She’s come from her office, I’d bet, or else she’s just come here to do business. She’s got that coat on, the camel-colored one, from the day I walked her to work. Beneath it, her legs in black tights, long and shapely in her heels.
I do what I did all those weeks ago when I saw her car pull up to my driveway. I step out onto my porch, take the two steps down, and eye her, as cautious as I was that first day. This time, I’m not afraid of what she’s come to start. I’m afraid of what she’scome to finish.
I take a deep breath, walk toward where she stands, stock still, by her car, and I think that was her plan all along. We’re doing this, right in this driveway, right where it started, and that doesn’t bode well for me, I guess. But whatever she’s got to say to me, I’ll take it.I’ve earned it.
I tuck my hands in my pockets, take in her face. Two days ago, she was so surprised to see me. She’d barely said anything at all, her skin pale and her eyes tired. Still beautiful, but not quite herself. Today, it’s different—color in her cheeks. Her lips pink, glossy. Her posture ramrod straight. Whatever she’s about to say, she’s thought good andhard about it.
“Your story needs work.”
In my pockets, my hands twitch, knuckles bumping the fabric. I clear my throat, but when I speak, my voice is still rough, thick with the same emotion that had been there in her office. “Should’ve practiced more,” I say.“Got nervous.”
She nods, looks out toward the street, as though she’s cataloging all the houses along the way. I’ll bet she can see more of it on a day like today, everything more visible now that the leaves are almost all fallen from the trees. I try to be grateful for this pause, long enough for me to gaze at her profile. It feels like I’ve loved to watch her for the longest time.
“I know you’re sorry about what happened at the lodge,” she says, bringing those gold eyes back to mine. “And I know it was...a hard day for you. A confusing day. I wish it hadn’t happened like that.”
Her eyes move to my throat, to the heavy swallow that must bob my neck. I’m nervous; I’m so fucking nervous to have her here. She holds my fate in her hands, and I think I must be looking at her the same way she looked at me all those weeks ago, when the day was too hot and she was too overwhelmed, coming to me with something that must have beenso hard to say.
Her expression softens, giving me all the sympathy I didn’t give her that day. “But I love you too,” she says. “Obviously.”
Holy shit,I think, my mind stuttering over what she’s said.She’s going to forgive me.She’s not even done speaking before I take a step toward her, my chest flooded with hope. But she holds a hand up, her sharp-edged jaw set, and it stops me in my tracks. My shoulders tense with all that deadlocked feeling. We stand close, maybe an arm’s length between us, but right now it feels like a gulf, and I have to steel myself, tighten up everything in my middle to keep from putting my arms around her, pulling her toward me and keeping her from saying what I’m afraid she’ll say.
“In this story you’re telling,” she says, keeping her eyes on me, “we rescue each other. That day I came here, you rescued me, too, and not just because I damseled-in-distress all over your driveway.” She lifts her chin, looking strong and unflappable, so unlike a damsel in distress that it’d be funny if my heart weren’t in my throat. “It was wrong of me to comehere that day—”
“Zo—” I begin, but she shakes her head, purses her lips. I may well break my back teeth from the way I clamp them down, wanting to stop this, but she let me say my piece, and I’ve gotto do the same.
“And I knew it was, almost as soon as I pulled up. I knew I was looking for a quick fix for...for the things I’d been feeling about my work and my past and my...myself, really.” She stops, clears her throat. “But even still, you gave me something I didn’t even know I was looking for, and you got me unstuck from the life I’d been living. You don’t know how grateful I’ll always be for that. For helping me see that sometimes you start something for a selfish reason, but you can continue it—you can finish it for another kind of reason. A good, kind, unselfish reason. And for helping me see that…that I have to move on.” That composed expression breaks then, and her eyes track down. She twists the tip of one shoe, just a little, against the driveway’srocky surface.
When our eyes meet again, I wonder if she can seewhat’s in mine.
Defeat.
She’s come here for closure, in spite of the feelings between us. She’s ending it. A thank-you and goodbye, good luck, have a nice life, and I can’t even say I blame her.
Forgiveness is never easy, after all.
But then she takes another step toward me, sets a hand on my forearm. Her hand is cold against my warm skin, and goosebumps rise in the wake of the path she takes to my wrist. She tugs, softly, so that I pull my handfrom my pocket.
And then she links her fingers with mine.
My eyes close with the feeling of it. It’s relief or fear, hope or anguish. I don’t know which, won’t know until she gives me an answer, something I can hold on to. When I open my eyes again, I’m looking almost right into hers. We’re so matched when she wears those heels. “Remember that night at the bonfire?” she asks, and I nod, a tip of my chin down. I look at our joined hands, unmoving, just like I did that night. I’m trying to make this driveway and that dirt clearing collapse in this moment, to forget about all the shit that happened in between. “You said it couldn’t be about anything but what we want from each other. You and me, Aiden, we’ve got to be done with debts. With what we owe each other.”
I raise my chin and look at her again. Is this what she means? That there’s just too much of that between us for it ever to work?
“Zo,” I say again, after a too-long pause. My voice is almost a whisper, a fact that’d embarrass me if I gave even one single damn about my pride in this moment. “I told you that night, you are smart as fuck. Whatever you’re telling me here, you’re going to have to spell it out. I miss you so much I can’t think straight.”
She laughs, breathy and quiet, and there it is again, that rush of hope. “I’m saying I want to be with you. Not because I owe you. Not because you owe me. Just—just because.”
It’s lightning fast, my hand jerking away from hers, the other one coming out of my pocket, and then I’m catching her up, my arms around her waist, her feet off the ground so I can hold her tight and high against me, so I can press my face in the soft curve of her neck, so I can release the gusty sigh of relief and—yeah, fuck it—the quiet, pained sob that says everything about how much I’ve missed her. How much I want her, how much I need her.
When I put her down it’s to cup her face between my hands, to set my mouth against hers, soft and searching, the first kiss we never really had. And it feels so good, so natural, nothing I’ve got to rehearse or practice for. I feel her hands on my sides, stroking my skin through my t-shirt, and my hips pitch forward, just a little, wanting to press her back, into the door of her car if I have to, just so I can get closer. My whole body is electric with reliefand gratitude.
She pulls back from me before I’m ready, and I must let out a noise of dissatisfaction, one that makes her mouth curve in a smile, her lips pink and swollen. “Wait,” she says, lifting a hand to my chest, setting her palm over my thudding heart. “The camp?” she asks.
“You know that wasn’t for me, Zo,” I say. “They knew it too.”
She nods, pats me where her hand rests. “I talked to Lorraine, but I didn’t want to ask her. You’reokay, though?”
Okay?Holy hell, I could pick her car up and throw it in the street if she asked me to—I’m that jacked up, that happy. But I know what she means, or at least I think I do, some of the fog in my head clearing now that she’s here. “I’m all right,” I say. “Going to a support group. Getting my shit together. You got me unstuck too.”
