Page 88 of Our Hearts Knew Better

“Of me?” There’s a crack in my snap, a broken down woman, who willnotfucking cry, because I can think of so much I’m tired of too.

“You know it’s not you,” he attempts to amend, but he’s still not looking at me. And he’s shifting again like I need to get off him.

So I get off with a swing of both legs. My feet slap against the floor as I collect a dry pair of panties and my sleep shirt, a hum my first response.

“I don’t know that,” I throw back, my second response, thinking the last time we were close like that was back at the apartment.

“Summer.”

My name is a fight, and I spin on him, ready, my vulnerabilities he just turned down covered.

But the fight leaves him, his eyes closing toward the ceiling as he says, “Every day is so long.”

It’s spoken to himself, but vocal enough for me to hear, to feel isolated on my own island, when all of his feelings and all of his numbness, all the lows, all the rare breaths I get from the rare highs—all of itis mine too.

“Yeah, they’re long,” I agree, my fight not leaving me, putting us back on the same ground, a punch and plea like air.

Adam’s eyes hold mine a long moment, then he gives me a nod and a soft blink. “I’m just tired,” he reiterates. “And it’s the same hell I have to get up at the ass crack of day to deal with,” he adds, a complaint at the time, over me waking him up. “I need sleep.”

You’ve been sleeping for a year!

“And when you get back,” I start. “We could go out—” I move closer to the bed with the thought, the far off idea that we could be an actual couple again, and Adam props himself up by an elbow with one quick motion, letting me know just how far off I am.

“You know what else I have to deal with every day? Showing my face.” He points a sharp finger at said face as he forces out the word, a shake in the motion and his voice. “Showing my failure to a town of people who expected something from me. People who watched me grow up and knew I was on my way to being somebody, and now I’m a nobody having to hear their apologiesevery day, Summer. I can’t go anywhere else around here than I have to.”

I almost crumple at the pinch of pain he holds me here with, at hearing the hatred he has for himself.

But my knees lock, every time, to stop myself from being dragged to the same hell.

“We didn’t have to come here,” I say, a low argument, because that’s all I’m really capable of anymore.

“We talked about this,” he says back with a sigh. He might as well tell me to use my memory because he won’t be repeating the conversation that, for me, has more than one outcome.

But I also can’t deny the pull I’ve had to come back.

“This will be good for us,” he does remind me, though. “You have to trust I know what I’m doing,” he adds, looking at me with those same sure eyes that knew I trusted him every time he would ask when we were seventeen. The exact same.

But we’re not the same.

“Stop putting so much pressure on me,” he continues when I say nothing. “I feel sobad.”

“Well,” I start through the sting in my lids, grabbing for my phone on the dresser and trudging back to the door, “you’re not the only one.”

****

All I can do is continue to cry into the phone when Clarissa picks up.

“Oh dear,” she says through thick sleep in her voice, and my laugh is a sob. “Hey. What’s going on? Do you need me to come down?”

I adjust my ass on the dry patch of porch step and suck in all my wasted tears that won’t change a thing, finding my voice. “No, it’s…” I shrug at the universe, my hand a slap against my leg. “Same ole.”

“Well, you have my ear,” she says, her voice strained through a stretch.

I wipe my cheeks, soaking my palm with more wetness, my face puffy feeling and my chest a bit clearer from the release. “Run away with me.”

There’s shuffling on her end, like she’s already collecting a change of clothes and shoes, but she teases, “It’s a little early. Can I shower and eat first? I also have to let Maisie know.”

“You can let her know on the road,” I tease back. She works at a design firm and her boss Maisie kisses my best friend’s ass instead of the other way around.

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