Page 96 of Fierce

To Worse

I woke up and Hemi wasn’t there, so I got dressed, made myself a cup of tea, and then, because this was my last day in California, took a blanket and a book and opened the French doors into the courtyard. I tucked myself up into a rustic wooden chair in a corner under an arbor, got cozy under my blanket, and set out to enjoy the last tiny bit of my vacation.

When I saw Hemi coming through the gate in running shorts and a sweat-soaked T-shirt, I started to get up before I realized he was on the phone and sat down again. And then I heard it. I heard it all. All the pain in his voice, all the things he hadn’t told me. And the thing that cut me deepest of all.

“It isn’t love, and it won’t be the next time, either. It’s sex, and that’s where it’s going to stay. She isn’t the mother of your grandchildren. She’s an arrangement I have for now for sex, and that’s all.”

I didn’t really hear the rest of the conversation, because I wasn’t listening. I was sitting frozen, wishing I could rewind the tape and forget what I’d heard.

Hemi hung up, stood and put the phone back in his pocket, and walked toward the room. And then he saw me and stopped.

“Morning,” he said, his face at its most expressionless.

“Morning.” I got up and began to fold my blanket as if it mattered that I get the corners straight, unable to look at him. Not yet. Not for a minute.

“Feeling better?” he asked.

“Yes. Thank you. What time do we have to leave for the airport?”

I had the blanket folded at last, so I led the way into the room, and he followed me.

“Hour or so,” he said. “We have time for breakfast before we go. Uh...that was my grandfather.”

“Oh?”

“Yeh.” He stood in the middle of the room, sighed, and ran a hand over the back of his head. “And I’m thinking you heard that.”

“Yes.”

“Sorry. I was feeling a bit...pressed.”

“Yeah.” I pulled out my suitcase and started to pack. “I heard. Do you mind if we don’t talk about this? I got it yesterday, I’m pretty sure. And I get it better now.”

“Right. Fine.” He began to pack up himself, and we went and had breakfast.

You could call it awkward. Or you could call it awful. Either one worked.

We began the hour-long drive back to the city in silence, and I sat in the passenger seat and looked out at the ocean. It had started to rain while we were at breakfast. Gusts of wind shook the car, and the swells were higher now, the waves angrier. Coming in and going out the way they’d been doing for thousands of years, the way they’d be coming in and going out for thousands more.

This was sad. Yes, it was. Sad for Hemi, and sad for me. That I couldn’t help him, and that he couldn’t be there for me, not in the way I needed him. He didn’t have it in him, not anymore. There was too much pain there, and it cut too deep. He couldn’t allow me to help him heal it, and he couldn’t help me heal my own pain, either, because we were too similar for that. We weren’t going to be each other’s salvation. It was what I’d always known, and what I’d let myself forget. Another fairy tale that wasn’t going to come true.

So, yes, it was sad. It wasn’t the saddest thing that had ever happened to me, though, no matter how it felt right now. Sometime down the road, in a week or a month or a year, it wouldn’t even hurt. It would just be a mistake, something I’d tried that hadn’t worked out. At least I hoped that was what it would be, because that sure wasn’t how it felt right now.

All the same, it wasn’t until we were crossing the Golden Gate Bridge again that I decided. The soaring span had represented what this trip had meant to me, all those foolish hopes and dreams. And even then, “decided” was the wrong word. The words were coming out of my mouth as if I’d thought them up, but I hadn’t. It was more that those few sentences Hemi had spoken had settled something inside me, had shifted the unruly pieces of our non-relationship into a pattern that was too clear to ignore anymore.

“I can’t do this,” I said.

“Pardon?” He glanced quickly across at me, then back at the rain-slicked road.

I reached over and turned off the car radio. “This keeps happening, doesn’t it? I have to ask myself why, and the answer’s pretty obvious. We keep having what’s basically the same conversation, and I keep walking out on you. Running away, more like. And then I change my mind and come back. And I’m doing that because I keep hoping, in some stupid place deep down inside me that still believes in fairy tales, that I’m wrong. That there’s more to this than I know there really is. That you care more than you’re saying, or that I care less, so it’s all right, and it’s enough. But it isn’t all right, and isn’t enough, and that’s why I keep leaving.”

“I know you want more,” he said. “But—”

“Yeah.” I didn’t need to hear him say it again. “I get it. You can’t. It’s what I said all the way back in the rose garden. The person sending mixed messages isn’t you. It’s me. And it’s time to stop. I can’t afford to...to wallow in drama like some college girl who doesn’t have enough real problems in her life. And I can’t believe you want that either, or that you’re enjoying this. You don’t want drama, and this is too much drama for either of us. You’ve told me what you want, and it isn’t a girlfriend. It’s a mistress, and I can’t be a mistress.”

“I never said you were a mistress.” He was following the signs to the airport, still so controlled, nothing in his face betraying emotion. Like this didn’t matter. Like it was an inconvenience and nothing more. And maybe he could even manage to make that be true. But I couldn’t.

“I don’t think you have to say it,” I said. “Because it’s obvious. I’ve wanted to...I’ve wanted to try. I don’t know how to do a relationship either, because I never lived with a...a good one. I never even saw the possibility of one I would want until I met you, and my life was too complicated anyway. I knew nobody would want to take that on. I’d be another person with their...with their hand out, like you said. And then I met you, and I did want it, and you’ve been so sweet to Karen, and I let myself think...” I stopped myself. He knew what I’d let myself think. “Well, anyway. I did. Being with you made me want to try, but you can’t try yourself, so that makes us a one-way street. I can’t go down a one-way street with no way of getting back again. I can’t afford to.”

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