Chapter 44

The air is chilly from the rain that has started pouring since I left for the shop earlier, and my house is empty. Tom is working late this morning, and when he gets home he’ll go straight to bed. Astrid and Millie are at school, and Mom is probably at the hospital, prepping with Dad for the surgery. (Spending time with him, as I should be.)

I message Gretchen, looking to vent, or cry, or something—anything—but she isn’t there, and she doesn’t respond. I wait for thirty minutes, curled into a ball on my bed before I decide it’s time to stop waiting around and do exactly what I’ve been dreading. My stomach hasn’t stopped burning, my head is still throbbing, and I know it’s not going to get better. In fact, I have this obnoxious feeling it will only get worse until I do what I’m supposed to do.

After another hour of debating, denial, and wishing, I come to the conclusion that nothing happens unless I make it happen. So I drag myself out of bed and throw on a pair of sweats and a hoodie, putting my hair into a loose bun on the top of my head.

I stand just inside the front door and text Levi to see where he is. Still no response from Gretchen, so I resign myself. Taking a deep, steadying breath in, I run to my car, but the rain is falling so hard that I’m soaked by the time my seatbelt is on. I check again for Levi’s response (I’m at the new office. Come see me.) and I set my course for the south end of Escondido.

Traffic is terrible because Californians don’t know how to drive in the rain, but eventually, ten minutes longer than it usually takes, I arrive in front of TCP’s new office. I want to cry because it looks like home, a home I that love, with its wide porch and picket fence that they’ve painted dark blue since I was last here, and the window at the top of the house that lets you see out from the attic.

The attic where we had our first fight.

I swallow and text him again. Can you come out to the porch? Then I pull my hood over my face, turn off my car, and make a beeline for the front door.

It swings open as I’m walking up the porch steps, and Levi comes out. I get a tiny glimpse of color and joy behind him before he shuts the door and pulls me tight against him. It breaks me a little, how warm his arms are, how they welcome me back, despite everything.

I can’t keep doing this to him.

Then his lips are on mine, suddenly, and my chest aches. I grip his face, fingers coming into contact with the frames of his glasses. I am tempted to slip them off, to make things more familiar, but I’m being stupid—I can’t kiss him anymore. Period.

I turn my head.

Levi pauses, then continues along my jaw, making me shiver, guilt pressing into my stomach, rotting it out.

“Levi, stop, please.”

Like a good boy (always the good boy) he stops. “I was worried about you,” he murmurs.

I close my eyes and drop my head and take a step back. Because I’m the Queen of Bad Moves, I ask, “If you were worried, why didn’t you come after me?”

I think he won’t have an answer for that (oh, why am I still fighting this?) until he says, “Because I didn’t think you wanted me to.”

Right. I didn’t. I hug myself, arms crossing, shoulders sagging.

Moments pass before he breaks the silence. “Bee?”

I’m hardly breathing as I say the words, “I can’t do this anymore,” through my teeth.

He goes as still as he did the night I told him I couldn’t be there for both him and my family. He’s smart—and he’s equal parts optimist and realist. He understands what I’m saying. “I assume you mean our relationship,” he says, voice low, his mouth a grim line.

“I mean our relationship and my life right now.” I shake my head. There are a few tears on my cheeks. “Every day is a challenge. It takes so much effort to remember to ask you something as simple as how your day has been when all I can think about is my dad dying.”

He laughs, harsh and short. There it is again—that word I don’t like, coming out of his soft, pretty lips. “Bee, you don’t need to ask me something as petty as how my day is.”

“But I want to. I care so much about you and everything you do, but I can’t give you the time. I can’t be who I want to be for you.” I pause and sniff, my breath coming out as a wavering sigh. “It is what it is, Levi. I can’t run from you anymore.” I look up, catching the incredulous expression on his face. “I can’t run from anyone.”

“There has to be a different way to do this.” He swears again.

I cringe. “How? Tell me how, and I’ll try. I swear I will.”

“How about we don’t break up at all. How about we take a break? Or work through it—this. Shit.”

I don’t have the energy, the emotional capacity, to work through this. Taking a break would be the same as breaking up. The break would last as long as my dad is sick, which could be a short time or a very long time. He knows this, I’m sure of it, because his eyes light up with sudden understanding.

“I’m so tired,” I say for the second time. “I can’t keep up. I’m weighing you down.”

“That’s bullshit. Who said that to you?”

I blink slowly. I’m not going to answer that question because he’ll only be angry with my answer. “Who do you want me to be for you, Levi?” I ask quietly.

He pushes the sleeves of his sweater up to his elbows, looking like he’s ready to fight me for this. “Whoever you are, I want you to be her. You know, the girl who wrinkles her nose at Bon Iver and still listens to him for my sake, the one who plans weddings and sits by my side while I go over applications. The one who laughs too loudly and sometimes doesn’t know her glasses are crooked.” He shakes his head. “She’s not that far off, Bee. Who said you aren’t allowed to be lost every once in a while? I love you, lost or found.”

He’s making this hard, too hard. “I know you do.”

“So why can’t I have you?”

“Because I’m not ready!” I shout. Then I immediately put my hands over my mouth. That is not what I wanted to say, not how I wanted to say it—despite how true it is. “Maybe it’s a good thing I never told you my name,” I whisper, beneath my shaking fingers.

His jaw locks.

I know, immediately, that I’ve dealt the fatal blow. (And how I hate myself for it.)

“You were never planning to, were you?” he asks, his voice tinged with disgust.

(He looks so hurt, and I am so broken.) “I’m sorry.”

“You gave yourself a way out, just in case things got hard.”

He’s right again. Blow after blow after blow. “Levi—” I begin.

“I wanted that with you, you know? Hard. I wanted fast and awful and perfect and hard and wonderful and slow and terrible with you.”

I try to catch the whimper that is coming up my throat and out of my mouth, but it’s bigger and stronger than my willpower. I cry silently, my tears mingling with leftover rain on my cheeks. “I know it’s not fair for me to say I love you,” I cry, “but I do. I love you so much, but it’s not enough because I don’t love you as much as you love me. That right there is the biggest reason why I’m not going to drag you through hell.”

“That’s not—”

I interrupt him. “We haven’t talked through a single thing, because every time we’re together, something is overshadowing me. We haven’t even worked out that first fight—Levi, that was weeks ago. We should have been over that for a long time now, but we’re not.”

This time, he’s quiet. Stunned.

“Please don’t make this harder than it has to be,” I beg, even though he already has. I wipe the backs of my hands across my eyes.

“Bee,” he grinds out, holding out his hand like he’s going to grab my shoulder, but because the movement is uncertain, I only have to take a step back. He drops his arm to his side again.

“Don’t wait for me,” I say. And because it hurts too much to look at him, I turn around and leave him there, alone, on the middle of the porch in front of the house we found, trapped by my words and the rain.