She smiled, kneeling down in the snow beside him. “I forgive you.”
“You can’t just forgive me.”
“Did you mean any of things you said to me that day?”
“No.”
“Then they were just words.” She shrugged as if he hadn’t ripped out her heart. “I forgive you.”
This was the type of craziness he would never understand. It was infuriating. “Fuck, Jazz! For once, can you just react like a normal person? Shout…or get mad, tell me you hate me, tell me to go to hell, call me an asshole. Fuck…anything!”
“You want me to hurt you?”
It only clicked when she asked the question, but that was exactly what he wanted. After the way he treated her, it was what he deserved. “Yes.”
“And what would the point of that be, Kevin? Look at how much you hurt yourself.” A long silence stretched on betweenthem before she leaned forward and took the stick from his hand. “You know what else you didn’t filter into the equation? I have a massive rapper dick and it causes me to lean to one side.” She drew a long, thick penis in between the legs of the stick figure and she made it so big, it filled the smaller circle. “Whether you like it or not, I’m already in here, so the question is…what do you want to do about it?”
He sank back to sit on the ground. “I-I don’t know. I wasn’t lying when I said I’m not ready for a relationship. You’ve got everything going for you and I don’t want to hold you back.” He paused, feeling utterly conflicted. “I…I want to be your one in one hundred, but I can’t expect anything from you when all I have to offer is broken pieces of myself. My life is a mess and it’s going to take time for me to get my head right…I don’t know if I can give you what you need.”
“Pffft! I honestly don’t know how you came to that conclusion.” She crawled towards him and straddled his hips to sit on his lap. She cupped his face with her gloved hands and tilted his head up so he would look at her. “You have an odd way of encouraging me. I was so insecure before I met you and you told me to embrace every part of me, even if it’s weird. You accepted me just the way I am. That’s what I needed. You rented a family for me so I would know what it was like. If I didn’t know, I would probably still be yearning for it, but now I can see that I have all of that in my dad. That’s what I needed. When you held my hand the whole time I was in that boardroom with my mother and you sat outside the bathroom door until I was ready to talk. That’s what I needed. And then you stayed with me for a whole week afterwards. You gave me what I needed and you did that even while you were hanging a foot above rock bottom. I don’t need you to be more than what you are, Kevin. Now, I’m not saying that you’re not an asshole. You are. And I’m not saying that everything’s okay. It’s not. I’m not ready for a relationshipeither. You’ve hurt me a few times and I don’t trust you with my heart anymore. What I’m saying is that I leave for Chicago tomorrow, and I wanna know where do we go from here?”
He took a few seconds to think about that. They weren’t ready now, but it wouldn’t stay like that forever. If they were both willing, they would find a way to make it work. “Forward,” he answered. “Every day let’s try to take one step forward. I don’t know what the future holds. And I’m gonna try like hell, but I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to earn back your trust. So let’s just start at the beginning…as friends and take one step forward…together.”
“Okay, Kevin.” She smiled, wrapping her arms around his neck. “Okay.”
He pulled the woolen hat off her head, moving his fingers into her short hair as she rested her forehead against his. “I love you,” he whispered and just saying it made him feel like more weight was lifted off his shoulders.
She didn’t say it back, and he understood why, but she held him tighter. That was good enough for him. They sat there for a long time, not speaking, just embracing each other and that moment. He shut his eyes, inhaling the scent of strawberries and exhaling all the negativity he’d been trapped in. For the first time in four months, he finally felt at peace.
Even though she was probably wearing several layers of clothing, he still felt her shiver. “Let’s go somewhere,” he suggested.
“Where do you wanna go?”
“We could find a motel…you know, for old time’s sake.”
She smirked. “Sure. But we’re going in my rental car and not that petrol guzzler you came with.”
She stood up and he got to his feet as well. “How did you find me anyway?”
“Well, you told me about your hometown and once I got here, I looked for the Barber Shop—that was hard to find, but when I finally did, this nice lady named Rose told me where you live.”
“That was easy enough.” He opened the door of her rental car and she got in. He leaned in and pulled the strap of the seatbelt across her chest. “Safety first’” he said before he closed the door.
She followed him back to his house. After parking the Land Rover, he went inside and told his mother he would be out for the rest of the night. He picked up the black box as he stepped out onto the porch, then made his way down the stairs to her car.
He opened the driver’s side door and knelt down beside the car. “Hey, what time is your flight tomorrow?”
“Two in the afternoon. Why?”
“The rest of my family will be out tomorrow…skating at the lake. It’s tradition, but uh…” Somehow asking her this made him feel nervous. “My mom will be at home…and I want you to meet her. I could ask Momma B to come over too.”
“Really?” She beamed with excitement. “I’d love to meet them.”
“Okay.” He stood up and nodded his head towards the passenger seat. “Scoot over. I’ll drive.”
“Are you sure?”
Conquering one small fear. Having control of one small thing. Taking one small step forward. “Yeah,” he replied with a smile.
