After packing my duffel, I go over.
There’s another evening thunderstorm coming, the breeze whipping up around me, and it’s just in the nick of time. A long journey and I’ll be soaked to the skin. Perfect.
I knock four times on the front door. I wait a beat and knock four more times. No one comes and there’s not a sound from inside. There’s no car in the driveway, and I can’t be sure if I’ve ever seen a car in the driveway. I never paid attention.
I look through the back door into a dim kitchen. I knock on the glass, but it’s futile. I run back to my place and scribble out a note. I run back over, half hoping wherever they’ve gone, they’ll return right that second, and I realize I feel a bit perturbed. I’m annoyed that Paul would go somewhere without me. Especially now. He’s always there, and it’s suddenly like a splinter stuck in my toe. He’s always there.
I start to put the note in the mailbox beside the front door, but then I stop.
My hand draws back.
I look at the front door.
This stupid thing that I’ve let happen…I’m going to get him into trouble. I almost did just yesterday. Probably just hurt him, too, and it wouldn’t be intentional, but it’s going to happen. It’s either I stop this now, or I hurt him later. I stop this now, or he leaves his aunt’s for greener pastures. Either or. And isn’t it just better this way? Now, at least, I have some control. It’s better this way, I nod to myself, emphatically. It was going to happen anyway. Sooner or later. Of course it was. I’m convinced.
And it isn’t so much that we wereseen.It’s the fact that this has gotten so out of hand that we let that extra precaution slip. That’s when you know it’s gone too far.
Rip the Band-Aid. Drop the ax.
I crush the piece of paper in my palm.
Eventually, he’ll figure it out. Eventually, he’ll see this was for the best. He’ll think about it all, and put it all together, because he’s smart. The brainy type. He’ll get it. Eventually.
I back away.
And he’s too good for any kind of life he’d have with me anyway. I get a vision of him in Paris, speaking sexy French words to other intellectuals, writing novels with philosophical meanings, reading in a lazy Parisian garden, curled up in the arms of a man that knows himself. That would never fuck up his entire family’s lives, including his own.
And I’m about to face it all over again.
As I back away, ripping the paper, I feel the first rumblings of the avalanche in my heart. And then I turn my back, the decision made.
I get my duffel and get on my bike. I make a glance over at the fence, hoping to see Paul come racing over, to stop me, to tell me this is not the way to do this. There is no either and there is no or. There is just me and him. But there’s nothing there but sunshine, birdsong, and green trees.
I start up my bike.
And I go.
CHAPTER NINE
Paul
TWO WEEKS LATER.
For dinner, Aunt Amy seared chicken in the pan and burned the edges.
She put some potatoes in the oven to bake, but mine isn’t baked all the way. I don’t say anything about it.
She takes a long sip of the Pinot Grigio she bought from Eckert’s yesterday, then glances over at me warily. “How’s your friend doing?”
I don’t like how she says it. Even though there’s no other way to ask one about one’s friend. I think it’s the wordfriendthat bothers me. The wordfriendis indicative of a certain kind of relationship; one that has very specific boundaries.
Lines you are not supposed to cross when you’re merely someone’spal.
“Paul?”
“He’s fine.” I push a piece of burned chicken around my plate. “Doing fine.”
She nods. “I haven’t heard that motorbike in a while. I was wondering.”
