Page 120 of Fun Together
“Andrew, please.” This is going so off the rails, I don’t know what to say to make him understand. “It wasn’t something I planned.”
“Are you in love with her?” he asks incredulously.
I don’t answer immediately, knowing how crazy it probably appears to him.
“Oh my god,” he says. “You are.”
“I didn’t mean to be.” I try to gather my thoughts. “It started with me helping her with some things. Job stuff, around her apartment . . . and it just became more.”
“I can’t believe this.” He laughs, but not a funny way. He laughs in way that is almost terrifying, like when someone reaches a breaking point and they are on the verge of full hysteria. “You can’t be with her,” he says, and now it sounds like he’s almost sorry for me, which makes me feel even worse. “She’s going to find out you’re not serious about her and then she’ll be alone again. She won’t have you. She won’t have me.”
And then I feel another emotion wash over me so quickly, I feel like I’ve been doused with hot water. I’m suddenly angry, too, at the unfairness of our situation. He and Faye are not together anymore. Faye and I can be together if we all just work through this. I need us to work through this.
“And were you serious about her?” I ask.
He’s taken aback by my question. “I asked her to marry me. Of course I was serious about her.”
My stomach drops. So, he did finally ask her to marry him, then. “Why did you wait so fucking long to ask her? You bought that ring before graduation.” I remember him showing it to me and asking me what I thought about it. I didn’t know much about rings, but I knew that they seemed happy together. It was the moment I came to the realization that I needed to leave, and start my own life.
He looks at me, bewildered, and sits back down on his stool. “I don’t know . . . I wanted to be sure.”
“Sure about what?”
“About her. You know how she is.”
“I know she’s amazing and it didn’t take me six years to figure that out. It took me six seconds. I’m glad I wasn’t here to watch you drag your feet with her.”
I regret the words as soon as they’re out of my mouth when he crumples over and buries his head in his hands. “I wasn’t dragging my feet. I wanted to—I was trying to be who she wanted. Ilovedher. I don’t want to see her get hurt.” His voice breaks a little, and I feel like a monster. “I don’t want to seeyouget hurt.”
I’m tired—so tired. I deflate onto a stool. “I won’t hurt her. I am serious about her.”
“And how does she feel about you?”
I can’t answer his question. Because that’s the same question I’ve been asking myself, too.
He looks at me for a few seconds before shaking his head. “I hope she’ll let you love her.” He gets up and places his empty glass in the sink.
When he leaves, he doesn’t storm out in an angry rush, but walks stoically over to the door, closing it with a soft click behind him.
39
Faye
I didn’t meanto eavesdrop.
When I came out of the bathroom and got closer to the kitchen, I could tell that Eli and Andrew’s conversation was heated. I’ve never heard either of them speak to each other that way. I’ve never heard either of them speak toanyonethat way.
Eavesdropping on a conversation where you’re the main issue of discussion is not something I ever wanted to experience again. It makes me feel like I’m six years old, hearing my mom and grandpa talking about me. My mom had met someone and wanted to move to another state to be with him.
“What about Faye?” my grandpa had asked. They were sitting at his dining room table, and I had been outside playing with my new jump rope. They didn’t hear me come in the door.
She tapped her cigarette against the side of the amber glass ashtray. “Can’t she just stay with you?”
He looked at her in his exasperated, yet stern kind of way. “She needs her mother, Marsha.”
“She doesn’t need me when she has you.” She reached over and placed a hand on his forearm. “I had you, and everything was fine.”
My grandpa just shook his head and sighed with the deep kind of fatigue that he always seemed to have. “If that’s what you want,” he said, defeated.
