And winced.
“Yeah, and I get that. That’s what I’m trying to say, I get it. And I just want you to know that I don’t mind. I don’t think you have to be another way. We can be friends no matter what you’re like. Or what I’m like. Or something like that.”
“You want to befriends?”
Now both eyebrows were up.
And the sight of them sort of punched her in the heart, a little bit. Because, sure, they were angry. But they were also just a little flabbergasted. Like she had said the silliest thing in the world.
“Well, I mean, of course not, if you don’t want to be.”
“I didn’t say that I didn’t want to be, I acted like why the fuck do you.”
“So that’s why you’re incredulous? Because you think I shouldn’t?”
“Of course I think you fucking shouldn’t. Now explain why you do.”
He folded his arms across his chest. Looked at her like,Well, I can’t wait to hear this one. But then, he had no idea how much easier what he’d just said made it. Suddenly she wasn’t as far out on a limb as she’d thought.
“Because I think we could be. I think we could be good ones, if I was just maybe less judgmental about how you are. If I was just more accepting, the way you’ve been with me. Like all the ways you’ve tried to encourage me to be myself around you and not tell me off and just be kind,” she said, confident about it, until he abruptly held up both hands.
“All right, that’s enough. Stop saying this before I lose my shit.”
“But you said to explain. I just want to clear things up for you.”
“I don’t care what you want to do. I did not do any of those things because I was trying super hard to be less judgmental toward you. There is nothing about you that would justify judgment at all. Nothing that shouldn’t be accepted by anybody even halfway decent. There isnothing wrong with you. Do you understand me?” he said, the same way someone might tell another that it was poison they were trying to ingest, and under no circumstances must they continue.
Even though he just didn’t get it.
She had to somehow make him get it.
“I understand that you’re doing it again. But the thing is, I couldn’t do it for you. Not even that secret way, that you did for me. I didn’t make you feel better about being a little uncomfortable with affection, or good about being kind of closed off and not always talkative. I was a jerk about it. I was pushy about it. Even though there’s nothing wrong with being not very passionate and emotional,” she tried.
But she could tell immediately that this had only made things worse.
He looked completely thunderstruck by the last word. He jerked back for some of it, as if she’d just told him she’d been bitten by a zombie and was on the verge of eating his face off. His hand even came up as if to ward her off. And he couldn’t seem to gather his words.
He went to speak, and nothing came out.
Even the breath he’d taken to make the words didn’t emerge. It was like he was holding it for a moment. Then he tried again, and the same thing happened. Again, and the same thing happened.
But it was the trembling that really got her.
The way the hand he still had out was going up and down like that. Almost imperceptibly, butalmost imperceptiblydidn’t matter. It seemed really bad that it was happening at all. That he was so furious or so fucked up by what she’d said it was running through him like a constant low-level electric shock.
Though fury wasn’t what came out of him when he finally did speak.
“You think Iwantto be the way I am?” he asked in a voice that swung so low and husky all she could think of was the wordhaunted. Like someone had walked over the grave of his sense of self. She almost put up her own hand on hearing it to tell him to stop there. But he got there before she could even get close. Louder now, much louder, oh so loud it made her heart try to burst out of her body at the sound alone. “You think I think the way I am is good and normal and you’re just some annoying nonsense I have to cater to? You’re not the annoying nonsense, Daisy, you are theway things fucking should be. You areeverythingI wish I was,everything.”
And god, the silence after he said it.
It rang in her head. She thought of alarms blaring at the start of some zombie movie to say the apocalypse was upon everyone.Danger, danger, danger, they said,don’t go further down this path.
As if she had any choice in the matter. “What are you talking about?” she asked. Thin words, really, for something that felt like the world was peeling back to reveal something utterly harrowing underneath.
“Things I should have made very plain a long time ago, apparently.”
“But none of it even makes sense. I’m a fucking mess, Miller.”
