Chapter 40 Miss You, Goodbye #3
“I don’t even know what they named him,” she said.
“And I know you’re not supposed to know, because there’s no way you can ever move forward.
But sometimes—most times—I feel like I never left that hospital room anyway.
” She stopped and sighed, knowing she was laying a lot on Jamie’s doorstep.
He squeezed her hands but bowed his head and simply listened to her.
“I came here because this is where my parents sent me when it happened,” Eve continued.
“They didn’t want their friends to know.
Their church.” She rolled her eyes. “They hid me here. And I wanted to hide here, too. In the end, I guess, it’s what brought me to you.
” She inhaled sharply and exhaled slowly, trying to recount the last year of her life without having to relive it.
“And meeting you, it was…it was a breath of fresh air, to have someone who didn’t know.
I just wanted you to see me without this tragic backstory.
I wanted a relationship…I wanted a life where I wasn’t attached to my grief.
And I know now that all it did was put a wall between us, and that wasn’t fair to you. It wasn’t fair to me. I fucked us up.”
“No,” Jamie cut in, looking up at her. “I put so much pressure on you.”
“You just asked me to be good to you.” She smiled glumly.
“And I didn’t always know how to do that.
” She closed her eyes as he kissed her left hand, and she ran her right over his lowered head.
He was kind. And he was beautiful. And all of this only served to remind her that she probably never deserved him in the first place.
“I’d been trying to make sense of the shit my entire life,” she said.
“I didn’t wanna be defined by it, but I let it consume me anyway.
And then, the right set of words from the right person made me realize this wasn’t my fault.
At seventeen, I deserved to be supported.
Not discarded. But my parents didn’t know how to do that.
And it wasn’t their fault either. Not really.
” She shook her head as she smiled at him.
“We’re all just trying to do our best, right? ”
“Yeah.”
Eve nodded. “So…I just thought you deserved to know,” she said, putting a cap on the conversation. “It was such a small thing in hindsight.”
“It’s not.”
“No, what happened wasn’t,” she agreed. “But the reason I kept it from you was. You would’ve understood. And instead, it became the reason you couldn’t trust me.”
Jamie looked up at her with guilt sitting in his eyes. Turns out, she would have preferred the pity. “I do trust you.”
Eve snickered. “You shouldn’t.”
“That’s not true.”
“I know you want to,” she said. “I know you wouldn’t be standing here if you didn’t at all. But you needed to trust that I wouldn’t hurt you, or Jack, and I couldn’t give you that. I’m sorry I gave you this so late.”
“I don’t care how long it took,” Jamie said. “You needed to grieve, and I didn’t give you that.” He swallowed visibly as he shook his head. “I wish I’d seen it. I wish I had been…I don’t know. Better. Softer. Easier. You didn’t deserve that. And I’m sorry.”
Eve let out a small hiccup as she failed to hold back more tears.
Instead, she felt all of her resolve crashing around her, because it just felt so goddamn good to get this off her chest, to be free from the weight of this unnecessary secret and allow Jamie to finally, fully see her—unstable, sad, and all.
And to receive an apology she never needed or expected, it left her feeling hopeful, confused, relieved, and aggrieved. Trapped in all her spiraling emotions.
Jamie wiped her tears as they continued to fall, and she nodded, appreciating the affectionate gesture. “We should eat,” she said, sniffling as she used her knuckle to clear her waterline. “I should’ve done that after breakfast.”
“No, I’m glad you didn’t wait.” He wrapped his hands around hers and rested his head against her chest. “I don’t know what you’re looking for at the end of this weekend, but…for me, this feels like a new start.”
Eve nodded again—not in agreement, but in understanding—and she came so close to telling him how badly she wanted that to be true.
She took a deep breath before asking, “Do you see us going back?” Now it was her turn to beg, her brown eyes pleading with the top of his head for an answer to their central dilemma.
“Or maybe I should say, is there a path forward for us? In your mind?”
Jamie shuffled his bare feet as he mused, and she could tell that nerves were inhibiting him. “I don’t know,” he finally answered. “But I’m open. To trying.”
“Can you…see yourself moving to New York in the foreseeable future?”
“Well. No, probably not before Jack goes to college.”
She figured as much. And the idea of a ten-year long-distance relationship was agonizing.
“You know my play just moved to Off-Broadway, which is a pretty big deal for me,” she said.
“And against all odds, my next play is supposed to debut there right after that. So I need to be in New York right now.” Because as much as Jamie felt like home, at some point, everyone has to leave the nest. “I want to be there.”
“I see.”
“So…I don’t know.”
“I mean, shit. That’s great, Evie. That’s incredible.”
“It is,” she agreed. She felt a flutter in her stomach, his use of Evie reminding her of the start of their relationship and all the best parts thereafter.
Eve , she’d learned, was generally reserved for when he was disappointed in her.
She wanted to hate him for making her yearn for a nickname she thought she’d buried with her grandmother.
Instead, it had only endeared him to her more.
“But I don’t know what to do here,” she said.
“Do we meet up in Gatlinburg every few months?” She tried to smile at the thought, but her mouth wouldn’t cooperate.
“That could be fun.”
“We can visit each other every weekend.”
“We can,” Jamie said. “Or…maybe that’s a step back.”
“Maybe it is,” she said. “And I don’t know if I have any interest in going back.”
Jamie nodded, too, but she couldn’t tell whether he really understood how conflicted she was here. “The path forward doesn’t sound easy,” he said. “And with everything happening for you, I completely understand why you aren’t particularly interested in goin’ down it.”
“But I am. It’s just…”
“I get it,” Jamie said, looking down again.
“It’s funny, because I was always so scared it was Leo in the way.
Because Lucy had been in mine for so long.
And being with her…it feels like it eroded so much of the good in me.
My patience, my willingness to be really vulnerable.
My confidence. I haven’t been who I wanted to be.
” There again was that slow, unsteady sigh before he looked up at Eve.
“I’m glad you started therapy,” he said.
“I’m happy for you. Even if it means the end of us. ”
“Jamie…”
“This isn’t self-pity talking. I’m serious.” He squeezed her knee as he gazed at her. “You’ve been holding on to so much. And I’m so sorry I added to your burdens. But more than anything, I just want you to be free from it all. However you need to get there.”
Eve nodded as more tears sprang to her eyes, still unable to hold his gaze. This was the most honest she’d ever been with him, with anyone, and it made her realize why she’d spent so much time lying and avoiding and running. This shit hurt.
“So then…I guess we go our separate ways?” Jamie asked.
“I don’t want that,” Eve said, the quickness with which she responded a resounding denial.
“What do you want?”
“I don’t know.” She sat with it for several minutes, and Jamie let her, seeming to understand that she needed the silence. He always did.
“Things are going well for me,” she finally said.
“And you can’t be in New York particularly often when Jack lives here.
So. Yeah.” She exhaled sharply. “Maybe this was just supposed to be a few good months. You were there when I needed something. And I was the same for you. But maybe it was never supposed to last forever.”
“Maybe.” He reached out to brush away another tear that had fallen down her nose, and he smiled sullenly.
“You can tell me if you don’t agree.”
“No, it’s that I do agree,” Jamie said. “I don’t think either of us will ever be satisfied with some intermittent relationship.
Not after what we had. And what’s the use in pretending for a few months, just to let it fizzle out later?
This is your time, and you can’t squander it worrying about whether you’re disappointing me.
” He then nodded emphatically, as if he’d settled on a resolution for both of them. “We had what we had.”
Eve sniffled, some part of her wishing he could’ve convinced her otherwise.
But prevailingly, she was proud that she was no longer willing to sacrifice her personal and professional growth for someone she loved.
She no longer needed the distraction of a charming neighbor to get through the day.
If six months was all she got to have with him, she would take that.
She would cherish it. But he wasn’t the only way to be happy. He couldn’t be.
She nodded, too. “We had what we had.”
In her old office at Fordham, Eve’s mother kept a cheap little plaque with some pseudo-philosophical quote hanging over the threshold of the door.
Her mother thought of it as a bit of sage advice for her students—a reminder for each time they stepped out into the world.
Eve always considered it hollow, at best—until now, that is, picturing the words as she dismounted from the counter, preparing herself to walk out of Jamie’s life. This time, on her own terms.
Leaving home, in a sense, involves a kind of second birth in which we give birth to ourselves.