Chapter 48
Jacob isn’t in the Builder Bay today as I work on repairs. He doesn’t come to my workstation, nor do I spot him in his. I work as fast as I can without hurting myself or making mistakes to make up for the loss of extra hands. As the hours tick by, my awareness of his absence grows.
Without his gravity, I’m unmoored. Despite my best attempts, I drift in and out of focus.
My mind is a looping replay of his destroyed expression during the weigh-in yesterday.
Hurt and angry. Rightfully. Then I recall his worry about the brackets over me, and I am hurtling through uncertainty again.
How should he have reacted? I don’t even know how I would react.
I want to call Ava or Fatimah, but they’re both busy. I try to focus on my bot, narrating everything I do like I’m teaching a hands-on lab in my classes. It keeps my focus enough to stop my mind from wandering too far.
By the time I finish everything I need to do for the day, I’ve been in the Bay for twelve hours, and I still have more to go in the morning. But I did it all by myself.
Right as I’m about to crawl into bed, there’s a knock on my door. I consider pretending I’m already asleep, but his tired voice drifts through the door. “Mari.” It’s salve on a burn. I didn’t realize the pain until his voice soothed it.
The carpet is soft on my bare feet as I grab my cane.
My knee is getting better, but it's not quite healed yet. Fear grips me as I reach for the latch. If I open the door, if I let him in, maybe this is the end. What if we don’t come back from this?
It took sixteen years to get here, and I fucked it up in a week.
I need to rip off the bandage. If this is over, I need to know so I can focus on the final two fights. I can compartmentalize if I know, instead of agonizing over what could be. Then I can go home and tend my broken heart in peace. Shine my trophy with my tears or something.
The latch and doorknob are cold and unforgiving on my fingers as I open the door.
His shoulders are heavy. His clothes are neat and smooth, like he recently changed into the comfy sweatpants and hoodie, but his hair needs to be combed, and his stubble is longer than usual.
“Can I come in?”
I move aside, letting him trudge into the room. His presence does not fill the space like it has; it is small as he tucks himself into the chair in the corner. I sit on the edge of the bed, facing him. Even though we are a few feet apart, it’s like we’re on opposite ends of the solar system.
He rubs his jaw as he studies the pattern of the carpet.
“You don’t trust me.”
The words are a shock to hear, but not as much as they should be.
That seed of doubt is rooted so deep that it feels impossible to dig it out.
I tried so hard, and still that inkling of doubt reared its ugly head the second I got scared.
There’s so much good between us, so much that works, but there’s so much pain.
How much of it is our past, and how much of it is self-sabotage?
I can’t figure it out; I don’t know what to do, and I don’t know what to say.
“Jesus, Mari.” His exasperated words crack, and those big gray eyes are crumbling stone. “You will risk your livelihood, but you can’t find it in yourself to trust me?”
“It’s different.” The words leave my mouth too quickly, and I wince.
“You’ll accept my help. You’ll sleep with me, but you can’t trust me enough to not blame me the second something goes wrong?”
“You said I didn’t have to trust you.” Is there something wrong with me? What about me is so fucked up that I can’t stop saying awful things? I chastise myself.
His hands scrub down his face as his elbows come to his knees. “That was before I spent a week in your bed.” He’s more upset than mad. I wish he were mad. Anger would be easier. “You should trust the people you sleep next to every night.”
Even saying something foolish would be better than the silence between us as he shakes his head at me.
“Why am I the one thing you won’t take a risk on?”
“Jacob, I ....”
His head hangs. “Mari, I know I fucked up before, but do you really think so little of me, of us, that you think I would sabotage you? Do you really think I would risk losing you again over winning Circuit Smack?”
Isn’t that why I did it? Because I assumed exactly that? I start to doubt myself instead of him.
“What happened?” he asks.
“You cared more about the brackets getting messed up than the fact I was about to be sent home.” The words don’t come out bitter, just exhausted.
He blinks in confusion, then realization.
“I was angry and hurt. That was the easiest thing to focus on without doing this in front of all our peers and the cameras. It wasn’t the best thing to say.
You’re right. But of course I don’t want you to go home.
I’ve done everything I possibly can to keep you here.
” His exasperation adds another layer to the guilt.
I can’t refute that, as much as I might try to find a way to.
The spectacle was bad enough; any more dramatics and we’d have a whole new scandal following us.
We’re lucky there weren’t many people around, especially the camera crew.
My reasoning for being hurt over his reaction was flimsy at best and only propped up by my own overzealous fears.
It’s quickly falling apart. My head hangs in shame.
He studies my reaction. “You were already blaming me, though. Why? What did I do? What happened?”
“Nothing.” It’s a knee-jerk reaction. I really need to work on thinking before I respond; I’m just making things worse. I’m afraid to tell him, though.
“Will you stop lying to me?” he groans, angry and wounded.
“I want to fix this. I want to do whatever it takes to be with you, Mari.” He sighs, drained and defeated, fury extinguished as quickly as it came.
“But I won’t be with someone who doesn’t trust me.
” He goes rigid suddenly. “Unless this isn’t anything serious, then I guess it doesn’t matter, does it?
” He falls back into his chair, blank shock overtaking his features.
“Was this always something with an expiration date for you?” he murmurs.
“It all just happened,” I say. “One minute I hate you, the next ....” I’m falling for you.
The words stay firmly behind my lips. “You’ve given me the path to my dreams as quickly as you took it away.
” The hurt in his eyes is like a needle digging under my skin.
It’s like I’m doing the same to him. “Everything will be fine, and then I remember what it felt like when you lied. That doesn’t go away overnight, Jacob.
I’ve dreamed of all of this since I was a teenager.
Circuit Smack and you. This isn’t, I mean, I don’t want it to be a casual thing. I want ....”
It all. I think I want it all, I realize with sudden, absolute clarity.
It’s clear and solid and certain in my mind.
I want it all with him. I want to come home to him.
I want to share a workshop and work on our robots together.
I want to adopt a cat and name it Asimov.
I want to have the Williams family traditions be the Williams-Moore family traditions.
But I can’t tell him any of that right now. Not when I fucked up so badly.
He is granite. “What happened?”
“I got in my head,” I admit. “I feel like an outsider all the time, everywhere. I was trying to convince myself that everything was going fine, and then I started to remember the last time I felt like that, right before my whole life exploded.” I breathe deeply, slowing my rapid outpouring.
“I got scared. I got in my head, and I blamed you. It was the easiest thing. That wasn’t fair to you. I’m sorry.”
The carpet’s loops and swirls of fiber look soft enough to disappear into if I try hard enough, but no matter how hard I try, I cannot. Do I trust Jacob more than I believe my own insidious fears?
I’m such a fucking fool.
“I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop since I got here, since this started happening.
” When I look at him through tear-blurred eyes, I can tell his are shining for the same reason.
“I got here and immediately realized this wasn’t the opportunity I hoped for.
” The memory of the excitement and crushing disappointment sloshes in my stomach.
“I had to rebuild my opportunity, just like we did Zeta. I had to take it apart, redesign it, and hope to god it works. I’m not used to things working out,” I say.
Nothing has ever worked out for me; not my relationships, not my career, not my robot fighting.
This time, it’s so close to happening that I can almost touch it.
Almost. “I’ve worked so hard, and this entire time, I’ve been waiting for it to be for nothing.
” Saying the words aloud makes them real.
It makes every dark fear come alive. And it makes them walk away. It makes them less scary.
“Mari,” he breathes.
“I have given up almost every shred of myself. Every professional and financial decision has been made for my family. I have watched my body slowly give up, inch by inch, until it’s no longer one I recognize.
” I examine my hands, swollen and fragile, and ball them into painful fists.
“I had the sport I love almost ruined for me. It wasn’t all your fault.
What happened didn’t help, but there were so many things working against me.
I gave up so much to keep a tenuous hold on it.
” I can’t stop shaking, and I grip the covers on the bed for stability.
“And I’ve done it all while being constantly discounted.
Everything I’ve won, everything I fought so hard for, and everything I have can be taken away in an instant.
You could take your motors back tomorrow.
One wrong move, and my run is over. I almost went home because I sprained my knee. ”