She’s going to leave.
She’s going to tell you that she can’t do this.
This is it.
“I have to tell you something, Clark.”
She sounds so sad that I grip her hands a little more firmly, scared that if I let go, she’ll slip from my fingers for good.
“O-okay.”
“I’m so sorry for the ups and downs I’ve put you through these past few weeks,” she mumbles, peering down at our hands as a few seconds tick by. “I know I’ve been confusing and unsure and speaking for you at times and making assumptions during others, and I… I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to apologize for figuring yourself out,” I tell her, and I mean it.
She needed that during this trip. Maybe she hadn’t realized it, and I didn’t realize it until a week or so ago, but she needed this trip to figure herself out. To help herself heal a little bit more. To free herself of the restraints she’s had on herself for so long. She deserved to live without having to put on a mask for others to see.
Maeve cocks her head as her bottom lip trembles, but she doesn’t look up at me. I pull our intertwined hands into my lap to get her attention, yet she still doesn’t lift her head.
“But I do,” she croaks out, “because I… I know I’ve been so confusing. So all over the place with my thoughts and feelings. You deserved better communication, better boundaries, better all of it. I should’ve given you that before we…”
“I’m a big boy,” I murmur, bringing our hands up to press my lips to the back of hers, “I knew what we were doing. What I was getting into. Maeve, if I had a problem with any of it, I would have told you that.”
Her lips purse as she nods, over and over again, like she’s trying really hard to accept what I’m telling her.
“I slept in the waiting room the whole time.”
I frown. “You didn’t get a hotel room?”
She shakes her head. “I wanted to be here when you woke up. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“Mae,” I urge in a soft voice, letting go of her hands and cupping her face, forcing her to finally meet my gaze, “thatcouldn’t have been comfortable. I was okay. You should’ve gone and gotten some rest in an actual bed.”
“I did,” she says, “in yours.”
A tiny laugh escapes me at that before I can even help it, and I lean forward, pressing a chaste kiss to her lips. She melts into me, something she’s always kind of done, but this time, it’s like her entire body presses into me with an urgency she’s never had. She furthers the kiss before I can even break it off and wraps her arms around my neck, forcing me to readjust my hold on her face. I want to ask her what’s actually wrong now, why she’s kissing me this way… Is this a goodbye kiss? My thoughts are silenced, though, when she loosens her arms around me to fist her fingers in my hair, tugging me closer.
“That wasn’t really what I needed to tell you,” she pants as she breaks the kiss, pressing her forehead to mine. “There’s something else.”
Oh no.
“Yeah?” I rasp. “What’s wrong?”
“The other stuff was just to preface this part,” she says, taking a shaky breath, “you know? Like a build-up to what I really needed to tell you.”
“Maeve,” I whisper, but it sounds more like a plea. She’s going to leave. She’s going to leave and it’s actually going to be the end of this. I’m not going to go back to Pennsylvania and have her waiting there for me.
Oh no, no, no.
My chest feels tight as I wait for the other shoe to drop. For the bomb to obliterate me. An eerie sense of no control and dread fills the large pit in my stomach.
“Oh, no,” Maeve urges, sitting up straighter as her hands drop from their grip they still had in my hair. “Tate, no. I don’t mean it like t-that. This isn’t coming out right. It’s not bad, at least, I don’t think it is. I don’t know, actually. Maybe it is bad?—”
“Maeve, you’re killing me here.”
She stops talking abruptly, her mouth clamping shut as her features soften. Her jaw clenches as she swallows thickly, her hands fidgeting in her lap again like they were doing earlier. She’s working herself up to speaking again; that much is obvious by the way her body rocks faintly, almost like she’s revving herself up.
“Seeing you sitting here in this bed, even though you were okay…” She trails off for a moment. “I don’t know what happened. I just…couldn’t stop crying. And then I…”
