Chapter 18
chapter
eighteen
Payton
She's not at school on Friday.
I noticed before first period. Her classroom door is closed, lights off, the little paper pumpkin one of her students made still taped to the window. I send her a text somewhere around lunch.
Me: Hope you feel okay. Let me know if you need anything.
She responds three hours later with a thumbs up emoji and nothing else.
I stare at the thumbs up for a long time.
Then I go home and I sit at the kitchen table, intending to make a snack, but I never manage to do more than take out two slices of bread.
My mom finds me there and I’m not even sure how long I’ve just been sitting and thinking.
She doesn't say anything at first, just refills her iced tea, refills mine without asking, and sits down across from me.
"How long have you been sitting here?" she asks.
"A while."
She nods, wraps both hands around her glass. She's got the same easy patience she's always had, the kind that doesn't push but makes it very clear there's room if you need it. After all, she’s raised five kids and kept my dad in line for the duration of their marriage.
"You've been different the last couple of months," she says. "Happier for a while. Then quieter. I wasn't going to say anything, but—" she shrugs, one shoulder. "Do you want to talk about it?"
I look at my tea.
"I met someone," I say.
She doesn't react beyond a small softening around her eyes. "At the school?"
"Yeah." I turn the mug in a slow circle on the table. “Well, before that, actually. But she is a teacher. She's—she's it, Mom. I know that sounds insane given that I've only known her a few months, but I know what I know. She's the one."
"But?"
"But she doesn't—" I stop. Try to find the right words.
"She has feelings for me. I know she does.
But she won't let herself have them. She keeps the whole thing at arm's length. She wants everything to be casual, but I’m just not built that way.
I don't know how much longer I can keep showing up for something she won't let be what it actually is. "
Mom is quiet for a moment, and I can see her thinking—not formulating advice, just actually sitting with it, which is something I've always loved about her.
"Can I tell you something?" she says finally.
"Yeah."
"When your dad and I first met, I was not in a good place.
" She says it plainly, no drama attached to it.
"I was twenty-three and I'd just come out of a relationship that had done a number on me, and the last thing I thought I wanted was someone new.
Your dad asked me out four times before I said yes.
The fifth time, I said yes because I was tired of saying no, and also because he showed up with a plant. "
I look up. "A plant."
"A very sad little succulent from the grocery store checkout line.
" The corner of her mouth turns up. “It wasn’t a gift for me. He said he'd read that succulents were hard to kill and he needed something in his apartment that would survive his learning curve. Things hadn’t been going well, so he’d taken the little cactus on an adventure.
“He didn’t even ask me on a date that day; instead, he asked if we could be friends.
I was so charmed by the cactus on a field trip that I readily agreed.
" She pauses. "The point is, he didn't push.
He didn't try to convince me I was ready or argue me out of my own fear.
He saw me, saw my struggle, and offered me something real.
He just kept showing up, and when I was ready, I could see that he'd been there the whole time. "
"So you're saying I should keep showing up."
"I'm saying there's a difference between showing up and making yourself available to be hurt indefinitely.
" She holds my gaze, steady and clear. "You can love someone and still need them to meet you somewhere.
You can't pour yourself into a person who keeps the door closed and call that a relationship.
That's just loving someone alone, and you deserve better than alone. "
I sit with that for a long moment.
"So what do I do?"
"Tell her the truth," she says, simple as anything.
"All of it. And then let her decide what she does with it.
You can't choose for her, and you can't love her into being ready.
All you can do is say what's true and give her the space to find her own way there.
" She reaches across the table and squeezes my hand once. "And if she's the one, she'll find it."
She takes her iced tea and goes back down the hall, easy and unhurried. I sit at the kitchen table for another twenty minutes, turning everything she said over until it settles into something I can use.
I decide to write her a letter. I’m not sure she’d actually listen to all of my words if I was speaking them. But a letter she can read at her own pace.
It takes me four drafts to get it all right.
I fold the paper in half, then write her name on the front.
Drive to her house before I can talk myself out of it, in the early Saturday morning quiet when the neighborhood is still half-asleep.
I leave it on her porch between the terra cotta pot of half-dead basil she's been meaning to water for weeks and the welcome mat that says come back with a warrant.
I sit in my truck at the end of her street for a few minutes, engine running.
Then I drive home.
Jules,
I've started this four times. The other three versions were either too much or not enough, which is maybe the story of everything between us—the distance between too much and not enough, and how we've been living in that gap for months now.
I'm going to try to just tell you the truth, plainly, the way you've always been honest with me even when honesty cost you something. You deserve at least that much back.
I love you.
I'm not telling you that to pressure you or to change the terms of something you've been comfortable with. I'm not telling you because I expect you to say it back.
I'm telling you because it's true and it's been true for a while and I'm tired of knowing it and not saying it. Keeping it inside feels like lying, and I don't lie to people I love.
So, I love you. I’m in love with you. With your sharp edges and the softness you hide underneath that you think nobody sees.
I love that you told nine-year-olds their color mixing was wrong and then quietly fixed it so they felt like they figured it out themselves.
I love that you talk to your half-dead basil plant.
I love the way you laugh, completely unguarded and full of joy.
I love the way you smell and the way you always seem to have paint somewhere on your body. I love the way it feels when I’m inside you. But I love the quiet moments on your couch eating cold tacos just as much.
Here's the other true thing: I can't keep doing this.
Not because I don't want to be near you—I will always want to be near you. And not because I'm angry, or hurt, or trying to punish you for needing what you need. But because I know what I want, Jules, and it's all of you.
Not this arrangement. Not the version of this where I'm welcome between certain hours and in certain rooms and not others. Not the version where I have to leave without saying everything I want to say.
You told me once that this was just sex. I know that's what you call it. I've never once believed that's what it was.
And I think you know that too.
I think you've known for a while that this stopped being simple somewhere around the second week. I think the knowing scares you for reasons that have nothing to do with me and everything to do with what you've had to survive to get here.
I'm not asking you to stop being scared. I would never ask you that. I just can't be the thing you reach for in the dark and put away in the morning anymore. It's starting to undo me, and I love myself too much to let it.
So here's what I'm offering instead: I'm here. I'm not going anywhere.
I will still leave notes under your coffee cup and argue with you about which of the Indiana Jones movies is the best. (The Last Crusade. I said what I said.)
What changes is this: I can’t come over anymore. Not until you’re ready to acknowledge that this thing between us isn’t just convenient and fucking amazing sex. Acknowledge that and be willing to risk getting hurt to claim something amazing.
If that day comes, I'm ready. I've been ready.
If it doesn't, then I'll figure out how to love you from here, which will be hard, but I've done hard things before.
Whatever you decide, I need you to know that knowing you has been one of the better things that's happened to me. The kids at school are lucky to have you. I was lucky to have you. I hope you know that.
XOXO, Yours
Payton