Page 68 of Again, In Autumn

Adam exhales, far too close for me to not feel his frustration. “Not nothing,” he whispers.

I’ve thought about this a lot.

“Oh, I could have,” I say. “There’s no guarantees in any relationship. My mother is dead. I only have my dad and Fran. If I pissed him off, he’d walk away, and I’d be parentless. I have to calculate my steps with him, so I don’t say the wrong thing and miss out on the one holiday a year I get to spend with my dad. And that’s a lesson learned at ten-years-old.”

Adam scratches at the side of his neck while his voice scratches over mine. “I wish you could have seen your potential through my eyes.”

“I don’t exist to be some perfect girl for you,” I argue. “I’m not young and skinny anymore. I have cellulite and wrinkles now. How does that sound? Doesn’t that make you want to run for the hills?”

“I didn’t fall in love with you just because you were beautiful,” he says, palms open, incredulous. “Or because you’ve never opened a book that wasn’t required reading or because you’d spend whole hours on the couch watching grown women argue on tv. I loved you in spite of the fact that you were a cheerleader. For your private school.”

This feels like I’m being insulted. I should intervene.

Adam barrels onward, finishing, “I fell in love with you because you had this thing inside of you that I had, and we were the only ones with it. I don’t know…When I was around you, there was no gravity. I wasn’t a body, I was just a soul.” The resentment, turned disgust, transforms to anguish. He whimpers, “Without you, I had to learn to breathe again.”

I’m lightheaded.

Adam rocks back on his heels. “I guess I should have fucking said that before you left.”

As if it would have made me stay.

I realize one more reason Adam and I were incompatible: I was infinitely practical. He was wildly romantic.

With care, I explain, “Adam, I lied to you, about a lot of things.”

His eyes snap up. The frown returns.

“I wanted to go to college.” I watch him fold deeper into his thoughts, continuing, “I don’t like to travel. I didn’t want to follow you around and watch you make your dreams a reality. But for you, I pretended all of that would have been enough.”

“That’s not what it would have been.”

“Yes, it would have. When you asked me to marry you, I felt pressured to say yes. I didn’t know what else to say.”

Adam drags his hand over his face. “I was not pressuring you. I tried so hard to make sure you never felt pressured into anything.”

“It was me,” I said. “I’m a people pleaser. I do what they want so I don’t lose them. I didn’t want to lose you, and I thought if I said no that you would just leave.”

“Why do you think I stayed all summer?” Adam asks. “I told my Dad I was going to visit his new house for a week, at most, but I stayed as long as I did because of you. I never wanted to leave you.”

The unspoken layer of his argument is that I left. I’m the one who gave up.

I say, “I was scared. I had every right to be. You have no right being angry at me without knowing my half of it.” I remember that I’m angry, too. “Oh…and fuck you for thinking that I should give a shit about your opinion of me.”

He hangs his shoulders, and his eyes blink, long and slow, batting away my words.

My voice cracks. “I’m nothing, remember? I don’t exist to you.”

“Vee –”

“I’d like to leave it that way,” I interrupt.

And I’d like this night to be over.

I turn on my heel, the wind in my wet, warm face and my ears clogged with the sound of my beating heart. I cross my arms and grip the edges of Adam’s coat with my fingertips.

When did he put this on my shoulders?

I spin around to toss it back to him, but he’s gone.

---