Chapter 30
CHAPTER THIRTY
Christina
When Danny, unprompted, pulls up to my apartment instead of the house, my heart disintegrates in my chest.
Because the Jezebel List is over.
I thought confronting my dad might give me closure.
I thought I might finally sever ties with that girl on the church stage so I could move forward, happy and scot-free.
Now I see she’ll always be with me. She’ll always be whispering at me to never get stuck like her again.
She’ll always be whispering at me how bad it will hurt for life to rupture again.
All this little road trip did was confirm that my fears are not irrational. They are hard-earned.
Yet it’s the story about Susanna that has haunted me most on the return drive.
My dad went through the same experience I have over the past few months.
He discovered joy in what had always been deemed sinful.
He fell in love with a woman. She made the world more than it could ever be on its own, just like Danny did for me.
My dad listened to his inner voice enough to know it was right to love her, to live in the world with her.
Yes, he made mistakes. Big ones. Carrying on an affair at the expense of his wife and children was by no means an admirable way of going about things.
But I think he was testing how much he could trust himself.
He was testing whether he could really get out of the toxicity and follow his inner voice.
And then he stayed. He had everything I have with Danny, but the fear still won out.
I will never, ever put Danny in Susanna’s position.
I would never go back to Evangelicalism now that I’m on the other side, but I also won’t choose another defining path that might dampen my inner voice. I won’t belong. I won’t suffer another life-altering loss.
Most importantly, I won’t drag Danny along in my rootless existence.
I won’t make him wonder when he’ll stop feeling right to me.
I won’t make that anger on my behalf seize him like it did at the parsonage.
I love him. I love him so much. And I’ll break his heart to protect him from the broken legacy handed to me.
None of this needs to be said. It’s why Danny drove me here. He already knows.
I stare out the front windshield, willing myself to move, but every cell in my body is screaming at me not to leave the car. Not to leave Danny.
“Will you at least tell me,” Danny starts, his voice hoarse from disuse and lack of sleep, “if you’re going to D.C. or New York?”
I can’t look at him when I answer. “I think I’ll actually go between them for a little while. A month or two in each city.”
“Will you make documentaries?” he asks.
It hurts, dear god it hurts everywhere. “Maybe. Casually, of course. It’s hard to unsee the world for what you can capture once you start seeing it that way.”
A long beat. I stare at a pigeon in the parking lot.
“Will you finish The Jezebel List?” I ask. As much as this final scene at the parsonage would end the documentary with a whimper, I still think it could help people. Maybe they can learn from my mistakes and do better than me.
The silence stretches too long. I finally turn timid eyes to him, and it’s worse than I could have imagined. He’s staring at me, but his big eyes are not burning. The fire has gone out completely. That cold emptiness causes my breath to catch in my chest, and I clutch a hand to my throat.
“I don’t know if that’s possible,” he murmurs.
Of course, it isn’t. Watching footage of the two of us, so obviously in love and happy, would shred me to pieces. Jesus, what a mess. I’m not only devastating Danny, I’m letting down all the people who need this story.
I have to get out of this vehicle.
As soon as my fingers curl around the door handle, Danny lays a soft hand on my arm. He’s looking down at it when he says, empty, “You’re the love of my life too.”
I break. I surge toward him and press my lips against his.
He’s unresponsive for a moment, but then he breaks too.
He drags me from my seat into his lap, and I straddle him, the steering wheel cutting into my back.
But I can only kiss him and kiss him, and wind my fingers in his hair, and try to memorize every single thing about this.
The way our mouths move together, the soft strands wrapped around my fingers, the taste of his tongue against mine, his hands splayed across my back.
And he seems to pour every bit of love and agony he’s feeling into his half.
But then he chokes off and drops his head to my chest. With every ounce of strength I have left, I twist off of him and out of his arms, back into the passenger’s seat.
I open the car door, but halt at the low rattle of his broken voice: “You’re not like him.”
I freeze, my gaze on the door handle. Danny is zeroing in on my biggest fear, because he’s my Danny. He knows me inside and out.
He pushes on. “Even if it happened differently, even if it happened years later, you always would have left that life. Because you’re you.”
Fuck, I want to believe that so badly.
But I just can’t be sure.
Gathering what’s left of my mangled heart, I exit the car without another glance.
When I open the door to my apartment, my friends are already gathered around the kitchen island, laughing and prepping brunch for Movie Church.
They take one look at me in the doorway, and then they’re running toward me as I completely collapse on the floor.
This Sunday may be worse than all my bad Sundays combined.