“Zach, listen to me!” Becca said in as firm a voice as all that conscious and unconscious training in Southern grace would allow. “I can’t handle it.” She stood in front of his living room window, her face and upper body backlit by the bright sun of the dry and cold day beyond the glass.
Zach sat in the upholstered chair against the far wall, as far from her as the room would allow. From where he sat her face was a dark mask—her eyes invisible in front of the brilliant day, her perfect features all a shadowed blur, perfect just now only in his memory. Part of him longed to see her eyes, that harbor for him since the start; but most of him was frightened of what he’d find there. In either case he didn’t rise to close the distance between them, didn’t move to mute the sun hiding her from him.
“I don’t exist apart from you,” she repeated. “I’ve got to find myself again.”
It was three days after the Badencourt party and the faux tribute the partygoers had laid at their feet. Zach had never felt closer to Becca, never felt more secure in their relationship. Apparently Becca felt differently—or maybe not, maybe she felt exactly the same way, and it scared her. “You can have all the space you need. Just don’t discard what we have,” he pleaded.
“What we have is exactly what’s keeping me from being me.”
“That makes no sense. What we have is part of you now. You can’t just cut it out and pretend it never happened.”
“I’m not pretending it never happened. I just need to focus on me for a little while—me, not us.”
Zach still couldn’t see her face. It was as if her voice was coming out of a cloud—a very dark cloud. “I think you’re wrong, Becca. You’re not going to find yourself by running from what we have. People spend whole lives looking for what we’ve been given. How can you walk away from that?”
“I think that’s my whole point, Zach. It’s too big and powerful; it’s more than I’m ready for.”
Zach was empty of words; he felt like he was empty of life.
“I need to figure this out for myself, Zach. Please give me that chance.”
Zach watched her unmoving in awful shadow, the voice out of the cloud now silent.
She reached in her coat pocket then leaned forward and put something on the coffee table. She turned and left.
From where he sat, her back—her golden hair, her brown canvas coat, her jeans, the heels of her clogs—was perfectly clear for that instant before the door shut in her wake. In the new stillness, he noticed the key she’d left on the table glinting in the sun.
The next morning—the weather still brilliantly clear and bitterly cold—Zach knocked on her apartment door holding a grapefruit in his hand. His hope was they might split the grapefruit and talk over that simple meal in her space, a space where she might feel more comfortable and open to compromise.
She opened the door, wide awake and frowning.
He said. “Can we talk?”
She shook her head. “I need space. Please let me have it.” She shut the door.
He stood in front of her door a moment then turned and walked toward the parking lot. Halfway to his truck, he remembered the grapefruit in his hand. He wondered what he’d do with the other half.