Chapter 17
Last night I told you that I needed space.
Rather, last night I needed space. That wasn’t what I told you.
“I’m tired,” I said on the phone. You had called me when you were leaving work for the day, and I called you back an hour later, having lingered at my desk for longer than I needed to, having stayed to finish something that didn’t need to get done.
“I am so tired. I just want to put on my oldest sweats and climb into bed and pass out. I wouldn’t be any fun. You don’t need to see me like that.”
“I would love to see you like that,” you told me. “I could bring over takeout. You need to eat anyway.”
I wanted to scream. Suffocating. You are suffocating me.
“It’s fine, Troy,” I said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” Finality in my tone, flashing irritation I couldn’t quite hide.
I could sense your hurt, disappointment, or annoyance—perhaps all three—churning. But I hung up, and I drove home.
I softened while I was lying in bed, alone and wearing threadbare lounge pants and a waffle-knit top. I sent you a text: Sorry about wanting to be alone. Love you.
You didn’t reply, and perhaps you sense that I’m still not sure that I mean those words.
Now I park my car in the garage beside my office building and climb out, dropping my keys into my bag, belting my trench coat. I check my phone as I wait for the elevator. Still no response from you.
Things have been moving so quickly, intensely, between us, and something is holding me back. But what?
It’s been several weeks since you asked me to move in with you, and I owe you an answer.
You are attentive and thoughtful. You are there when I need you.
But are you there too much? Sometimes you make me feel like a mother with very young children, overstimulated from having her hair pulled, her face pinched, her clothes tugged, from being needed and needed and needed, all day and every day, until she can’t bear it anymore and must sit alone in a dark room to recharge.
I had moved in with Adam, of course. But we were together for more than two years before we rented that town house.
We ordered furniture online and browsed showrooms, picking out things we liked.
We put some pieces on my credit card and some on his.
We intermingled our dishes and utensils and towels.
Then, two years after that, we had to split it all up.
Was this mine or yours? You bought that. You take it. Yes, I’m sure.
It was all so cordial, so stilted, but with simmering antipathy, hurt rolling into a boil, tight lips and nothing left to say.
I don’t want to go through that again. I don’t want to move in with you unless I believe our relationship will last forever. And the fact is, I’m not certain that I want it to.
You seem so perfect. But are you? I fear you are too good to be true, and are therefore not true. I’m thirty-five, wise enough to be suspicious.
You don’t play games. You don’t pretend to be busy or behave as though you aren’t that interested.
You just like me—love me, actually. Is that because of our age?
Are we too old for games, our biological clocks counting down, each tick a warning?
Or is that just how you are? Confident in what you want. Vulnerable in your simplicity.
The elevator doors glide open, and I step inside, using an index finger to punch the button for the ground floor. The doors close again, and the elevator begins its descent with an unsettling shudder.
My parking garage is just across the street from my office building.
The walk sign flashes, and I step into the crosswalk.
I see a man standing in front of the building.
Tidy, dark hair; long black coat. As I approach the revolving door in the building’s face, the man turns, and I see that it’s you.
Still a couple of yards away, I freeze.
You’re grinning at the sight of me, at my surprise, and you have a coffee in each hand. “You said you’d see me tomorrow,” you say, extending one of the coffee cups toward me. “It’s tomorrow.”
You are always giving me coffee. During the workweek, you place a steaming mug of it on my nightstand before I can even climb out of bed. On the weekends, you run out for Starbucks or Dunkin’, treating me to sickly sweet syrups and whipped cream.
And how many times have you done this? It isn’t the first time you have been waiting for me outside my office building.
There was the time you appeared outside the courthouse, my missing umbrella in your hand.
I chalked this up to a mistake or a coincidence.
Maybe my umbrella was in my condo and you picked it up one day, needing it and thinking it was a spare.
Maybe you thought it was yours. Maybe it was yours.
It’s not impossible that you had the same one.
I know there have been other times, I just cannot specifically remember them. Memories of you fill these last few months. You fill them, the blur of you.
“Sorry I didn’t reply to your message,” you say, stepping closer to me. “I was sulking. I was being petty and bratty, and I missed you.”
“It’s fine,” I say, smiling tightly.
You step closer still, and then you close the gap completely. You kiss me, right there on the sidewalk, like I am your oxygen and without me you cannot survive.
Isn’t this what any woman would want? Aren’t you? What is wrong with me that I am so unsure?
You are so much more devoted than Adam, than any relationship I ever had.
You are more devoted than my parents ever were, my mother gone, living out her glittering freedom, my father tired and inept, bearing more responsibility for me than he’d wanted or expected, until he died.
I’ve relied on myself for forever. I’ve had to.
And here you are, always wanting to love and give, yet I don’t welcome it. The dependability of you scares me.
When we break apart, I force myself to smile again, but discomfort and embarrassment twist and tumble in my gut and heat my cheeks.
Partnership decisions are being announced in just a few weeks.
Kissing one’s boyfriend on the sidewalk outside the firm’s office building doesn’t exactly scream partner material.
In fact, it screams the opposite. It screams youth, I think. Unprofessionalism. Distraction.
“Did you—” I swallow, not knowing what I was going to say, what I should say.
You rescue me, answering the question I wasn’t certain I was trying to articulate. “I know you need to get in to work. I do, too. I just wanted to drop off your coffee and let you know I was thinking of you.”
“You’re sweet,” I say, wrapping my fingers around the cup. “But no worries. I’m sorry I was being lame last night.”
You shake your head. “You’re entitled to your space, Klara.”
Your words don’t land quite right. Why are you telling me what I’m entitled to?
I glance toward the revolving door, and you take the hint.
“I should head to work,” you say. “Just couldn’t start the day without bringing my beautiful girlfriend her coffee.”
I smile, and you kiss me again, lightly, the length of a blink.
“See you tonight,” I say before pushing through the door.
I sip the coffee as I wait for the elevator in the lobby. It tastes bitter—you didn’t order it quite right. I drink the whole thing anyway.