“You don’t have to babysit me, you know,” she says finally, watching me while the coffee percolates loudly next to her.
“I’m not,” I say defensively, letting my finger trace the grain.
She lets out a short laugh, sharp around the edges. “So why are you here?”
“Sure look, you’ve no business on your feet,” I remind her, voice clipped.
She smiles at me, like she appreciates it, and pushes a loose curl out of her face. “But I am.”
“I wish you wouldn’t be.”
“I didn’t know you cared so much,” she teases, pulling the pot off the burner and walking it over to the table. It’s probably true. She doesn’t know how much I care. I can’t bring myself to tell her. I look at her pointy canines, deep set in wide, smiling peach lips, at her green eyes with flecks of gold under heavy lids and even heavier lashes, at her brown hair streaked blonde from surfing in the sun, and I feel nothing but pure terror.
She pours us each a cup and sets the pot on a trivet in the center of the table before finally attempting to sit, her back arcing backward as she considers her strategy. I snap to my feet to help her, easing her down by the elbow. Her weight settles into my palm for just a second too long, and I grip harder than I should, afraid of both letting go and holding on.
But the time to let go always comes, and she offers me a withering look once she’s in her seat. I stay standing for a moment, as if she might tip over. Finally, I return to my seat and wrap my hand around the mug, though I don’t drink. “Are you feeling better?” I ask. It’s a simple question. It’s the best I’ve got.
She pokes out her bottom lip and shrugs. “No contractions. So, you know, that’s always better.” She leans forward, her curls falling over her cheek. “I wanted to tell you thank you for coming to class the other day. That was nice of you.”
I look up at her over the mug that I keep fingering the handle of instead of drinking. “About that, Willow, I don’t know if I made the right call.”
She tilts her head in an expression that disarms me. “What do you mean?”
“I’m just…not going to be your boyfriend, Willow. Ever. You’re better off with one of those guys.”
Her eyebrows lift. She studies me, her expression softening instead of hardening. She whispers, “One of those guys.” She sips her coffee, her eyes still on me. “I thought you were smarter than they are. I don’t deserve a boyfriend that’s smarter?”
I tense my jaw at her using my own words against me. “Well, you know, there are other things that matter more.”
“Oh, okay. And they have those things, and you don’t?” she clarifies, but her tone is biting and sarcastic. I nod, and she nods back, slowly, like she’s marinating in her understanding. “Is that supposed to protect me—you keeping your distance? Or does it just protect you?”
My throat works, but nothing comes out. I can’t tell her that I’m terrified of being abandoned, that even though she needs me, families will always feel like they’re about me. I can’t tell her that falling for her felt like the easiest thing in the world, easier than I’d ever dreamed, and that the babies made it the hardest. So I say nothing.
Her eyes linger on me, waiting, hoping maybe, and I give her nothing. Because I’m a coward. Because silence is easier than risk.
She exhales through her nose, like she knew I wouldn’t answer. “That’s what I thought.” She pushes her mug away, untouched, and looks away. “Thanks for the ride.”
I stay for a while, my fingers still tracing the grain in her table. I try to meet her eyes, but she’s stubborn, training them on something far off in the kitchen. I move my face, trying to catch her, but she won’t let up. I’m sitting across from someone too like me. Her tactics are mine, and they hurt.
At last, I outwait her, and the scrape of her chair against the floor cuts the air. I watch carefully as she braces on the table to push herself up, her hand trembling just a little. I shove back my own chair and stand to help her, but she jerks away from me like I burned her. “Don’t touch me.”
“Ah,Jaysus,Willow?—”
“I mean it, Rowan. You’re not my doctor anymore. You’re not my boyfriend. You’re nothing. All you are is a man in my house who I want to leave.” The words are sharp, biting, but she still won’t meet my eyes. I have a flipping feeling in my stomach that if I could see hers, they’d be swimming with tears.
My hand drops to my side. The distance between us stretches wider than the whole kitchen. I walk to her front door and look around her place one last time. It may be the last chance I ever get. I look at the canvas and the crumpled blanket, the worn furniture, and I glance at the contents of her bag,A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. “That’s a good book,” I tell her, clumsy, useless, all I can reach for in a sea of her rejection.
“I decided not to read it,” she spits. “Not worth my time.” One last win.
Dismissed. And I deserve it. She’s right—someone worth knowing wouldn’t make her feel this way. So I take the dismissal, no wave, no goodbye, just a closed door.
16
SEAN
On a walk home one night,I spot her before she sees me. Her hair is piled up like she did it with one hand, salt still in the curls, a canvas tote and a surfboard both bumping her knee as she cuts away from the last straggle of tourists at the market. The night’s got that Charleston mix of hot brick breathing up from the ground, horse sweat and soap from the carriage barn, sea air drifting in from the harbor like a promise you half believe. She smells like work—the sugar of the sweets she sells and the salt of the sweat on the tourists.
“Howya, Miss Abel,” I call, low and cheerful, so I don’t scare her. “You planning to give me gray hair, walking alone at this hour?”
