“I’m trying!” I fling my hands upward like he did just moments ago.
“I’m trying too, okay?”
“You mean the part where you accused me of having feelings for my co-worker? Or the part where you made sure to dig into me about a cheating boyfriend I had two years ago?”
My words are pissy and petty and I know it. But I also can’t seem to stop.
“I apologized about theTate thing!” he says, sitting up straighter. “And you knew what I meant!”
“Really? Did you actually say the words ‘I’m sorry’? Because I don’t remember hearing that.”
“Maybe you were too busy being pissed at me for not checking out old women in lingerie!”
“Maybeyoushould stop acting like they’re two steps away from being in a nursing home!” I shout back.
“Oh my god, Emily, would you please tell me what thehellyou’re freaking out about?”
I let out a frustrated noise somewhere between a groan and a yell, my fists balled up near my eyes, which are burning with the tears I don’t want to let out.
Those fights we’ve had before, about mac and cheese or opposing political viewpoints we don’t actually care about all that much—they were (shocker) never actually about those things.They were always about some convergence of shitty timing. One of my marketing plans would tank on the same day Jason got an email from his dad chewing him out for not sending a card for his stepbrother’s eighth grade graduation.Things we didn’t even admit until after all the ridiculous sniping.
We’ve never fought about real problems. I don’t think we know how. Until recently, it didn’t matter, because our problems were never about us.
“Are you even in this anymore?” I finally manage, my eyes squeezed shut.
“In what?”There’s still an edge to his voice, but not nearly so much as before.
I drop my hands down, open my eyes. Force my voice to steady. “Us.This relationship.”
He blinks.The anger is gone, replaced by uncertainty and . . . worry. Because he knows I’m catching on to something he doesn’t want to face?
“Of course I am,” he says. “What are you talking about?”
“It’s not just the moving in thing. I keep feeling this weird disconnect from you. Like you’re not there with me, like you’re . . .” God, I’m not making any sense, even to myself, but all I can see is that image of us in the future, him there with me but not there with me, silence except for forks scraping against plates. “You don’t even think about our future, and if you wanted one with me, you wouldn’t be able to help thinking about it. You’d want it and wantmeand . . .”The words I’ve pushed down and covered with sniping are now gushing out unchecked, and he’s staring at me wide-eyed, caught in the torrent. “It’s this hot and cold thing, and I don’t understand it, and I can’t do this anymore, I can’t be in something where I don’t know—” My voice chokes off around a sob.
“Are you breaking up with me?” Jason stares, stunned.
The look in his eyes, this kind of stark, haunted fear . . .
Oh my god, am I?
The tears burning at my eyes spill over onto my cheeks. “I don’t want to,” I say, “but I just can’t dothis.”
And it’s true. I’ve been avoiding the growing sense that something’s wrong, balling the unease and fear up inside. It’s gotten too big now.
I need things to be certain, one way or another.
His hands twitch at his sides, the rest of him frozen.
“Have you already decided?” he asks, in a smaller voice than I’ve ever heard Jason use. “Do I get a chance to fix it?”
Desperate. Pleading. Like he’s on the edge of being broken.
Not at all like a man who’s relieved to not have to be the one to end things. Or even a man who wants to hold onto something comfortable and settled.
My heart stutters; maybe I’ve been wrong. Please, god, let me have been wrong, even if it means I’m crazy. Even if it means I horrifically overreacted and it will cause another fight, but it will be a fight of two people who stillloveeach other . . .
“Do you even want to fix it?” My hands tremble as they grip my knees.
