Chapter 19
Nineteen
“Can I ask you something?”
I didn’t even notice when Mia entered, just that she dropped a coffee and a delicious Nanaimo bar beside me, and said quietly, “You okay?” with that knowing look of hers.
“I don’t know. He wrote a letter, and it feels like a part of him left. I really don’t know, Mia.”
“You’ll know when you see him,” she said and left it at that.
And then, around 10:41, he was there. The reflection in the glass door of the IT room caught me off guard: Paul, in a dark hoodie and jeans, head tilted slightly like he was listening to something or someone.
His hair was longer, messier, and his posture more rigid.
And then he turned, our eyes meeting across the room: no smirk, no wink, and no teasing comment passed between desks.
Just a look, a faint smile, and then he turned away.
By 10:57, a Post-it note appeared on my keyboard, wedged under the corner of my calendar: just one line, in familiar, neat handwriting:
“Terrace. 11:15. If you still want to.”
The wind was stronger today, tugging at the hem of my shirt and messing my hair.
The sea was shimmering like glass far off in the distance; Gabriola and Newcastle Islands were still there.
I leaned on the rail, coffee that Mia thoughtfully brought for me in one hand, and pretended to be casual, chill, everything just fine.
I heard the door open on my right. I didn’t turn and fixed my eyes on Gabriola, just to anchor myself onto something.
He stood there for a moment, all cautious and wondering whether it was safe to approach, then stepped up beside me, close enough that I could feel the warmth of him.
Not touching, just close, all tall and familiar.
“I read your letter,” I said simply, just to start the conversation. “More than once.”
“I figured,” he said quietly.
“It was beautiful. But sounded like a lot of things, read different to me with every try, and this time it messed with my head.”
“I didn’t mean for that. You’re a beautiful soul, Alicia, and that’s what I wanted to say, in all my fucked-up-ness.”
I turned toward him. It was time, and I just couldn’t hold it in any longer, that knot in my gut Mia told me about, fighting those butterflies in my stomach and achy heart somewhere behind my ribcage.
“Paul?”
“Yes, girl?”
“Can I ask you something?” I said so quietly that I could hardly hear myself over the wind.
He nodded once.
“Do you think,” I began, my voice steady even though my chest felt like it was about to explode, “we could… stop hiding? Just be, you and me. Us. Together. Whatever that means.” I paused.
Uneasy, but confident enough to go on. “I’m not afraid of the things you’re working through, Paul.
You, too, mended me in ways I never thought possible.
You make me… calm. You make me want to listen to music and dream. ”
He was staring straight ahead, jaw tensing with every passing second.
“I want to be with all of you,” I said. “I’m strong enough now—and I thank you for it—to take it all in and make it ours.”
Silence. More silence.
And then he broke.
After a minute of silence, which felt like an hour, he leaned forward, gripped the terrace railing with both hands like it was the only thing holding him upright. His knuckles turned red, then white.
“Fuck!” he muttered under his breath. “This is so fucked up.”
I didn’t move, startled completely. What?
“This was never supposed to happen,” he said, shaking his head repeatedly. “Not with you. Not like this.”
His breath was ragged. He looked straight at me, with that mix of sadness, guilt, and a storm incoming.
“I can’t, Alicia, I fucking can’t!” he growled, but I knew he directed the anger toward himself, and not me.
“I’m not sure I understand. What can’t you do?” I whispered, my voice shaking.
“I don’t know how to fix this,” he muttered.
“You don’t have to fix anything now,” I said. “I just… wanted you to know how I feel about you, no poetry and no letters. I thought maybe you wanted this too. Did I completely misinterpret what happened between us?”
Another beat. Another curse under his breath.
“No. Alicia, please, no. This is all… What did we do..?” he said, almost pleading to the sky.
His fingers still clenched on the rail, head shaking, his whole body shaking.
“Come to mine, after work or now. Please. This isn’t the right place.”
Someone sucked the air out of the earth, a breath caught in my throat, my chest rising too fast, my scars pulling in different directions uncomfortably.
I reached for him instinctively… and stopped.
He left the door open, just slightly cracked, like he wasn’t sure I’d walk through it, but couldn’t risk not letting me in if I did.
The apartment was dim, no music, no smell of coffee or food.
The shadows stretched long across the hardwood floor.
The basil plant on the windowsill looked like it was dying.
Paul was by the kitchenette, shirt rolled up to his elbows, hands resting on the counter.
He looked over when I stepped inside, but his face did that thing: stormy and unreadable.
“Hey, girl,” he said.
“Hi, boy,” I whispered.
A beat. He took two steps forward, slow, then another, until he was close enough to touch. He reached for my cheek, barely: a brush of skin against skin. His knuckles skimmed my jaw. Then he kissed me, but not on the lips, just beside them, too careful not to touch them.
“I didn’t mean for today and this day to be… like this. But I’m so glad you’re here,” he said.
“I’m here but don’t know what to expect, Paul. I’m really not sure why I’m here and what you couldn’t say at the office.”
He nodded once. “Do you want something to drink?”
I blinked. “What?”
“Water? Wine?” He opened the fridge. “I think I still have ginger ale, but it might be flat.” Then I realized he was really nervous, but he was trying. Trying to be the man who cooked pasta and teased me on the couch, pretending like this was any other night.
“Wine’s fine,” I said, because I was trying, too.
He poured two glasses, the cheap red he always bought; he seemed like he had ten more on stock. He handed me mine and touched my fingers, looking at them sadly, then he walked over to his desk, sat down, almost in slow motion. His laptop was already open.
“You remember the John Mayer songs we talked about?” he asked, not looking up. “I wanted to show you something, if you still want to see it. He is amazing with the guitar, improvises like Hendrix, reinvented blues rock like it took no effort from him.”
I just sat on the arm of the couch, curled one leg under me, sipping the sour wine even though I couldn’t taste a thing.
The first chords came on. Free Fallin’, live, from the Nokia Theatre.
That slow, dreamy, California-sky kind of ache, and we listened in silence.
He was humming quietly, lost somewhere between Portland, Nanaimo, and Los Angeles.
I wanted it to mean something, and for a second, I let myself believe it did.
That everything will be back to normal, in this tiny studio on Bruce Avenue.
But I wasn’t an American girl from the lyrics.
When it ended, he didn’t look at me, just clicked on the next tab.
Ain’t No Sunshine. John Mayer again, another live performance, from Chicago this time. White sunglasses. Black, simple T-shirt, like Paul’s, the first time we met outside of the office. Orange background. Orange guitar. He didn’t say a word before pressing play.
The guitar started, slower, moodier. Paul still wasn’t looking at me; he was in his own world of blues, sadness, and vulnerability. And then the voice came in: deep, bruised, so full of mourning it hollowed out the space between us.
I couldn’t move, my body frozen apart from my fingers tightening around the stem of the wine glass, while my other hand curled into the sleeve of my cardigan.
He didn’t look at me at all. Not when the line came: “Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone…
” Not when the second verse hit, and the band swelled around him like sorrow in stereo.
My hearing buzzed, a high pitch, in the left ear, faint at first, then louder.
The sound of the song distorted, a bullet train and a crash storming in my head.
My chest started to ache, this sharp, unbearable ache I knew too well, and vertigo caught up with me. I was losing my balance.
I looked at him with all the strength I could muster—he was still watching the screen. Still not watching me. And that’s when I knew for sure.
I knew something, a lot was off lately: when he stopped contacting me in Portland, without explaining things clearly.
And then he wrote that letter. My gut was screaming loud, although completely, unapologetically muddled by love.
But now music, of all things, made things clear: as always, he spoke through music.
The realization unfurled in me like smoke through lungs, a sudden, terrible knowing. Even Camus looked down from the poster with that half-smile and cigarette in his teeth, and he knew.
It wasn’t about me, and this wasn’t ours. This apartment I thought could be home.
When the video ended, the silence wasn’t silent at all: it rang, it shrieked terribly inside my head. Then I placed my glass down, carefully, still not sure of my balance, like I didn’t trust myself not to smash it.
I turned to him, and my voice cracked as I said, “That song’s not about me… is it?”
He closed his eyes and still didn’t speak.
“Your letter, your Paris fantasies of forever places weren’t about me, were they?”
Silence.
“Paul,” I said again. “Say something, now.”
He turned then, finally. And when he looked at me, I saw it: that same storm in his eyes I’d seen the very first time he dared me. But now, it wasn’t daring. It was devastation. Or perhaps I didn’t see him clearly then, desperately looking for a lifeline.
“I gave my heart to someone three years ago, but broke it off. Ran, eight months ago, like a fucking coward. I made it here, of all places. But I left my heart there, and never got it back… This trip only made it worse.”
And then again, quieter:
“I met you and you found me, you… surprised me. You made me believe for a second I’m not a fuck-up and that I could heal from her. But I can’t.”
I stood up too fast, too dizzy. “I surprised you? I surprised you?”
He reached for my wrist, but I flinched before he could touch it.
“What was this? What am I to you: your consolation prize? Your little detour? Your new Ella you need now and then for healing? You left your heart in Portland, so you played with mine? And you knew it, you knew how I felt, you must have known.”
He stood next to me, close, too close, those blue, beautiful eyes I fell into that day at the office, looking at me. Broken, on the verge of tears. Like that would undo it. Like he could hold me in place and I’d forget the lyrics still echoing and burning my skin, my ear ringing like an alarm bell.
“My heart’s a mess, Alicia. It’s fucking broken. I told you I was fucked up.”
“No,” I said, trembling now. “No, you said I made you the kind of man who wants to stay but doesn’t know how, that’s different.”
His mouth opened. Then closed. No more words.
“I would have loved you and I would have chosen you, every day,” I whispered. “And you chose me, of all people, for a chapter. And you know what’s the worst? You knew that from the start.” Tears filled my eyes before I could stop them.
He took another step forward. “Please, don’t go like this, Alicia, please.”
But I was already moving. I grabbed my coat off the chair, walked to the door, and looked around the apartment like it had turned into someone else’s space.
“Just stop, Paul. Save me that last ounce of dignity and know when to stop.”
And then I slammed the door behind me hard enough to make the Camus frame rattle.