Andy closed his computer and stood. “Maybe fresh air will do me some good. I’ve been staring at this screen for so long I can’t even see it anymore. There’s not much walking we can do here, but I do have a picnic table out back.”
“The picnic table sounds perfect,” she responded.
“Is something wrong?” Andy asked once they were seated across from each other.
“I’ve been thinking about what you said about losing your mom. You shouldn’t choose me over your family.” She kept her gaze on the table.
“Excuse me?” Andy was certain he misunderstood.
“Family is important. You shouldn’t choose me over your family,” she repeated while she appeared to blink back tears.
He opened his mouth to speak and then closed it. He wasn’t sure what to say. He had sensed something was off when he stayed the night with her, but he was not expecting those particular words to come out of her mouth.
“Samira, I’m not choosing you over my family. I’m choosing myself over my family. This is something I should have done years ago.”
“And I’m proud of you for doing it. I will fully support you as a friend. I just have so much going on, I don’t know that I can handle the backlash that I’ll get as your girlfriend. I can’t go there again,” she explained. “And you really need to take some time and think about if this is worth it to you.”
Andy stared at her in confusion. They had literally just talked about it. Sure, she had encouraged him to follow his heart, but she didn’t give him the idea. His decisions were his own. They weren’t teenagers anymore. He knew how to protect her, and he wouldn’t have let her take the heat for his decisions.
“What exactly are you saying? You don’t want to do this anymore? Cut to the chase,” he finally said.
Tears ran down Samira’s face. She swiped at them to no avail. It seemed the more she tried to pull herself together, the more she fell apart. It took everything in Andy to not go to her. He needed to know what she had to say.
“I don’t know what I was thinking. I said from the beginning that we had two different lives, and mine is in DC. Friendship is the only thing that can possibly work with us. We can’t have forever. So, when it comes to making major life decisions, we need to think about that,” she explained through her tears.
Andy took some more time to study her. Something must have happened. Something had to have caused her change of heart. He worried that maybe he put too much pressure on her to stand by him. He never wanted to pressure her, and he never expected her to put up with any bad treatment by his mother. He had only meant to prepare her for the imminent cold shoulder they would both get.
He stood up and walked over to her side of the picnic table. “What brought this on? We already talked about all this, and nothing has changed.”
“We were living in a fantasy. This was never going to work,” she said before pausing to regain enough composure to continue speaking. “We need to go back to just being friends.”
He took a step back from her. Realization hit him like a bolt of lightning. “Was this your plan the whole time? Kill time with me and then just walk away? Go back to your city life like none of this ever happened?”
Samira stood up and took a step toward him. “No. It’s not like that, I swear.”
“I should have known better. People don’t change. When things get tough, you leave. Thanks for at least telling me this time,” he said before turning to walk back to his shop.
He heard her call after him, but he didn’t look back. Her tears would tempt him to comfort her and tell her everything was okay. Well, everything was not okay. He knew from the beginning that her time in town was limited, but he never expected her to just throw him aside like that. Again.
He yanked the door open and slammed it behind him. Instead of heading back to his office, he went straight ahead and into the shop. No way could he focus on paperwork. He needed something physical. Sanding usually helped him calm down.
“You alright?” Josh asked as Andy stormed past him.
“What’s waiting to be sanded?”
Josh raised his eyebrows in question before pointing to a set of four chairs. Andy walked over to the chairs, picked up a sanding block, and got to work. As soon as he began the short side to side motion, he felt himself begin to relax. He could think better when wasn’t pissed off.
“I saw Samira come through,” Josh said quietly. “Did she leave already?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Andy muttered.
Andy went over the last several weeks in his head. Sure, in the beginning she had mentioned only being in town for a shorttime. He always knew she planned to go back to the city. He didn’t have a problem with that part. He had just assumed from the way things were going between them, that they would find a way to see each other anyway.
“Why didn’t you tell me that I was being stupid?” Andy shouted over the sound of the table saw.
Josh turned off the saw and pushed his safety glasses up to the top of his head. “I thought you didn’t want to talk about it.”
“I don’t,” Andy said before starting on the next chair.
