Page 68 of How to Walk Away

It was a powerful thing to see him again. It was like the real Chip had been gone all this time, but now he’d finally come back, and all that toughness and resistance I felt about the new Chip disintegrated as soon as I saw the old one again.

“Are we engaged?” I asked him then, my voice soft. “Did we ever settle that?”

He gave me his famous Chip Dunbar smile. “You know we are, on my end at least.” He was flirting with me! “Your position’s a little less clear. But you’re still wearing the ring.”

“Your mother thinks,” I said, making air quotes, “that you don’t ‘desire’ me anymore.”

He let out a honk of a laugh and then sat in the chair his mother had just vacated, grabbing my hand in a very similar way. “I do. Oh, my God, I still do—so much—”

I felt myself release a breath I didn’t even realize I’d been holding. I felt a pinch of hope that things might turn out okay for us, after all.

Until he went on. “The old you.”

What?

“I think about her all the time.” Chip pressed his forehead down against my hand, and his shoulders started to shake. “I miss her so much,” he said, all muffled.

“You miss her? She’s not gone,” I said, not even trying to disguise my astonishment. “She’s literally right here.”

Was Chip crying? Again? “I miss her hair,” he went on. “And how she walked in heels. And the way her jeans hugged her hips.”

That was just mean. “You realize you’re talking about me in the third person,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Your mother thinks you’re going ahead with the engagement out of guilt,” I said next. “She thinks you don’t want to marry me anymore, but now that you’ve, you know,paralyzed me,you feel like you have to.”

“No.” He shook his head as he lifted it. “I still want to marry you. I want that more than anything.”

“Her? The girl you miss? Or me?” As if we weren’t the same person. “The old me or the current me?”

“Any you I can get my hands on.”

That made me smile—a little. I wanted that sunshiny feeling back again. “So you do still want to marry me?”

“More than I can possibly say.”

It felt good to hear it. I won’t lie.

Chip sat up straight then and let go of my hand to wipe his face. He took a deep breath, as if he might be about to shout something, and then he held it a second. When the words came out at last, they just seeped out in a whisper. “I want to marry you, Margaret. But I think I can’t.”

I held still.

He lowered his eyes. “I think,” he went on, “in the end, you’re not going to let me.”

Then, like a premonition, I knew what he was about to say. I knew exactly what “actions” his mother had been talking about. Yet again, I found myself several mental steps ahead of Chip.

Now I had a decision to make.

I could end this conversation right now, and let him off the hook, and never hear for certain what he was about to say. If I did that, we could continue on. We could keep muddling through, trying to patch things up. I could chalk everything we’d said or done up to “the tragedy” and forgive it all and stay focused on my impossible odds.

I could so easily take that route. It was wildly tempting.

But I didn’t. “Chip. What happened?”

He kept his eyes on the bedspread and shook his head.

“Chip,” I said, more pressure in my voice. “Tell me.”

---