“I can’t do long distance.”
She meets my gaze. Her eyes have hardened. The usual liquid irises look like the block of amber from Jurassic Park. And I’m the mosquito suspended in it.
“It’s not long distance when I’m there and you’re here.”
“You know what I mean. I can’t do it.”
I stare down at her and wait. You don’t get to make statements like that and not explain. She stares right back, every inch of softness I saw last night gone from her face.
“I can’t be sitting at the table with your empty seat,” she hesitates, possibly considering if she can leave it there. When she looks up at me, she must see that she can’t. “I know you need to be here. I know you have to choose your career—your family. I just can’t—do this again. My dad—he could never show up, Jeff. Every holiday. Every big event. We could never be his first priority. It broke us. It broke me.”
I run my thumb beneath her cheekbone, through the path a tear left shimmering in the light from the pendant hanging over the island. She lets me. I wait for her to tilt her cheek into my hand. She does not.
“You aren’t broken. And I’m not your father. I went into orthopedics so I could have a life—be with my family—be with you,” I tell her. “I’m choosing you, Devon. I just need you to choose me.” She stiffens under my touch.
“What you’re asking of me is exactly what he asked of my mother. Sit around and wait—be ok with the empty seat. I can barely get her into the backyard, Jeff. It ruined her.”
She tugs her hand from mine, steps back, and I swallow.
“That’s not us, Devon.”
“You can’t promise that. Shit happens, Jeff. Just like it did that night you didn’t show up for dinner.”
I study her face, the way her lips tremble as she tries to breathe. The way her arms cross in front of her to protect herself—from me? I think of the scar tissue you have to cut through when you open up a joint that’s been previously operated on. That’s what I need to do. I’ve got to press a little harder.
“Move here. Come with me,” I whisper. A hail Mary straight down the middle of the field.
She narrows her eyes.
“Really, Jeff? Just leave my life? Do you expect a dowry, too?”
Shit. Interception.
“What do you want from me?” I ask.
And though I really want her to answer—to give me her honest picture of a future—she looks like the question punched her in the gut. She puts a hand on the edge of the sink behind her. Shakes her head too hard.
“I can’t ask it and you can’t give it.”
I step forward and she puts her hand up to stop me. This is the moment where you either push harder and hope for the best or find a way around the scar. I’m not trained for this. And there’s no attending I can call to help.
“You need to be here for your family,” she says. “And I need to be there. My students. My mom. My life is there.”
“Which leaves us where, Devon?” I can’t keep the anger out of my voice as I take in the stubborn set of her jaw. “You’re just going to let this go and give up? That easily?”
“It’s not giving up. It’s saving us both from getting hurt later down the line.” She looks up at the ceiling then back at me. “This is what we have to do. This is the only way.”
She says it with such firmness that it feels like she’s slapped me across the face. I narrow my eyes at her. It’s not the only way. There is always a way. She doesn’t blink. And the tears have stopped. This is what she wants. To let it crash before it’s taken off, just to minimize the damage. Damage that might never happen.
“This is bullshit,” I tell her. She flinches.
“You don’t know what it was like. I can’t do it again.”
“I know what it’s like to lose, Devon. And that’s what this is. A loss. But worse, because you’re choosing it.”
She shakes her head. If only she could use some of her misguided stubbornness to fight for this. For us.That’s not what she wants.
“It’s over,” she whispers. And I can’t tell if she’s saying it to me or to herself. But it doesn’t matter because either way the words are spoken.
