Page 33 of Don't Hate Me
Shit. I hated even having the thought, but maybe the right thing to do would be to end this. For now. Let him finish his degree, get away from my father, and in five years or so I could search for him. Find him again. Remind him of the bond we had.
Then it would be like he wanted. Easy and normal. Although I suspected there was no such thing for Marc. Not when he had as much anger inside him as he did. Anger he didn’t even realize I helped to dissipate.
It would be the risk of a lifetime. He could move on from me so completely, the bond we shared would ultimately break. Worse, though, was holding on to him as hard as I could, only to watch him grow apathetic toward me.
That would be unendurable.
Monday, I would see him.
The right thing to do was to make the offer. To swallow my heart and tell him he was free. Of me. I couldn’t keep him tied to me. The strings that held us together had the potential to snap if he tugged on them a little harder. I could feel it.
I could feel him tugging.
If we were ever going to make us work, he had to believe in us like I did. He had to see, as clearly as I did, we were meant to be together.
Through the fog of the drama I’d created with all our subterfuge, he couldn’t.
The separation would hurt him. My absence would be like a constant toothache with no source for him to fix. I knew that, even if he didn’t. But maybe this was what we both needed. To understand the power of what we had, maybe we both had to lose it for a while.
It would hurt. His toothache would be my constant heartache, but only for a time.
Only for a time.
9
Newark Airport
Monday
Marc
I was goingto break up with her.
That I had to skip two classes to sneak around with her for a few hours, only to drop her off back here at the airport instead of at her house, made me see that what we were doing, what we were trying to do, wasn’t going to work.
This wasn’t a real thing. This was some clandestine fucking and late-night calls, and it had to end. For both our sakes. Ash had to go to school, she had to finish growing up, she had to—
I stopped myself because the thought hurt. But I couldn’t look away from the hard truth.
She had to fuck some other guy.
I couldn’t be what she needed. I’d already told her that. I wasn’t going to be someone who would profess love and forever after. I was an asshole most of the time, and an asshole to her almost all the time, and, in the months since we’d been together in Florida, it was becoming harder to see how this would end well.
I parked the car, and walked into the airport with a sense of determination. But as soon as the sliding doors closed behind me, I was reminded of the time I’d dropped her off to go to Switzerland.
How strange it had felt then to finally acknowledge she was important to me. To have this feeling like I was putting my right arm on a plane and sending it across an ocean.
She wasn’t any less important to me right now. Breaking up with her wasn’t about who she was to me. She’d would always be Ash.
Breaking up with her was about removing both of us from a situation that had no good ending. I was doing this for her because I knew it made sense.
I hadn’t seen her since December. Just the calls and texts. I wasn’t a fan of video chatting because I thought it was stupid. We knew what the other looked like, what was the point?
So I was nervous. Nervous about what I would say, how she would react. Nervous, too, I might fall on my knees in front of her and ask her to run away with me.
“Marc.”
I turned, and she was there. Walking towards me. Her wispy blond hair tied in a ponytail, her eyes so big and blue they hurt me. I didn’t think. I just opened my arms and she ran into me. Almost knocking us over.
