Page 35 of Beneath Her Hands
“I know,” Rosalind whispered back and kissed Jane softly on the forehead. Soon, Jane was asleep.
Jane woke up several hours later, it was still dark outside, but the sounds of the storm had abated. She felt the bed next to her, but Rosalind wasn’t there. Jane got up and pulled a fresh robe from her dresser before padding softly into the living room. Rosalind was there with her clothes, freshly dried from Jane’s dryer, she must have been up for a while. She was pulling her pants on as Jane came into the room.
“What’s going on?” Jane asked.
“Nothing,” Rosalind answered. “I just need to think.”
“About what?” Jane asked, her skin prickled in defense.
“I don’t know—about everything,” Rosalind said. “I’m sorry, it has nothing to do with you, it’s my own issues that I am trying to deal with.”
“Why can’t you let me help you?” Jane asked, quickly becoming angry.
“Because it’s not your problem, it’s mine,” Rosalind said.
“So the whole ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ nonsense?” Jane snapped.
“It’s the truth, Jane,” Rosalind said without meeting her eyes.
“So you come over, drip all over my apartment, profess your undying love, sleep with me, then just… what? Escape?”
“It’s not like that, Jane, I just…” Rosalind said.
“It’s exactly like that, Rosalind,” Jane almost shouted. She felt hurt and betrayed. She had been so certain that they’d turned a corner in their relationship, but it was the same old crap again.
“You don’t understand,” Rosalind said and lifted her eyes. The pain in them was real, even Jane couldn’t deny that, but it didn’t give Rosalind an excuse to be this much of a flake.
“I can’t understand what you’re not willing to share with me,” Jane snapped then headed to the kitchen where she started boiling some water for tea. “Are you so self-absorbed that you can only love me in fits and spurts?” Jane immediately regretted the words as soon as they left her throat. Still, this was all too much.
“No, Jane, my feelings for you are real, I can’t deny that, but I don’t have the slightest clue what to do with them,” Rosalind said while looking at the floor. She had finished getting dressed and sat down on the couch.
“Would you like some tea?” Jane asked, though her tone was less than friendly.
“Sure,” Rosalind said, she finally lifted her eyes to Jane’s, and the pain in them was acute. It tore at Jane’s heart.
“I shouldn’t have called you self-absorbed,” Jane said, but Rosalind just waved it off.
“I understand,” Rosalind said. “I would feel like that in your position, and I wish there was some way that I could explain it that doesn’t sound like childish nonsense, but I can’t. I just… When I start to think about anything further than right now, today, I get stuck. I can’t see it, I can’t imagine it. I can’t imagine my life without you, now, but I also can’t figure out how to make it work. I’m just paralyzed.” Rosalind sighed. “That’s never really happened before, I’m always going, always moving, always…”
“Running?” Jane offered.
“Yeah,” Rosalind answered and deflated into the couch. “Did you know that my mother has the rest of her life planned?”
Jane was taken aback by the sudden shift in topic. “What?”
“Yeah, apparently she’s been planning what happens next since my father was diagnosed, he even knew about it, when hewas still lucid, anyway. She’s going to travel with her friends,” Rosalind explained, but Jane was confused.
“Is that… That sounds like a good thing,” Jane said.
“It is,” Rosalind said. “It is a good thing. It takes a lot of the worries I’ve had these last few weeks off of me, but I had no idea. I don’t know; I never really thought about how much my mother did for me, maybe I really am that self-absorbed.”
Jane pressed her lips, unsure how to respond.
“Sorry, I know this doesn’t seem relevant, and I’m definitely not fishing for compliments or comforting words here, I just… I don’t know how to react,” Rosalind said.
“She probably just didn’t want you to worry and didn’t want you to feel you owed anything to her.” Jane took two mugs from the cabinet and added the tea bags, watching Rosalind from the corner of her eye. She had to admit that everything Rosalind was saying, was feeling, was genuine, but she wasn’t sure what it had to do with them.
“She told me to just come ask you,” Rosalind said and laid her head back against the couch. She slung an arm across her eyes.
