Page 83 of The Cabin
I lean forward, elbows on my knees. Sigh harshly, head in my hands.
What went wrong?
Maybe, though, it’s more of a question of what went right: too right, too soon.
That’s a cruel joke, if that’s what it is.Learn me, Find YouI can’t breathe properly. My lungs won’t open all the way. My hands shake, and I grip the steering wheel until my knuckles hurt.
I don’t know how I get back to the cabin. I don’t remember the drive, and I’m not sure how I even know the way back. But here I am, skidding to a stop beside the cabin. I’m on the porch before I realize I didn’t even turn the car off. I go back, press the button to shut off the motor, close the car door, and barely make inside before I start sobbing. Not even sure why. I’m up against the door of the cabin, the wood pressing against my forehead. Hand on the knob. Shaking. Sobbing.
Why am I so upset?
It’s too much to figure out.
I hear his truck, the rattle-thrum of the diesel engine coming to an idle and then silencing. Door opening, closing. I hear his boots clomp slowly up my steps, across the porch, stopping outside the door.
No, no, no. I can’t deal with you, Nathan. It’s too much. You’re too much.
“Nadia.”
He’s on the other side of the door. I feel him. I can almost see him, hands braced high and wide, gripping the frame with his huge rough hands. Forehead to the wood, eyes closed.
“Nadia?”
“I can’t.”
“Can you let me in, Nadia?”
“I can’t do this with you, Nathan.”
“I can’t not do this.” His voice is so rough, a ragged rumble. Vulnerable.
“Nathan, god, please. Just leave me alone.”
“I can’t.” I hear him inhale deeply, hold his breath, let it out in a rush. “You tried, remember?”
I don’t know what to say.
I hear him humming something. A song. I don’t recognize it, at first. And then the hum becomes singing: “…I knew you were trouble when you walked in…”
He’s singing Taylor Swift. Starts with the chorus, his voice like stones tumbling in a well, and he sings it through, I don’t know why. He knows the whole song, start to finish.
I could sing it with him, but I don’t have a voice.
Once he’s sung the song, there’s silence, and it feels deafening. Hearing it sang a cappella, I realize despite the peppy melody, it’s a sad, depressing song and I wonder why he sang that one. Stuck in his head, maybe. How does he even know that song?
He’s right on the other side. I can hear him breathing.
“I can’t walk away from this, Nadia. And I don’t think you can either.”
“Just…please, just give me tonight. I need to…to think.”
“I’ll bring coffee.”
“Okay.”
He’s still there.
“Nathan?”
“Hmmm.”
“I just don’t know how to do this with you.”
“I know.”
“Just…just give me tonight to figure myself out, okay?”
“I’ll be at your door in the morning. Six thirty.”
“Thank you, Nathan.”
Still silence.
Then I hear a scuff of a boot on wood. Hesitant, reluctant. The porch creaks, and I hear his heavy sigh. Slow tread, as if still hoping I’ll change my mind at the last minute and open the door for him.
After a while, I hear his cabin door thunk closed.
I turn my back to the door, slide down to sit against it.
It was just too much. The candle, the flower on the table. My favorite color, lavender. The sunset on the lake, loons swimming, fluting to each other. My favorite food.
How did he know?
Something isn’t adding up.
Or it’s adding up too well. My favorite wine, my favorite flower, my favorite dinner.
The champagne thing.
So many things.
He just knows me.
He knows me too well.
It scares me. Because I feel comfortable with him.
That was a date. It was utterly romantic, perfect. Incredible. I’ve rarely felt so…seen. Known. So intimate. I felt myself falling.
I felt myself toppling toward him. If we’d finished the date, we’d have sat on the dock looking at the stars and I’d have kissed him.
Invited him in.
Kissed him by the fire.
Kissing is as far as my brain goes, as far as I can allow thoughts to progress, but the full reality is there under the surface.
It’s happening. In some ways, it’s already happened.
Love again, Nadia.
Tears trickle.
How can I, Adrian? You were my love. You were my present and my future, my past, my everything. You WERE. Now you’re gone but my heart doesn’t totally realize it. Can’t quite accept it. I’ve learned to exist as a human without you by my side, but living again, without you?
To hold another’s hand. To let him into my heart, into my world. To put my body at his mercy. How do I do that again?
I don’t know what to do with myself. I’m not sleepy. I don’t want to drink. Can’t think clearly enough to read; I have no focus, no mental or emotional direction. I’m a ship without a keel or rudder, becalmed, just floating, spinning with the currents.
