If he is then I am, too, she had remembered thinking at the time. Because he had come late to university, just like she had. Thirty-two to her twenty-five, and whollyunderstandable to someone who had easily been able to see herself waiting even longer.
“Felt like it. Felt like I was a million years old,” he said, then very visibly seemed to regret it. His hands twisted on the steering wheel; he shifted uncomfortably in his seat. And she caught the expression on his face when he glanced at her. That hint of searching her for the truth. Or contempt for his reaction to it.
Though of course he didn’t appear to like that she had.
His face hardened, and he turned back to the road.
“Anyway, just shut up about it, all right,” he snapped, in a way that would have made her heart rate jump in years gone by. But oh, it was hard to have that happen, when so many things about this suggested the opposite of anger. The opposite of everything she had thought, really. He hadn’t shoved past them all, he had wanted to get away. He hadn’t hated her laugh, he had hated being laughed at.
And this reaction wasn’t intended to hurt.
It was intended to cover up his own.
He hadn’t had feelings then, he didn’t have them here.
Only he had, and did, and all that just made her heart beat slower, if anything. It made everything inside her go soft, and quiet, as this new angle to something sank through her.
But what to say?
Sorry, the way she always wanted to if she’d hurt someone?
She wasn’t even sure if he’d understand that. Shebarely understood the urge herself.He’s your enemy, she told herself.He’s your enemy who doesn’t want to hear it anyway.And then it struck her. How to go about it, without really going about it.
“Got it. No addressing the devastating emotional impact of being on the outside looking in. Thinking people are laughing at you, and then getting what seems like confirmation that they are. Even though I promise, they really weren’t. Not about that. Never about that. Your terrible opinions about zombie movies, sure. Your deep love for dry toast, absolutely. Starting university late for probably terrible reasons I don’t even want to guess at? I’d sooner run into barbed wire,” she said, andnowher heart was racing in a way that made her wonder.
Was it really fear of him that had ever made it happen in the past?
Or was it something else?
Something that was in his eyes, when she turned in time to catch him looking at her. Gaze raw with confusion and maybe even relief, just for a moment. As if he were like her, always waiting for a terrible memory to turn out to be a simple misunderstanding. Before he very clearly forced that down, and replaced it with something a little morehim. “You realize this is all just you talking about it, right,” he said. But it was rueful, alongside the withering.
“Yeah, but you don’t seem that mad about hearing it.”
“Well. I am. I’m furious. Not grateful at all for one word of it.”
“Good, you shouldn’t be. I was just being awful somehow, anyway.”
That’s it, she told herself,give him the amusing out.This is all just a big casual nothing, one enemy saying sorry without really saying it, the other accepting it without really acting like it means anything.And apparently, he agreed. Because after a moment of strange silence, he started speaking. Haltingly, carefully.
As if he were treading on an emotional glass floor above a great drop.
“Just like I am when I tell you… there’s nothing wrong with the way you laugh, nothing at all. Because now you’re gonna do it all the time, and probably make a real fool out of yourself,” he said, and god, when he was done.
She had to look away.
She couldn’t let him see her expression after something like that. Because she knew, for the first time, that he didn’t meanfool. He meantYou aren’t.He meantI don’t mean it.He meantPlease do it more.And she didn’t know how to feel in the face of such a sentiment. It made her think of every single person who’d sneered at her cackle, told her to be more silent, crushed her joy for being too joyful until she had made herself this organized and carefully curated thing.
And not one had ever been sorry.
Not even justsorry. He had apparently never been saying that at all. He simply wasn’t good at explaining or expressing what he did mean, it seemed, and she was too used to things being clear to her keen eye, or too cruel for her to easily imagine anything else, and so here they were. Him silent, her face wet suddenly.
Just versions of the same thing the other person was feeling, she thought.
Then even more frightening:Maybe we are that in other ways, in every way.
And she didn’t know what to do with herself then. It sort of felt as if she might have a nervous breakdown if she carried on, so really it was a relief when he abruptly spoke into the fraught silence.
“We should go back to the ground rules,” he said. Because that? That was the Miller she knew. That was more familiar ground, and therefore easier to navigate. She even laughed to hear it.
