“I knew she had to have something on you,” Eitan says. “There had to be a reason you let her treat you like shit.”
The words nip at me with sharp teeth.
“I don’t let her treat me like shit,” I say, barely holding it together. “We have an agreement.”
“Don’t you get it? Friends don’t make friends offers with strings attached. She’s using you. And the worst thing is? You let her, because you don’t think you deserve any better.”
It’s hard being seen. Sometimes it feels like flying, other times it feels like falling.
I laugh, a sound made of pure fear. “You don’t knowanythingabout Pen’s and my friendship.” I still recall his words at the bus stop, so many months and touches and kisses ago.Maybeyou’rethe one who doesn’t know her very well.Since the beginning, he’s made assumptions. Judgments.
“This is my life.Mine.No one else’s. I’m allowed to do whatever I want with it.”
“Look, Ruby, I don’t care about Pen. I care about you.” He swallows. “You don’t realize how much I care. I just want to see you put yourself first.”
I sit back in my seat, the crushed glass feeling like it’s traveled down my esophagus and lodged in my stomach. We fly down Lake Shore Drive, approaching our exit.
Eitan keeps going. “I watched my dad be given six months to live because he ignored his symptoms foryears. And you actually have the gift of knowing, but you’re running away from it.” He scrubs his cheek. “Will you just trust me? It’s better to know. I’ll go with you. We can get through it.”
That’s exactly what I’m afraid of. Doing this together, putting whatever is blossoming between us to an immediate, do-or-dietest. He said it himself: he hasn’t been able to have a relationship because of his depression. What does he think will happen if the biopsy comes back abnormal? It could send him over the edge again. I see him pulling away, the quiet death of desire, the aftermath of loneliness. I barely survived it the first time.
My thoughts organize into something semi-coherent by the time he pulls off on Fullerton. “I need you to understand that Iamputting myself first. Things are going well for me. Forus.I don’t want anything to mess that up.”
“Do you think cancer would mess us up?” Eitan asks. “I understand cancer is hard—believe me, I understand that—but it…It wouldn’t change anything between us.”
A humorless snort escapes me. “That’s what they all say,” I mutter, drowning in the memory of being abandoned. “I’m saving us both the pain of watching whatever is unfolding between us die a painful, health-anxiety-fueled death,” I say, my hand drifting to his cheek. We can fix this, and move on. This will be a blip. I’m so close to getting everything I want.
Eitan pulls up to my apartment, the silence thick enough to cut a slice and serve on a plate. “Do you really think I would leave? Because of this?” he asks, a raspy whisper.
He wants to hear me say,No.I think you would stay.But I can’t, because I don’t. I turn away from him, and press my forehead into the window.
Eitan grabs my hands and forces me to look at him. “I’m really trying. I’m back in therapy, and I found a new psychiatrist in case I need to go back on medication. I need you to believe in me.” His eyes are watery, his smile sad. “Do you…Do you believe in me? In us?”
My lip wobbles. It’s a lot to ask, to believe in something new more than everything that came before it. More than the memory of being abandoned, being forgotten. He could be right, and we could handle it. Or, he could be wrong, and we don’thave enough tying us together to survive something like a cancer recurrence. I’m the one left alone, in a wasteland, surrounded by cliff edges.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, blinking away the tears.
As soon assorryleaves my lips, Eitan’s face changes. Something breaks, or dies. “I can’t be the only one who believes in us. You have to, too.” He closes his eyes, preparing himself. I hear the death knell. “Maybe this happened too quickly, and we weren’t ready?—”
“Iamready,” I argue. “We can still be together, and we don’t have to deal with this until…”
“Until when, Ruby?” he asks through a clenched jaw. “What do I need to do to prove to you that this doesn’t change anything for me?”
Until I’m a different person, I think.Until I become someone who can survive going through this again.
“I can’t watch you put the wedding, your manuscript, whatever it is you think is so important, ahead of your health—of yourlife. I don’t—” The words break, spindrift, washing away the sandcastle of our relationship. Eitan closes his eyes, anguish flashing across his face. “I already had to lose one person I—” His hand covers his mouth.
I close my eyes.
“Ruby,” he says softly.
I brace myself. I need to hear him say it. The nail needs to be fully hammered in the coffin. “Just say it,” I manage to get out.
His seaglass eyes are fractured, tears escaping out the edges, even though the rest of his face looks more mad than sad. “Maybe we should take a step back.” Eitan’s voice is ragged, wrung out completely. “Go back to being…friends.”
Wesplinters before my eyes intoheandI. It’s the ending I went in expecting but naively hoping we could avoid. There’s some comfort in the confirmation that the last two weeks havebeen a fantasy. Something I was meant to experience, so that I would know what I was missing. What it felt like to be loved.
I should have been counting down the minutes, waiting for the inevitable end. I should have known that the sun burns brightest before it sets.
