She’s not wrong about the first part. Climbing is a lot more cerebral than non-climbers know. You can’t just climb up a difficult problem. You have to solve it in your mind first. I may doubt myself in a lot of ways, but I’ve never had a hard time accepting that I’m good at solving problems. Except maybe ours. “Okay, but you might still be happier with someone college educated and respectable, and—” Oh, shit. I groan and let go of Emily and reach up to cover my face.
“What?” she says.
I just realized something terrible. I turn on the lava lamp. Emily looks stricken, and I shake my head at her. “I’m not mad at you, just in general.”
“Why?” she asks.
“This is why I hate your friend Connor,” I say. “Because he’s educated and works in finance and is totally the kind of person my dad would respect.The kind of person he wishes I was.”
Emily blinks at me. “Oh. Yeah, that makes sense.”
I don’t know what to do with that, but it certainly does.
“Well, I don’t want to be with someone like Connor,” she says. “I want to be with you.” She wraps her arms around my waist. “I was thinking we could talk again about moving in together.”
I try not to tense up.That conversation feels like a minefield, mainly because last time it blew up in my face, big-time. “Okay.” I turn off the light. I don’t feel angry now—just scared. Mostly that I’m going to mess this up again.
“If you still want to do that,” she says quickly.
“Of course I do.” I want to be with Emily forever, and moving in together seems like the next logical step. “Do you want to right away? Even though things have been . . . difficult?” I was already worried about annoying her before—being too messy, or too loud, or not giving her enough personal space. With the way things have been, I can’t imagine any of that is going tohelp.
“Only if you want to,” she says, and I can hear the weight of all of her fears in her voice.
“Of course I want to.”
She hesitates, like she doesn’t believe me, and I expect her to argue. But, instead, she relaxes against me. “Do you have any ideas for how we should go about it?”
“Like, logistically?” I ask. Logistics are almost entirely Emily’s arena, because she’s so much better at planning things out than I am. I can plan a difficult climb, but for almost everything else in life, I’m better off winging it.
“Yeah. We could move into your place or my place. But if we did that, we’d have to get rid of a bunch of stuff or get a storage unit. Maybe both.”
I nod. Neither of us have huge apartments. Emily’s is a lot more put together than mine. I mostly think of mine as a place to sleep, but I have a bit more space, even if that is usually taken up by the abundance of climbing gear I’m too lazy to drive back to my work storage unit.
“Or we could get a new place,” Emily says. She sounds happiest about this option, and I think it’s objectively the best.
But it bothers me. Getting a new place would mean signing a lease, which would mean one of us is responsible for that lease if we can’t work things out. It’s also going to mean higher rent. I’ve been in my place for a while and have a good deal on it, which means I’ve been able to save for a down payment on a house.
Which I still haven’t mentioned to Emily. Ideally, I’d love to buy one together, but if I’m worrying about committing to aleasewhen we’re on unstable footing, a mortgage is out of the question. But moving is going to eat into that money I was saving, not just because of the higher rent, but because we’ll need a deposit, and I’ve been in my place long enough I don’t think I’m getting my last one back in full.
I stare at the fire, at the base of the flames dancing in greens and blues along the black of the charred wood.
“Do you know which option you like?” I ask her. I assume that she does—Emily always has a plan—and going along with what she wants seems infinitely easier than sorting through that tangle.
“I have thoughts. But I want to hear yours.”
I open my mouth, then shut it again.Telling her I want to buy a house seems like a heavy weight to dump on us when we’re struggling already.Telling her I wanted that but I don’t anymore seems even worse.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I’m okay with whatever you want.”
Emily is quiet for a moment.The burning wood makes a loud pop, and part of it disintegrates down into the coals. “Jason,” she says.
“Yeah?”
“You wanted an example of a time when I’m feeling a disconnect between us? I’m feeling it now.”
Shit. Yeah, okay. So am I. But I know that telling her I’m not sure about the future is the wrong thing to say.That’s what she’s afraid of. I don’t want to feed that fear.
“I love you,” I say instead.
