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You can love somebody and still go.

I look at him one more time. The cowlick. The sleeves pulled over his hands.

Then I turn around and walk toward the car.

Down at the curb, behind the windshield, Rafe hasn’t moved.

32

Stay in the Car

Rafe

He has his arm around her neck.

That’s the first thing I see when the screen door bangs. Not her. Him. Coming out behind her onto the porch in a gray hoodie and socks, and before she’s even off the bottom step, his arm comes up and hooks around her neck from behind and pulls her in against his side.

My hand grabs the door handle, and I’ve already pulled it. The latch gives with a small click, the door comes off the frame about an inch, and cold air comes in through the gap and hits my knee.

I stop.

Stay in the car.

I sit there with the door open an inch and my hand on the handle.

I said I would. I told her I would stay here.

I pull the door shut, so it doesn’t make any noise, and I don’t let go of the handle.

She stopped walking. He’s talking in her ear. I can see his mouth moving, close to the side of her head, and his face, which is doing something smug and loose, like he thinks he’s funny. He’s swaying a little. Not much. Just enough. His head moves too much when he talks. His shoulders jerk when he laughs. His eyes from here are wrong. They’re too wide and too pink at the same time, and he blinks too slow.

He’s fucked up. I don’t know on what. I don’t need to. I saw him like this on a couch on Thanksgiving, sitting on her.

And now his arm is around her neck on Christmas, and I’m sitting in my car because she told me to.

She grabs his arm and shoves it off her and steps out from under it. She says something to him. Short. I can see her mouth make two or three words and stop.

Good. Good. Good. Get in the car, Tess.

She doesn’t get in the car.

She stands there and talks to him.

I don’t understand it. I watch it happen, and I don’t understand it. He laughs at something and nods at my car right at me through the windshield and says something with his eyebrows up, and she shakes her head. He crosses his arms and looks at me. She says something. He says something back. She takes a step toward the car, and then she says something else over her shoulder, and I think that’s it, I think she’s coming.

And he says something.

And she stops.

She turns around and looks at him.

And I wait for it. I wait for her face to do what mine’s doing. I know what she looks like angry. I’ve seen her angry. I’ve seen her shove a chair into a man in that exact house.

She isn’t angry.

She isn’t scared, either. She isn’t small. She isn’t looking at the ground. She isn’t doing any of the things she used to do in a hallway when I came around the corner.

She’s just looking at him for a long time, and it isn’t hate. I’d understand hate. Hate is what I currently have. She’s looking at him like she’s sorry for him. And I want to break his fucking jaw. I want to get out of this car, walk up that path, and put him through the screen door. And she’s standing there, looking at him like she understands something about him I never will.