My spine elongates. “No, Jenna, no. Please don't play the age card.”
“It's not a card to play. It's the truth. Youareyoung. And you've been through so much the last few years.” Her fingers are stroking me through my T-shirt. It feels like both heaven and hell.
“All the more reason why I need this,” I say. “Why I need you.”
She pauses, swallows, and looks down at our hands. “I don't want you toneedme, Marty. I want you to love me and have me as your partner. Not your crutch.”
“Is that what you think you are to me?” My mouth falls open.
“No.” Her eyes are back on me – dry again, and more serious. “I don't think that at all, but I worry that's what itcouldbe.”
“I would never, Jenna, I...”
She’s quick to interrupt. “And I worry you would become the same for me. I'm still healing from my divorce too. I still have things I need to figure out and work through.”
“Why can't we do it together?”
“How, Marty? With trips here and there? With you working a lot of weekends, it's just not sustainable. It will get stressful very quickly, and you don't need stress in your life right now. I don’t want to be a source of stress to you.”
“You are the literal opposite of that to me,” I begin.
“Right now,” Jenna interjects. She glances up and her eyes rest on the view through the double doors. “In this little paradise, away from the rest of the world. But we can't live here, Marty. The real world is waiting for us.You will change, I will change. Whatever we feel now, it will change. Like I said, I don't want to play the age card-”
“Then don't,” I interrupt.
“But I've been here before. I had all this magic and spark and joy and sex - all the wonderful sex - and the connection, and it faded away when things got hard and I needed space to grow. And honestly, I don't think I can survive this spark dying because you didn’t have space to grow.”
“Who says it has to?”
“It's what happens. Of course, you don't know this yet.”
“I asked you not to say shit like that.” I grit my teeth. I feel dangerously close to losing it, but really, I know it's more dangerously close to losing her.
“And I am asking you to not play the youthful magic card. I know you see the world differently, with all its shine and possibility, and in some ways that's the thing I want to protect by doing this.”
“But five years...” It’s an eternity. I was still a teenager five years ago. Arnie and I weren’t even together. I didn’t know who I was.
“One for every sunset we've shared...” Her voice is so full of pain I can't bear it.
“Jesus, Jenna!” I have a sudden urge to pull out of her grasp but I daren't. I worry if I do, she won't let me back in. Instead, I hang my head low and heavy on her shoulder. “It's such a long fucking time.”
“I know,” she says, her voice breaking. It's only a small comfort to have her fall apart with me.
I decide to level with her. “You know you're doing the one thing I thought you'd never do. You're telling me I don't know what's best for me. You're trying to make that decision for me.”
“Marty, no,” she begins but the protest drops from her voice quickly. “Well, actually, yes. You're right. That is how it sounds, and I can understand that’s how it may feel, but this decision isn’t about that. It’s about what I think is best for me too. I am also vulnerable and scared and fragile right now. I've not had anything like the loss you have but I have had a huge life change and I still feel lost and I don’t know what I want my future to look like. I need some time and space to figure that out. And the way I feel about you... Oh, God, Marty, the way I feel about you. It's not for the faint of heart. So, I want to make my heart stronger. I want to make myself stronger. I want to be the best version of myself for you.”
“But I love you as you are, right now,” I say, lifting my head and digging my fingertips into her flesh at her waist. “Why not five months? Or just one year? Bollocks to the symbolism of it all.”
“I think it has to be longer. It has to be years,” she says slowly, her hands now smoothing out my T-shirt on my shoulders. “You're still very deep in your grief about Arnie. I have to figure out my career and I want us to have all the time and energy we need to tackle both of those things. Even if that wasn't the case, you arejust twenty-four. When I think about who I was at that age and who I was five years later, it's not the same person.”
“I don't think you would expect me to stay the same person. I certainly don't expect you to never change.”
“That's true, and I love that,” she says. It's almost patronising, except there is too much kindness and love in her eyes as she looks down at me.
“I don't think I can do five years,” I say because honesty is all I'm capable of.
“Maybe it will go quickly. If we both stay busy...” she says but there's nothing certain in her voice, it just sounds like air.
