Chapter 43
Chapter Forty-Three
Jeff
Sammy’s dangling off my back like an orangutan as I walk into the kitchen. She smells like peanut butter—the whole house does—and there’s nail polish all over her hands and wrists like she was accosted by a deranged manicurist.
“Hey,” Devon says from behind a pile of sandwiches.
She looks like a pop-star Medusa from the eighties.
I want to tease her. To laugh and tell her the good news, that I got my dream position at Chicago Central.
That the sudden nature of the vacancy allowed me to negotiate my contract like I was on Shark Tank.
That the signing bonus for starting sooner than I’d planned and leaving my fellowship without my specialty covered the entire mortgage debt, the new therapy equipment, and then some.
That my attending was so happy to have me back, he gave me every weekend off in January and February to adjust and visit Devon.
Everything is going to be ok. Better than ok.
But I can tell immediately from the set of her mouth and the way she looks down at the bread in her hand that something isn’t right.
I look to Jenny who gives me a sad smile and a nod to confirm what I already know.
Devon knows that I was interviewing. And she’s not happy that I didn’t tell her.
It’s a lame excuse to say that I didn’t lie—that it really was a financial mission after accepting the job and taking my mother straight to the bank.
At this point, I know that the conversation we are about to have is so far overdue that the library would have just made me pay for the book.
I untangle Sammy’s arms from my neck and kiss her on the cheek, place her back on her own two feet.
“You wanna do a trail ride in a little?” I ask.
She lights up. The insanely bushy Christmas tree that sits behind her has nothing on that smile.
“That’s a great idea, J.J. We’ll get the horses tacked up. You two join us when you’re ready.” My mom lifts on her toes and kisses my temple then heads straight for Devon and puts her hands on each of her shoulders. “You will ride Athena. You share a spirit.”
I half expect Devon to decline—spout off some rule about horseback riding—but she just tilts her head and smiles.
“Sounds like fun,” she says. And my mom folds her in a hug then motions for Jenny to get the hell out of dodge.
“I gotta talk to Devon and then we can go,” I tell Sammy.
Three of the four women of my life scatter from the kitchen and I’m left to face the conversation I’ve been dreading for so long. Devon loves me. And I love her. Now that we know, we can handle a little distance.
I walk around the island and wrap my arms around her hips, kiss the side of her neck. She doesn’t tilt her head the way she usually does.
“I’m sorry,” I start.
Devon keeps swiping at the bread.
“What are you sorry for, Jeff?” she says.
I put my hands on top of her arms, stilling her movement.
“We have enough sandwiches. Can you look at me?”
Her shoulders drop as she lets go of her butter knife.
“I don’t know if I can look at you.” Her voice is thick. “I’m scared to see something I think I should’ve seen a while ago.”
I spin her around and twine my fingers in hers, noticing that her hands are spattered with color like she was shot with paintballs. I hold them up between us.
“No future in cosmetology,” I whisper. But Devon doesn’t laugh. And the absence of that sound is what scares me the most.
“You took the job, didn’t you?” she asks.
Shit. We are doing this.
“Devon,” I tilt her face up toward mine and a tear leaks out of the corner of her left eye, streams back toward her ear. “This was always the plan. My family needs—”
She nods and her fifteen ponytails all swing in different directions.
“I think I knew. I always knew. I just hoped. I let myself hope. When? How long?”
She’s biting her lip so hard that I think she might be breaking skin. I try to brush my thumb against her lip and she turns her face.
“Right away. After the new year—” Her eyes shut slowly, blocking me out. “We can make this work. I’ll fly out to Philly the first eight weekends then twice a month and you can fly here the weekends I’m on call,” I say. It’s not unreasonable. Until we can come up with a better solution.
“I can’t do long distance.”
She meets my gaze. Her eyes have hardened. The usual liquid irises look like the block of amber from Jurassic Park. And I’m the mosquito suspended in it.
“It’s not long distance when I’m there and you’re here.”
“You know what I mean. I can’t do it.”
I stare down at her and wait. You don’t get to make statements like that and not explain. She stares right back, every inch of softness I saw last night gone from her face.
“I can’t be sitting at the table with your empty seat,” she hesitates, possibly considering if she can leave it there.
When she looks up at me, she must see that she can’t.
“I know you need to be here. I know you have to choose your career—your family. I just can’t—do this again.
My dad—he could never show up, Jeff. Every holiday.
Every big event. We could never be his first priority. It broke us. It broke me.”
I run my thumb beneath her cheekbone, through the path a tear left shimmering in the light from the pendant hanging over the island. She lets me. I wait for her to tilt her cheek into my hand. She does not.
“You aren’t broken. And I’m not your father. I went into orthopedics so I could have a life—be with my family—be with you,” I tell her. “I’m choosing you, Devon. I just need you to choose me.” She stiffens under my touch.
“What you’re asking of me is exactly what he asked of my mother. Sit around and wait—be ok with the empty seat. I can barely get her into the backyard, Jeff. It ruined her.”
She tugs her hand from mine, steps back, and I swallow.
“That’s not us, Devon.”
“You can’t promise that. Shit happens, Jeff. Just like it did that night you didn’t show up for dinner.”
I study her face, the way her lips tremble as she tries to breathe.
The way her arms cross in front of her to protect herself—from me?
I think of the scar tissue you have to cut through when you open up a joint that’s been previously operated on.
That’s what I need to do. I’ve got to press a little harder.
“Move here. Come with me,” I whisper. A hail Mary straight down the middle of the field.
She narrows her eyes.
“Really, Jeff? Just leave my life? Do you expect a dowry, too?”
Shit. Interception.
“What do you want from me?” I ask.
And though I really want her to answer—to give me her honest picture of a future—she looks like the question punched her in the gut. She puts a hand on the edge of the sink behind her. Shakes her head too hard.
“I can’t ask it and you can’t give it.”
I step forward and she puts her hand up to stop me. This is the moment where you either push harder and hope for the best or find a way around the scar. I’m not trained for this. And there’s no attending I can call to help.
“You need to be here for your family,” she says. “And I need to be there. My students. My mom. My life is there.”
“Which leaves us where, Devon?” I can’t keep the anger out of my voice as I take in the stubborn set of her jaw. “You’re just going to let this go and give up? That easily?”
“It’s not giving up. It’s saving us both from getting hurt later down the line.” She looks up at the ceiling then back at me. “This is what we have to do. This is the only way.”
She says it with such firmness that it feels like she’s slapped me across the face.
I narrow my eyes at her. It’s not the only way.
There is always a way. She doesn’t blink.
And the tears have stopped. This is what she wants.
To let it crash before it’s taken off, just to minimize the damage. Damage that might never happen.
“This is bullshit,” I tell her. She flinches.
“You don’t know what it was like. I can’t do it again.”
“I know what it’s like to lose, Devon. And that’s what this is. A loss. But worse, because you’re choosing it.”
She shakes her head. If only she could use some of her misguided stubbornness to fight for this. For us. That’s not what she wants.
“It’s over,” she whispers. And I can’t tell if she’s saying it to me or to herself. But it doesn’t matter because either way the words are spoken.
I need to get out of this kitchen. Away from the smell of peanut butter that normally comforts me but is now turning my stomach. I give Devon a stiff nod and turn my back on her, the buzzing in my ears so loud that I can barely hear my heart yelling at me to fight while my mind says let her go.
Five minutes ago, everything was falling into place. And yet here I am, striding out of the house and then letting the front door shut with a bang, leaving a huge chunk of my heart shattered on my mother’s kitchen floor.
Sometimes the scars are so thick that there’s no way around. And if you press too hard, you could end up doing more harm than good.