Page 147 of Pick-Up
“Why do you always ask me that when I fall? Whatever happened to ‘Are you okay?’ When did that become not enough?”
“Be honest,” he says. “When you said ‘all tied up,’ you meant with your earbuds.”
I shoot him a look, smooth my pony.
“Do you want to keep going?”
I don’t. I really don’t. I am sick of running. From him. From this. On the loop. But I don’t want to admit it. Admitting it means confronting all the things.
If I hear him out and we can’t make sense of things, I have to give up all hope. If I hear him out and we both want to try, I’ll be vulnerable.
How do I know he’s different? That he won’t turn into a Cliff?
Do I want to keep going? “Doyou?”
His hands are planted on both hips as he leans over. He is breathing like an elderly bulldog. But he calls my bluff: “I’m in until you’re done. I’m onyourclock.”
“What if I go ten more miles?”
He doesn’t even point out the absurdity—no, sheer impossibility—of that notion. Or the fact that he’s wearing jeans and has been running all over the city. He is a man who is willing to wait on me.
“I can go all day,” he says, looking at his watch. “Well. Until pick-up.”
That gets my attention. I snap to it. My eyes on his. I feel myself sucked in by the gravity of his pupils, dwarfing the flecked brown. “Pick-up?” I repeat. “But you don’tdopick-up.”
He stands up a little taller, holds my gaze. Like he’s a kid announcing he’s become a man. “I do now.”
I consider him, this person who has quite literally run all over town to find me. Who has risked his job to hire me. Risked his career to call out a figure like Martin, the misogynist shit face. A man who is trying his best.
The rest of the mad goes out of me.
“Okay, fine,” I say. “I’ll talk.” If I ever catch my breath.
“Okay, great. I’m going to start, if that’s okay?” He looks genuinely relieved, but also focused. “Look, I’m sorry. I need to say that first and foremost. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the job before putting you up for it. I’m sorry I didn’t make sure you understood who my ex-wife was and how much she…”
“Detests me?”
“Yes. That. I won’t even sugarcoat it. For what it’s worth, she has never been a great judge of character. Present company included.”
“Fair enough,” I sigh, hugging myself. A hand on each of my own shoulders. “But why did you do it? Why omit all those details?”
“Sasha,” he says, his eyes boring into mine in a way that hits me in all the places. “I like you. Likereallylike you. Maybe even… anyway. There are reasons, for sure. Qualities that draw me to you. But, more than that, it’s that feeling. Like I’ve known you forever and always will. But you have been poised to run since the first moment I met you—for the second time.” He breaks eye contact, kicks a pebble with his shoe. Boots. He’s been running in hisboots. “I think I was afraid to scare you off.”
I know there is truth in his words. I cannot deny my instinct to flee—at a moderate to slow clip. “Fair enough,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest. “But how do I know it won’t happen again?”
“You don’t,” he says.
We sit with that for a moment.
“You don’t. You want honesty and there it is. I’m coming off a relationship where we shared minimal information that mattered. Where I avoided interacting—even showing up—in order to keep the peace. Even if I tell you now that I will always be forthcoming about every detail of every single element of our lives together, that I will try as hard as I can, which I will, you can’t know. No one ever can in a relationship. And that’s one of the risks with this.”
Our lives together. Those words hover in the air between us, strange and magnetic. A whole life. And, actually, to my surprise, the words don’t scare me. I like how they look, how they sound. I want to try them on my tongue.
I realize with a jolt: I am in.
“I can’t make this decision for you,” he is saying, running a hand up and down his stubble. “I wish I could. But I can’t decide what you want or what you can handle. You have to get there on your own. That was my hesitation after our argument in Turks and Caicos too. You have to want this as badly as I do or it isn’t going to work. I’m willing to wait as long as it takes. But I can’t have the pendulum swing back and forth—because one minute you’re inviting me into the shower; the next you’re swearing we’re doomed.”
“I feel like there was some stuff in between those two things.”
