“Yes!” I insisted.
“Well then why are you being so cagey about this?”
“Ian,” I snapped, letting go of him abruptly, “can you please just drop it?”
“Why?”
“Because it’s not going tohappen!”
Ian looked startled; I’d never raised my voice at him before. I scrubbed both hands over my face, shaking my head hard like I could rattle all the knots loose that way. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m just stressed out with finals and stuff. I didn’t mean...” I trailed off, mortified by my own outburst and trying to reel myself back in as quickly as I could manage. But what could I possibly tell him? How could I possibly explain?
“Look,” Ian said again, sliding off the bed and jamming his socked feet into his boots, not bothering with the laces. “I’ve got a hundred pages to read for tomorrow. I should go.”
“No, wait.” I stood up too, reached an arm out. “Come on, Ian—”
“I’ll text you later, okay?”
I looked at him for a moment, resenting him for putting the pressure on me. Resenting myself for not being able to give him what he wanted. “Yeah,” I said finally. “Okay.”
Once he was gone I sprawled on the mattress and stared out the window at the air shaft, trapped and pissed and guilty. I picked at my essay for a while. I ate a stale dining-hall cookie I wasn’t hungry for. Finally I rolled over andpicked up my phone.That was horrible, I texted.Can you meet me?
It took him a long time to text back.Sure, he said.Coffee?
I jumped into my flats and jean jacket, hurrying down the sidewalk with my hands shoved into my pockets. Boston in May is all promise, warm sunshine and pale-green leaves on the trees; still, I found myself shivering like it was the middle of winter, like there was an icicle dripping right down the back of my shirt.
Ian was sitting at a table by the window at our usual coffee shop, one hand wrapped around the back of his neck while he paged through a lit theory textbook. I gazed at him through the window, at his wavy hair and serious expression. For a second it felt like he was a stranger. And that was what I’d wanted back when we started dating, right? Somebody who didn’t know me. Someone completely new. Somehow I’d never calculated for how complicated that might get down the road.
“Hi,” I said cautiously, touching his shoulder. The café smelled like pastries and freshly ground coffee; Edison bulbs glowed dimly above the counter, and the long tendrils of a hanging pothos plant trailed nearly to the floor.
“Hi yourself,” Ian said quietly. He didn’t smile.
I sat down across from him, tucked my hands under my thighs to warm them. “Are you breaking up with me?” I asked.
Ian sat up straight. “Am I breaking up with—no, Molly.” He sighed. “I’m just frustrated, you know? Sometimes it feels like you’re purposely keeping me from getting close to you. Like you have this whole other life that I’m just never going to get to see.”
“That’s not true,” I protested, reaching for his arm across the table; a girl in glasses at the table next to ours peered over curiously. “This is my only life, Ian. That’s the whole point, you know?” I shrugged and let go of him, picking a paper napkin up off the table and twisting it into a rope. “I told you when we first got together that there was stuff I didn’t want to talk about. And you said yourself that it didn’t matter. So now—”
“Were you with, like, a ton of dudes? Is that it?”
My eyes widened; I shoved my chair back hard enough that it screeched. “Are you serious right now?” I hissed, glancing at the girl one table over; she was fussing with her phone, probably live-tweeting the couple embarrassing themselves in front of a dozen strangers at a coffee shop. “No! Jesus Christ, Ian.”
“I’m sorry,” he said immediately, cheeks coloring underneath his beard. “That was out of line.”
“Yeah,” I snapped, “it was.” Out of line or not, the question cut way too close to the bone; I was surprised by the heat of my own outrage, the instinct to defend myself with claws and teeth. I hadn’t felt anything like it since last summer, when Julia’s ground campaign of social misery finallybecame too much to tolerate even for me. “First of all,” I said, channeling everyJezebelarticle Imogen had ever emailed to me, “even if I’d been with the whole United States Army, that wouldn’t be something I had to apologize to you for. Second of all—”
“No, of course.” Ian held his hands up. “I’m sorry. I just—what exactly is it that you don’t want me to know?” He was smiling at me now, abashed, trying to turn the whole thing into a joke. “Are you on the run from the law? Do you have multiple personalities? Is there a crazy wife locked in your attic?”
I huffed a breath out, leaning back and carding my hands through my hair. “I don’t think the wife inJane Eyreis crazy,” I finally said.
Ian tilted his head to the side, interested. “You don’t?” he asked.
“No, actually,” I said, “I don’t. I think Mr. Rochester got tired of her, locked her away, and told everybody she was a nutbar so he could have sex with the babysitter.”
Ian grinned at me, our fight momentarily forgotten. “You’re something else, you know that?” he asked.
I rolled my eyes a little and tried not to smile, not totally ready to give it up yet. “I have been told that in the past, yes.”
“Yeah,” he said softly. “I bet.”
