CHAPTER FIVE
I pushed the front doors to the gym open then winced in the sunlight. Swirls of heat rose up from the parking lot to engulf me. The air pressed thick against my skin, and when I took a deep breath, sticky fire filled my lungs. How was it even allowed to be so hot in May?
I quickly opened my car door then gave some of the stifling air trapped inside of it a minute to escape. Deeming it safe enough, I hopped in and cranked the air conditioning.
I’d pushed myself extra hard at the gym that morning, forcing myself to do an extra set of reps and run two more miles. I was already exhausted, but it was good. Some days I woke up feeling a little lost without someone around to encourage or order me to do and be more. Once I shook myself and remembered that it was up to me to be my own boss the days went by much smoother.
As I buckled my seat belt, my cell rang. I froze. Cristiano? I’d been trying my best to not even think of him since our rendezvous at the coffee shop several days before. Mostly my attempts had been unsuccessful. I’d expected him not to get in touch, and yet I’d been disappointed when he hadn’t.
Unfortunately, truly forgetting about him was still a long way off. I would see him when I went to the orphanage. He was a part of my life now, at least for the time being.
The picture flashing up on the screen was of Derek though, one I took the month before when we went on a road trip to visit some friends of his in New York. We’d gone to Coney Island for a day, which ended up being the best afternoon we’d ever spent together. I’d snapped a pic of him on the beach and saved it as his contact photo immediately.
Happy to hear from him, I swiped the answer button.
“Hey. How’s it going?”
“Hey babe,” he said. “It’s good. What are you up to?”
“I’m just leaving the gym.”
“Are you going somewhere now?”
“I don’t have to be anywhere until this afternoon. I was just going to head back to the apartment for a shower. Why? Is something up?”
“Yeah, I’ve got a surprise for you.”
A smile tugged at the corners of my mouth. “Really?”
I heard the smile in his voice. “Really, really.”
“What is it?”
“Come over and see.”
Beyond pleased, I whined in a little girl voice. “Hey, come on! You’re not even going to give me one clue?”
“How about this? You’ll like it.”
I laughed and turned the AC down a notch to cut the now chilly air in the car. “Okay, that’s good enough. I’ll see you soon.”
“Bye.”
I hung up and tossed the phone down onto the passenger’s seat. As I pulled out of the parking lot and merged into traffic, my mind raced. Derek had never called me to his house with the promise of a surprise before. Whatever he had over there had to be big.
Judging from his excitement, he expected me to like whatever it was. I tapped the steering wheel and thought harder. What was something I’d mentioned to him that I wanted?
Camping was the first answer. I’d already asked him to go camping with me north of the city a couple times, but he always declined. The closest thing we’d ever done that came close to a night spent outside was our day trip to Coney Island. Too buggy, he said when I brought up hitting the woods and pitching a tent. And, It’s not the real camping experience. I suggested planning what might be considered a real trip, one where we went backpacking, traveling and staying on trails for at least several days, but that hadn’t seemed to pique his interest either.
But maybe he’d finally caved. Or maybe he’d found some sort of excursion we could both enjoy. I would be happy staying in a cabin or a hotel somewhere if it meant the country was nearby.
I sang along to the radio on the drive to Derek’s apartment, beating my palm against the steering wheel in time to the music. Suddenly, the temptations of the last week seemed so small. Cristiano was attractive and suave, yes, but what I had with Derek was still going strong. We were still good together. And maybe we were even getting better. Realizing that made me immensely happy.
And as far as going to the orphanage and having to see Cristiano? Well, I would deal with that one way or another. I’d been through worse things than having to be around a man I had the hots for.
The available parking space right in front of Derek’s first-floor apartment seemed to be a good sign. I pulled up right next to his truck and then practically skipped to the front door. Not sure whether or not it would be unlocked, and not wanting to disturb his roommate if he was there, I knocked.
A few seconds later, Derek pulled it open. “Hey,” he grinned down at me.
I smiled back at him. “Hi. So where’s this big surprise?”
His eyes went wide. “Wait. Turn around.”
“Okay,” I slowly said, but obliged. “This sounds like a big one.”
“Yeah, and I want you to be surprised,” he explained, covering my eyes with his hand.
“I will be,” I promised, but didn’t fight him. Instead, he put his other hand on my shoulder and navigated me, my eyes still shielded, into the living room. My foot bumped into what I thought was the couch, and I laughed.
“Can I see now?” I asked.
“Yep.” He dropped his hands. “What do you think?”
Nothing was different. In front of me sat the same blank wall, the same entertainment system pressed against it. Same Wii. Same black shelves. I opened my mouth, trying to think of something to say, then shut it. Nope. I had nothing.
Then I noticed something was off. The usual TV was gone, replaced instead with a bigger model. It was almost twice the size of the original television, taking up a giant portion of the wall, but for some reason, I hadn’t initially noticed it.
Maybe it was because I’d been expecting something else. Something really eye catching like a backpack or a canoe paddle. But a TV?
It was the TV I was supposed to be excited about... right?
“W-wow,” I stammered, hoping that was enough. “Look at that.”
Derek came to stand in front of me, still wearing the giant smile that would probably be permanently glued to his face — at least until Sony’s next model came out. “Now you can watch that show you like... what’s it called?”
“I could watch it on the old set,” I answered, not sure if he was talking about the reruns of Gilmore Girls I was slightly addicted to or the newest one about vampires. One of the things Derek and I had in common was an affinity for chilling on the couch and watching shows and movies. Though, really, his predilection for it probably extended into the area of passion.
His smile flickered the slightest bit. “Yeah, but that set was too small.”
“Was it?”
“Don’t you remember what it was like to watch games on it?”
“Uh...” Though I played them in high school, I avoided watching sports like the plague. I dimly remembered catching half of a baseball game at Derek’s before making a promise to myself that I would never have to go through that again.
Realizing I was verging on the edge of uncaring, I wrapped my fingers around his hand and squeezed. “It’s great. I can tell you’re excited.”
The light washed back over his face. “This weekend is going to be great.”
“It sure will,” I agreed in a small voice. I couldn’t stop thinking of all the things I’d hoped to see upon walking through Derek’s front door. The canoe paddle. The backpack. The brochure to some quiet retreat nestled in the woods somewhere between two of the great lakes. Those simple pictures spun romantic visions in my head of me and my boyfriend nestled under a blanket on a swinging bench.
Of course, it was already May, and we probably wouldn’t need a blanket...
But the real point was that, instead of anything even slightly romantic, there was a TV. The disappointment was unfair, I knew that. But it was there nonetheless.
My gut twisted. Derek, not seeming to notice my mood, picked up the new remote so he could turn the television on. “I’ll have to get a new set of speakers. They were all right for the last TV, but they just don’t cut it for this one.”
My teeth seemed stuck together, and I had to use every ounce of strength to open my mouth. “Uh-huh,” I agreed in a weak voice. “That... that sounds good.”
Derek turned to look at me, one of his eyebrows doing that little dipping thing it did when he got annoyed or generally unhappy. “What? What’s the matter? You sound like you’re in a bad mood.”
“It’s just...” I gestured feebly at the TV, then wished I hadn’t said anything other than Wow. I should have just kept my mouth shut, should have just let him enjoy the moment of having a new toy to play with. But I couldn’t help it. It had been a long time since I’d felt so disappointed.
And it was just a TV. I knew that.
Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was something more. Maybe the TV just happened to be the perfect example of our whole relationship. Evie was right. Derek and I got along, but that didn’t mean we could ever become perfect for each other. I’d known it after the second date, and yet I kept going, pushing and hoping we could be something more. Here I was, hoping to go away to the country for the weekend, and he couldn’t wait to get a new set of speakers to go with the TV.
“Derek,” I softly said. “It’s great that you’re excited about this, but I’m not. I’m sorry.”
He shrugged. “You can use it anytime you want. Even if Jeff is here. He doesn’t mind. His friends are over here all the time, you know that.”
I shook my head. “But I don’t want to. When you said you had a surprise for me, I thought it was going to be a weekend getaway. You know, maybe camping or a road trip. We’ve never gone on anything like that. I didn’t think that we would be spending the weekend at home.” I paused, and then, because I’d already gone all in, added, “Again.”
His nostrils flared slightly. “I was thinking of you too when I got this, you know. I thought you loved staying in. We do it all the time. And since when don’t you like movies?”
“Yeah, we do,” I agreed. “We do stay home a lot. And I love movies. I guess I’m just... I’m getting tired of it.”
He snorted and took a step back, pushing his hair from his face. “You never told me this. So what’s up? Where is this coming from?”
I sucked in a sharp breath. The conversation was quickly turning into a fight, and though I wanted to be completely honest, there seemed to be no way of doing that without things getting heated.
“I’ve liked being with you,” I said. “And I like staying in, yeah. But I also like doing things. I haven’t gone more than twenty miles out of Chicago since we went to New York.”
“That trip wasn’t that long ago. And I’m busy,” he said fiercely. “You know that.”
“I know, I know.” I held up my hands. “I’m not blaming you.”
“It sure sounds like you are.”
I bit my bottom lip, a whole slew of emotions rising up. I needed to keep my cool. If I got emotional, then I would lose all sense of rationality. “It seems like you and I never want to do the same things anymore. Other than just sit around at home or go to the movies.”
He crossed his arms, the shiny new remote still dangling from his hand. “Well, now you’re dropping this bomb on me, telling me we actually don’t like the same things, so what the hell am I supposed to do? You make it sound like I did something wrong, but the truth is I’m trying all the time to make you happy. You gotta help me out. I can’t read your mind, Blaire.”
Anger flashed through my chest, and I took a moment to inhale a deep breath in an attempt to soothe it. It helped. Somewhat. “I asked you months ago if you wanted to go camping. I asked you at least twice, and you never wanted to.”
“Well, I didn’t know it was such a big deal to you. If I’d known that, I would have gotten some time off of work.”
My eyes fell to the floor. “I guess I didn’t know it was either,” I whispered.
Derek didn’t say anything. A clanging came from the apartment next door, and then a muffled baby cry, the perfect soundtrack to the moment.
I looked back up at Derek’s face. He was still frozen with his arms crossed, staring at me like I was the one who was supposed to have all the answers. I shrugged dumbly.
“I don’t know,” I whispered in response to the unasked question. “I don’t know.”
“You’ve been acting different lately. Something’s going on.”
I flinched, guilt striking me. No, I haven’t, I wanted to argue. But how did I know? After all, I’d recently been feeling different. I’d been spending more time thinking about mine and Derek’s relationship, wondering exactly why I was in it. Basic Boyfriend. I hated those words. They were so demeaning. Derek was a real person, worthy of so much more. Like everyone else, he was worthy of being someone’s everything.
He just wasn’t my everything. And he could never be that. Not even if I enjoyed the new TV. Not even if he took some time off work and took me to the mountains for a whole week. There was nothing in the whole world that could make us perfect for each other.
And I must have known that deep down, otherwise I would have told him everything about myself. Everything I’d been hiding.
“We’re different,” I rasped, finally unafraid to admit it. “You and I... we see things differently.”
He shrugged. “I know we see a lot of things differently. I always thought that was fine.”
I nodded, my throat burning a little bit. “I thought it was good. I figured it helped us see other points of view.” My voice grew softer. “I thought it was good,” I repeated, realizing how pointless it had really been.
Pointless. Was that our whole relationship? One that accommodated our shallowest needs, but did nothing to really fulfill us?
My eyes grew hot and wet, but I blinked hard, forcing myself not to cry. After a couple seconds, they grew dry again. “I think we’re wasting each other’s time. I don’t think we’re good enough together, Derek.”
His jaw ticked.
I studied him. “Don’t you agree with me at least a little bit?”
He sighed and looked away. “This was supposed to be a great day.”
“I know.”
“If you’re going to go... I can’t stop you.” He looked back at me, pain in his eyes. Beyond that, nothing else was visible. A front had just gone up. I’d hurt him, so he shut me out. Most likely, I’d never see the real Derek again.
But had I ever?
No. Just like he’d never really known me, I’d never really known him. Our whole relationship had been one of chit-chat. Anytime we’d tried to talk about something deep, the conversation had fizzled out, a lack of agreement on points of view usually being the issue.
I swayed on my feet, knowing I needed to go, and wanting to go, but wishing things weren’t so painful.
Derek’s mouth twisted. “Don’t worry about me. I’m fine.” He shook his head. “I always knew it would probably end this way.”
The sour way he said it twisted my heart. Things needed to end. At that point, I wanted them to end, and I knew that, even if he wasn’t pleased with it then, he would be someday soon. But, damn, it still hurt.
I sighed. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah,” he said stiffly, and I had no clue what that meant. Yeah, what? He was sorry too? Or he couldn’t give less of a fuck?
Either way, the conversation was over.
“Bye,” I murmured. The door clicked softly behind me.