Page 102 of Falling Backwards
Both of us rush out of the car now.
Once we’re fully in the cold, she says, “Here’s an opportunity for powerwalking, I guess, so that we aren’t late.”
I’m relieved she doesn’t sound upset and I’m appreciative of her idea.“Yeah, good point.Let’s do it.”
We hurry away.Her fingers comb her bangs back into place in that one spot even though the breeze from our pace is blowing them around a bit.
Something else our pace is doing is quickly pissing my legs off.
But I don’t slow down.Not because I don’t want to be late clocking in, but because I don’t want to give up on this—I’ve only just gotten started.
After all, Maggie was right: if you don’t make any effort to change things in your life, they can’t get better.
—
Manylong hours later, I get back to my apartment after dropping Maggie off at home with her friends.I’m hungry and tired, but at the same time, my mind feels awake.
Our shared shift was somewhat on the awkward side, and I know it was because of how things unfolded for us today.There were more pleasant ups and annoying downs and pulse-skipping in-betweens today than there have been recently.
As far as conversation goes, the drive away from Lucent was almost as quiet as the drive there had been.All we exchanged were light words about tomorrow’s shifts being staggered, with mine starting a few hours before hers; she’ll see if Emma or Joy can take her to work.
But even with us being free of each other for the time being, she doesn’t leave my thoughts—especially since I decide to finish cleaning my kitchen while a frozen pizza bakes.
She’ssoin my thoughts as I stand in this damn kitchen.
I’m sluggishly drying the clean frying pan when my phone vibrates in my pocket.I dig it out and see a text.
MAGGIE:My friends can take me to work tomorrow.I’m gonna spend the morning with them, too, so anywhere I might go, they’ll be with me
Sounds good to me.Since I open at Lucent with brunch hours, there wouldn’t be much time for me and her to, say, try to continue our hunt for exercise clothes together.
ME:Okay, cool
After a moment, I decide to only partly joke:
Don’t finish shopping for workout stuff without me, though, eh?
In general, I don’t give much of a shit about shopping for clothes, but today wasn’t bad.Even with her.
Orbecauseof her.
I think about her standing in her short green bathrobe while she apologized for prying into my bad mood—the bad mood she ended up pulling me out of despite that I didn’t expect she would ever again make me feel better about something to do with my dad.For the last eight years, I’ve believed her incapable of soothing any kind of pain he might cause me, since she apparently knew exactly how to make it worse.
But now I’m certain my day would’ve taken much longer to improve if she hadn’t been a part of it.
I managed to amuse her—managed it more than once, even, as the hours went on.Then I caught and held her attention like a moth drawn to flame when I burst out of my fitting room ready to fight whatever had spooked her; she tried to avoid that flame while she was in there with me, but her struggle was palpable and I couldn’t help that it meant something to me.Then she tried to clean my kitchen out of thoughtfulness, not to be overbearing.
And not one of the times I touched her ended with her yanking away from me.
Touches are part of our fake-dating agreement, I know, but we didn’t even have a potential audience for all of them and she still didn’t stop me.
By the time I’m sitting down with my pizza and turning the TV on, I feel even more wired and tired than before.
Especially since that one thing she said is trying to grow in my mind:‘Not everything should just be left the way it is.’
I sigh at my plate.
Sometimes it’s easier to leave things like they are.The painful things.The confusing things.The twisted-up things.
