19. Izzy
— ? —
Izzy
The Sunday ferry is half empty and cold enough that my breath shows.
Wilson stands beside me at the rail with my hand tucked into his coat pocket, his fingers laced through mine inside the wool.
The city shrinks behind us until it’s a gray line, then nothing.
Neither of us says it out loud, but his thumb moves over my knuckles when the island comes into view, and I lean my shoulder into his arm, and that’s the whole conversation.
Manhattan is where we visit now. A dirt road behind the scrub pines is where we come back to.
He drives me out to the cottage. He walks me to my own red door.
He kisses my forehead, says goodnight, and walks back to the Jeep.
The gentleman. The goddamn idiot.
I stand on the porch with my arms crossed against the cold and watch his taillights shrink down the dirt road.
Toward the inn. Toward the room with the slanted ceiling. Toward a bed a few miles from mine that he’s putting himself in on purpose, because I said slow and the man has decided slow is holy.
I said slow. I meant slow.
My fists are clenched inside my sleeves.
Inside, the cottage ticks and settles around me.
I make tea and forget it on the counter. I open the book I’ve been carrying around since the storm, read the same paragraph three times, and close it on the same page.
I bank the stove and check the latch and climb the stairs, and halfway up I turn around and come back down for a glass of water I don’t want.
That’s when I see it.
His rain shell. Still hanging on the crooked hook by the door, next to my grandfather’s slicker, where he hung it the night of the storm.
I cross the room and lift the sleeve to my face. Salt, cedar, him.
My eyes close, and I’m back in that hotel room with my coat half off and his hands not steady.
I take the shell off the hook. I take it upstairs. I don’t look at what my hands are doing.
The guest bed is cold. I leave the lamp off.
Moonlight comes in off the water and turns the quilt silver. I lie down in an old T-shirt with his jacket draped over the pillow beside me, and I let it come.
It comes in pieces.
His hands shaking on my coat buttons, a man who has signed away fortunes without a tremor, undone by wool and me.
The way he stopped when the coat slid off my shoulders, eyes closed, breathing hard, and then started again, slower.
My hands find the hem of my shirt and I let them.
His mouth at my collarbone and the words he pressed there. I see you. I see you. I see you.
My breath goes shallow. My back curves off the mattress.
Seven years of flowers with somebody else’s handwriting, and then one night of a man saying sorry with his mouth, directly to the skin he’d left alone, until every inch of me had heard it.
His voice does more than it should from a few miles away. Say what you need. It will be yours.
My hand answers.
His weight. His patience, and the exact moment it ran out. The sound he made against my shoulder when he came apart, wrecked and grateful, my name somewhere inside it.
The cottage stays quiet. The waves keep time outside.
I come apart in my grandmother’s guest bed with his jacket against my cheek and his voice in my ear, quietly and completely.
My eyes are wet before I’m finished. Tears slide sideways into the pillow while my body is still shaking, the wanting and the grieving arriving together and leaving together.
Afterward I lie in the silver dark with my heart slowing down and his jacket warm under my face.
That was on the list too. Wanting him back in my own skin, on my own terms, with nobody watching me choose it. Cross it off. No, actually, that one repeats.
I laugh at my own stupid joke, alone in the dark, and the sound surprises me. It’s been a while.
The phone is on the nightstand, face up, screen dark, where it’s been all night like a dare.
I pick it up. His name is at the top of the messages, where it’s lived for weeks now, above my mother and the group thread and everyone else. My thumb opens the conversation and the cursor blinks at me.
I start typing the same two words I typed under a lamppost weeks ago.
I still
The cursor blinks after it, patient and waiting.
Down the road in a room with a slanted ceiling, he’s probably sitting at that little desk writing me another letter, being noble about the distance he put between us tonight.
The beautiful idiot.
I delete the text one letter at a time, same as always.
Then I do a thing I haven’t done in months.
I tap his name and before I can talk myself out of it, I hit call.
It rings once and my pulse is suddenly in my throat.
It rings twice and my thumb hovers over the red button, because this is crazy, this is too much, I said slow and calling him at midnight is not slow.
He picks up on the third ring. “Izzy? Hey.” His voice is rough, like he was almost asleep, or like he’s been lying in the dark the same way I have.
“Hi, it’s me.” I press his jacket against my face and breathe him in while I talk. “I just wanted to say goodnight. I didn’t want to text it tonight.”
“Goodnight.” He says it soft and careful, like the word could break if he holds it too hard. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m okay.” My voice cracks on okay and I don’t try to hide it. “I just wanted to hear your voice. That’s all.”
He’s quiet for a second. I can hear him breathing on the other end of the line, steady and close.
“I’m really glad you called.” He sounds wrecked in the good way, the way he sounded in that hotel room when I finally let him touch me. “I’ve been lying here staring at the ceiling trying to talk myself out of driving back to your door.”
My whole body goes warm at that and I press the phone closer to my ear like I can get closer to him through it. “Wilson, don’t.”
“I know I shouldn’t.” A long pause. “But I’m still thinking about it.”
“We said we’d take it slow.”
“I know we agreed on that, but…” He stops and starts again. “I’m lying here in this bed that smells like nothing and the sheets are cold and you’re a few miles down the road in that cottage and I can’t stop thinking about the hotel, Izzy. I can’t stop thinking about the way you sounded when I…”
“Wilson, stop.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I know, I just.” He exhales hard and shaky.
“You called me. You actually called me and now I’m hearing your voice and it’s making me crazy.
I’ve been good for weeks. I’ve been so goddamn good and patient and I’ve done everything right and I still drove away from your door tonight like a gentleman and I’m lying here wanting to punch myself for it. ”
I pull his jacket tighter around me with my free hand. “I’m lying in your jacket right now.”
He makes a sound on the other end of the line, a groan with a crack running through it. “Why would you tell me that?”
“Because it’s true.” I press my face into the sleeve. “I’ve been lying in it for the last hour thinking about you. It smells like you and I can’t stop breathing it in and I just needed to hear your voice, Wilson. I needed to.”
“Izzy.” He says my name like it hurts. “Izzy, you can’t say things like that to me and expect me to stay here.”
“I’m not trying to torture you.”
“Well, you’re doing a pretty good job of it anyway.
” His laugh comes out strained and desperate.
“I’m literally holding my car keys right now.
I picked them up off the nightstand while you were talking and I’m sitting on the edge of this bed holding my keys like an idiot because every single part of me wants to drive back to you. ”
My heart is pounding so hard I’m sure he can hear it through the phone. “What’s stopping you?”
“You.” He breathes it out. “You said you wanted to take it slow, so I’m respecting that.
I’m trying to do this right, Izzy. The way you want it.
But I guess I just need you to know that I miss you.
I miss you so much it’s hard to breathe sometimes.
And I want to make this work more than I’ve ever wanted anything.
And I hate myself for not being there when you needed me the most. I hate that I have to earn you back because I should never have lost you in the first place. ”
“Wilson, please…”
“I keep replaying what happened on that ferry.” His voice cracks. “Your hand in my pocket. The way you leaned into me. The way you smelled. And I keep thinking, she’s right there, she’s so close, and I still can’t reach her. And it’s my fault. It’s all my fault.”
My eyes are burning and I don’t even try to stop it. “I want you back.”
“Don’t say that unless you mean it.”
“I do mean it. Wilson, I…” The words catch in my throat. “I want you back and I’m not punishing you by making you wait. I need you to understand that. I’m not doing this to hurt you. I’m hurting too. Every night in this cottage I’m hurting too. I want you here. I want you here so badly.”
“Then let me come back.”
“But if we want to fix this, we need to do it right.” I wipe my face with the back of my hand.
“We can’t let what we want in this moment mess up what we’re trying to build.
Does that make sense? I can’t just fall back into you because it feels good.
I did that before. I ignored all the problems because being with you felt better than being alone, and look where that got us. ”
He’s quiet for a long moment and I can hear him breathing, ragged and uneven.
“You’re right.” He finally says it, and it sounds like it’s killing him. “You’re right. I know you’re right. I just… God, Izzy. This is so hard.”
“I know it is.”
“I’m putting the keys back on the nightstand.” I hear a small clatter through the phone. “That’s me putting them down. Okay? I’m staying. I’m staying because you asked me to and because you’re right and because I’m trying to be the man you deserve this time.”
I come loose and break at the same time.
“I hate this.” His voice is raw. “I need you to know that I hate this. I hate being patient when all I want is to hold you. I hate that the right thing and the thing I want are two different things right now.”
“I know.” I’m crying now, quietly, tears sliding down my face and into his jacket. “I hate it too. But it won’t be like this forever.”
“You promise?” The bed creaks on his end. He’s lying back down.
“I promise.” I wipe my nose on the back of my wrist and pull the quilt higher. “We’re going to get there, Wilson. We’re going to make it.”
“Okay.” He takes a shaky breath, and I hear him let it out slow, the way he does when he’s counting. “Okay. I believe you.”
“And Wilson?” I roll onto my side so the phone is between my cheek and the pillow.
“Yeah? What?” A rustle. He’s turned toward the phone too.
“Thank you. For listening. For staying. For doing this the way I need you to do it.”
“I’d do anything for you.” No hesitation, no speech. Just the words. “I think you know that by now.”
“I’m starting to.” I press the sleeve of his jacket against my mouth so he won’t hear what my breathing is doing.
“Good.” All the strain has gone out of his voice. “That’s all I want. For you to know.”
“Goodnight.” I say it fast, before the rest can get out. “Goodnight, I have to go, I have to hang up now.”
“Okay. Goodnight, Izzy.” He doesn’t hang up. I can hear the inn creak behind him.
“Goodnight, stranger.” My thumb finds the red button and holds there for a second before I press it.
I hang up before I say a thing I’m not ready to take back. The phone goes face-down on the nightstand and I press my face into his jacket and I let myself cry, really cry, with no hotel and no kitchen full of family around to see it.
He’s doing what I asked. Not because it’s easy, but because I needed him to. That’s all I ever wanted.
I love him. God help me, I still love him, and it scares the hell out of me.