with his hands—and this whole time.
This whole time you were out there proving I was right to worry, and I hate you for it.
I actually hate you a little right now. And I still?—“
I stop.
Slam my mouth shut on the end of that sentence, hard enough my teeth click, because no. No. He does not get that too. Not tonight. He does not get to stand in this parking lot having wrecked me and also get to hear the end of that sentence, I am not handing him one more thing to hold onto?—
“You still what?” He steps toward me, fast, and I flinch back into the car—and I see it hit him, see him flinch at me flinching, see it go through him like a blade, good—“Josie. You still what?”
“Don’t come closer.” My hand’s up between us and it’s shaking so bad it doesn’t even look like a warning, it looks like weather.
“Josie—“ And his voice breaks. Actually breaks, right down the middle, and for one second he doesn’t look big at all, this man the size of a doorway, he looks like something knocked half down, standing in the gravel with his hands opening and closing at his sides like they don’t know what they’re for if they’re not allowed to touch me.
“It doesn’t matter.” I’m digging for my keys and my hands won’t work, won’t close around anything, shaking too hard—one try, two, the little pocket of this stupid beautiful dress swallowing them whole—three, and I’ve got them, teeth of the key biting my palm I’m gripping so hard.
“You can’t drive like this. Josie. Look at you, you can’t—I’m not letting you?—“
“You don’t get a vote.” I get the door open. “You lost your vote three weeks ago.”
“Josie—“
“I need to go home.” And my voice breaks clean in half on home, no warning, right down the seam of it, and I hate that most of all, that home is the word that does it and he’s standing close enough to hear.
I don’t look at him again. I get in, and I don’t remember starting the car, don’t remember reverse—there’s just the clubhouse lights swinging away sideways in the windshield, gravel spitting, the county road unrolling black and empty, and I’m crying so hard the centerline’s doubling and I have to slow way down and grip the wheel at ten and two like a student driver, hiccupping, wiping my face with the back of my wrist over and over.
In the rearview, his shape under the lot light. Getting smaller and smaller in the dark. Not chasing the car. Not running after me. Just standing there, hands at his sides, shrinking.
And some small stupid part of me spent that whole last quarter mile watching the mirror wanting him to run after it—and I hate that part of myself most of all tonight.