Chapter 7 #2
And here was the thing Rory would carry for the rest of his life, the thing he understood even as he did it and did it anyway: he believed him.
That was the trap of it. Standing in the dark diner with the number still ringing in the air, Rory looked at Theo Vann's ruined honest face and believed, all the way down, that the man meant every word — that he'd gotten off the plane one thing and become another, that the confession was real, that I want to stay was true tonight, in this diner, with the foghorn going.
He believed it. And it didn't matter. That was the part nobody understood about Rory, the part Eddie had understood and never once managed to fix. It wasn't that he thought Theo was lying. It was that it didn't matter whether he was.
"My father meant it too," Rory said.
Quiet. He heard his own voice come out level and terrible.
"When I was a kid. Before. He'd say he wasn't going anywhere, and he meant it, right up until the October morning he got in the truck.
People mean it, Theo. That's the thing you don't get, because you're the one who leaves, you've never had to learn it from the other side.
Meaning it isn't the same as staying. My father meant it.
My mother meant it. Every single person who ever left me was, I'm sure, extremely sincere about it right up until the door.
" He put one finger on the envelope and slid it an inch across the counter toward Theo.
"You mean it. I believe you mean it. Tonight.
In this room. And in six months, or a year, when the debt's still there and the diner's still bleeding ten months a year and the winter's got its teeth in and Portland calls with something shinier — you'll mean that too.
You'll mean leaving just as much as you mean staying right now.
That's who you are. You told me so yourself, in the boat.
I already left everywhere. You said it like it was a wound.
It's not a wound, it's a fact, it's the truest thing about you, and I let myself—"
His voice did the thing. He stopped it.
"I let myself forget it for about four hours," Rory said. "In a bed. Which is on me."
"You want to know the worst part?" His voice went quieter, which with him was the dangerous direction.
"It's not even that you'll leave. People leaving, I know how to survive — I've got calluses on it an inch thick.
The worst part is the four hours. Those four hours in that bed, I forgot to keep the door shut.
Let it be all the way open, first time since I was a kid, and it was—" He stopped.
Made himself say it flat, because flat was the only way it came out at all.
"It was the best four hours of my life. And now I know what it costs to have that.
It costs feeling it when it goes — all of it — the way I never let myself feel my father leaving, because I was smart enough by then to already be gone before he was.
You woke that up. Five weeks, and you woke up the part of me that can still be left.
So no. You don't get to stay and do it slow.
I want the door shut again. I need it shut again.
And right now you're the only thing standing in it. "
"Rory." Theo's eyes were streaming now and he wasn't hiding it, wasn't performing it, just letting it happen, which was worse. "Don't do this. I'm not your father. I'm not the truck. I'm standing right here telling you I want the thing you want—"
"I know you are." And this was the brutal part, the precise part, the part Rory had been sharpening all day at the grill without letting himself know he was doing it: "That's why you have to go now."
Theo went white.
"Because if you stay," Rory said, "I'll believe you every day.
I'll let you all the way in, further than this morning, I'll build my whole— I already started, that's the problem, I already started building around you, and I swore when I was twelve years old I would never do that again, never hand somebody the keys to the thing that can end me, and I did it anyway, I did it in five weeks, and I cannot— " He breathed.
Leveled it back out. "I can survive you leaving now.
Tonight. While it's still mostly just a bed and a boat and a bad idea.
I cannot survive you leaving in a year. So you're going to take the offer, and you're going to sign it, and you're going to pay your debt and get your life back, and you're going to leave, because it's what you came here to do and it's what you're going to do eventually anyway, and I would rather you do it now, on my terms, than in a year on yours. "
***
Theo didn't take the offer. He did the opposite.
He snatched the envelope off the counter — Colson's dated offer, the price of everything Eddie ever built — and tore it, once, twice, down the middle, the heavy cream stock giving with a sound too small for what it was, and he dropped the pieces between them and had his phone out with shaking hands.
"Watch. Eleven o'clock, I don't care, I'll wake him up.
I'll tell him the parcel's off the table — not now, not ever, not at any number.
You want proof I'm not leaving? This is me killing the only way out I've got, in front of you, with a hundred and forty grand still hanging over me and no plan for any of it.
Just say the word." His thumb hovered over the screen. "Let me prove it's real."
And for one second Rory wanted to let him. God, he wanted to — wanted to watch Theo Vann torch his own escape and mean it, and then come around the counter and—
That was exactly why he couldn't.
"Put the phone down," Rory said. "It doesn't matter."
"It doesn't—" Theo stared at him. "I'm offering to burn it all down, for you—"
"I know. And it doesn't matter, because you tearing that up tonight doesn't change one thing about who you are in a year.
There's always another offer. Another door.
Another shinier thing. You'll mean staying tonight and you'll mean going when it comes — every time, right up until you're gone.
" Rory looked at the torn halves on the counter and felt the cold thing in his chest close like a hand.
"You could burn every bridge you've got in front of me and it wouldn't touch the thing that's actually wrong, which is that I let you matter.
That part's already done. The only thing I still get to decide is how much it costs me.
And it costs me less tonight than it will in a year. "
Theo stood there breathing hard over the torn halves of his own rescue, and Rory watched him break, which Rory hadn't wanted, hadn't budgeted for, the sight of it going in like a knife going in cold.
"You're not sending me away because I might leave," Theo said finally, low, wrecked.
"You're sending me away so you never have to find out if I wouldn't. Those aren't the same thing, Rory, and some part of you knows it.
You'd rather be right about being left than risk being wrong.
You'd rather have the wound than the man.
" His voice cracked all the way through.
"You're doing the exact thing your father did and calling it sense.
You're the truck. You're getting in the truck.
And you're going to spend the rest of your life telling yourself you were the one who got left. "
"Get out of my diner."