Page 26 of The Significance of Moving On

Tal catches the front door on the way out but stops short on the porch letting go of my hand, gripping her right elbow, her right hand fondles the hem of her shirt. She shares heavy at my shoes. She doesn’t speak. The wind picks up blowing strands of curl across her forehead. The vanilla of her shampoo has me daydreaming about baked goods. There’s no doubt what she wants to hear from me.

“Tal.” I beg her to understand, though I’ve given her no real reason to. “Ican’t.”

I need her to read the truth in my eyes, in my posture, and in all the nonverbal cues I’ve given her because I can’t get myself to say the actual words. It’s not her, it’s never been her.

We walk down the steps to the car. The distance between us is huge and that’s not from proximity. She doesn’t understand. Tally won’t even let me help her into the car. This is a bust.

As she sits in the front seat shrunken into herself more like a small child than the woman of my fantasies, errant tears still streak her cheeks leaving watermarks against her skin. It’s too much, too fucking much to resist. I wipe her face with the sleeve of my hoodie.

She grabs ahold lacing her manicured fingers through my rough ones. And my heart breaks wide open, engulfing her, me, the car, the street, the town, but she’ll never know. This doesn’t mean she’s coming around. It means she’s putting on an act because the air feels heavy and the distance even more expansive than before. We’re drifting apart and if I don’t get us back on the plan, I’ll lose her forever. I barely survived losing Luke. With Tally, it’s different. Since she came into my life, everything has been different. If I lose Tal, there’ll be nothing left of me to survive.

I turn my head away from her and discretely wipe at my eyes. Then I start the car.

The plan. What was that kid’s name? The one who asked her to homecoming?

Able Mackey? I think that’s his name. Okay, then no car, not today. She needs a dress. And dress shopping should prove a mundane enough activity to keep us distracted and not touching. Clearly, we can’t handle touching right now.

It’s still blustery as we drive down Michigan Avenue to Old Town, sticks and leaves blow and tumble across our path like tumbleweed blowing through a ghost town in one of those old spaghetti westerns. But through that, the sun peeks out from behind the clouds, dispelling the rain for the moment, and filling the cab of the truck with natural heat and defused, yellow light. Tal sucks in a sharp breath when I parallel park in front of a little vintage clothing store. One thing I’ve learned about her, Tal’s not a mall dress kind of girl. The little, white store used to be someone’s house, now wedged between two looming brick buildings that went up years after the house that leans severely to the right.

“Is it safe?” She asks, but there’s finally a smile on her face, even if it doesn’t reach her eyes.

“Safe is a relative term,” I tease.

Tally punches my shoulder.

“Okay, okay. You know I’ll always rescue you,” I say, hoping she hears the truth of my words without the moment getting too heavy.

“I know,” She says back, squeezing my arm before she hops out and walks up the steps.

I fall in stride next to her. A little bell over the front door jingles when we enter, and then a second time when the door closes behind us. To see Tally’s eyes light up the way they do makes me wish I’d brought her here sooner and want to find more places like this to ensure her excitement never fades.

“How can I help you folks?” The woman hanging up dressing room cast offs back on the racks pauses, waiting.

“Homecoming dresses?” Tally asks.

The woman points us toward the back room. She’s short, rail thin and has that vintage appeal to her. She must be the owner; she’s definitely a client. “It’s nice to see a couple shopping together,” the woman says as we pass. “You know it’s love when a man sticks it out through the dress shopping.”

I’m about to correct her, tell her that we’re not “in love” or even “a couple” until I catch Tal’s fear-laced, cringing eyes and bite my tongue. Literally bite my tongue because that look is like a kick to the solar plexus. When did I give her the power to affect me like this?

Finding the perfect dress in a vintage shop takes a lot more time and eons more patience than I’m used to putting out there for clothing because there aren’t fifty of each style in ten different sizes hanging on the rack. We’re lucky enough to find four of her liking in the correct size.

“You need help zipping?” I call through the changing curtain.

She laughs. That can’t be a good sign, can it?

“Okay. Ready?” There’s a bit of hesitation in her voice that makes my pulse speed up a bit.

I grip the belt loops on my jeans not sure what to do with my hands. Why amInervous?

She pulls the curtain back and my eyes feel like they’re doing that cartoon pop out of the sockets thing and I swear I hear “a-woo-gah”.

“You look like a movie star.” Even better than that, my Tally is a goddess in gold. A halter style neck that drapes to just below the bust line where the rest of the fabric clings to her curves like the dress was tailored just for her, only to flair out at the shin where it stops. “Turn around.”

When Tal spins, it’s her soft skin, not dress that shows. Backless. The damn dress is backless drawing out feelings I’ve been really trying hard to drive away, forcing my hand to move from the belt loop to my pocket where I push down on those feelings to keep them from showing through the front of my pants. A little chuckle escapes her throat and her cheeks turn red. Guess I wasn’t as discrete as I tried to be.

“So?” She asks, as if we both don’t know what my body’s reaction means.

“So, Able Mackey is a lucky, lucky man.”

---