“How can you say that? Your family loves you.”
“They love the parts of me they choose to see,” he said. “You’re the only one who stares at all of me and doesn’t blink or look away.”
It sounded like a compliment, but it felt like a cut, and it stuffed Rae’s nostrils with a poem fragment.
they loved him
in spite of
she loved him
because of
“I love you,” Rae repeated, falling back on the phrase and hoping it might catch her.
“I’m tired,” Dustin said, though he’d gone to bed at nineP.M.last night while Rae had managed to stay up until midnight to clink champagne flutes with the rest of his family.
Rae offered up her shoulder as a pillow, but Dustin leaned his head against the window and put on noise-canceling headphones—a new pair he’d bought himself for Christmas that looked fit for a helicopter pilot. He shut his eyes to the dim daylight.
She tried to let him rest, but she couldn’t let it rest.
“Dustin?”
“What?”
“Can we talk?”
He cracked an eye. “About what?”
“What do you need from me right now?”
“I need you to let me sleep.”
“But I can’t just sit here and …”
“Watch a train wreck?” Dustin said wryly.
“You’re not a train wreck,” Rae said, as their own train screeched along the tracks. “You’re getting better.”
“Keep telling yourself that,” Dustin mumbled, eyes closed again.
Rae thought about giving Dustin’s therapist a call. She thought about calling his mom. She thought about dialing one of those depression hotlines in case it was easier to talk to a stranger about this. She thought about texting Ellen, but she knew what her solution would be: walk away.
But love wasn’t just the lightness in the air and sunny days with mountain views that stretched for miles. It was the clouds and the weights and the fog that blocked even your own feet sometimes. Real love required finding a way, not walking away.
“Dustin?” she tried again. “Please … let me love you at your lows?”
He made no acknowledgment that he heard her except to shift slightly farther away on the hard-cushioned seat.
Rae wanted to say more, but she didn’t want to risk having Dustin turn on her, and right now that meant swallowing her heart before it spilled out of her mouth.
“I’m with you,” she reminded him, willing the words to be enough.
Keeping one arm looped through Dustin’s, hand squeezing his forearm to a reassuring rhythm, Rae caught up on work emails one-handed, resenting the reckless use ofASAPfor deal summaries and financial models. The only thing needed ASAP was a way to prop up the slumped soul beside her and lift him out of the Great Depression.
“I’m back,” Rae called out as she let herself into the Lorimer Loft the following Saturday evening. “Ready to go?”
Dustin had agreed to come to Ellen and Aaron’s engagement party tonight. The proposal had come earlier this week, at a sevenA.M.yoga class the two went to before work because yes, they werethatcouple. Aaron had gotten on one knee during tree pose, and after singing out her “Yes!” in front of the whole studio, Ellen had called Rae to relive everything thirty times and wag the diamond in her phone camera. The ring was a little too showy for Rae’s taste, but Ellen’s long fingers carried it gracefully.
