***
I tried to appear normal as I walked through the door. Alex was sprawled on the couch with his head on Gabrielle’s lap.
“You’re home early,” he said, glancing at his watch. “Really early.”
“I didn’t feel like sandwiches again. I thought I’d come home and cook dinner.” The lie came easily. The twinge of guilt I usually felt when I lied to him didn’t come at all.
Years of school teaching had given Gabrielle extraordinary powers of perception. “I’m going to head home,” she announced, patting Alex’s chest for him to sit up and free her. I walked through to the kitchen, leaving them to debate the real reason why I was home early.
I was hacking through a head of lettuce with a blunt knife when Alex appeared in the doorway.
“So what’s for dinner?"
“Sandwiches,” I mumbled.
“So you changed your mind about cooking?”
“I’ve changed my mind about a lot of things.”
“Like what, Charli?”
“Wholemeal bread,” I ranted extraneously. “I hate wholemeal bread.” I picked the loaf off the table and shook it at him like some weird prop.
He grinned. “I do too. I also hate low fat milk and brown rice, but Floss told me my kid needed those foods to live. They’re good for your heart.”
I needed all the help I could get where my heart was concerned.
I thumped the loaf of bread on the table, squashing it. Alex tried to salvage it by reshaping it with his hands.
“Tell me what to do, Alex,” I demanded.
I didn’t need to elaborate.
“I can’t. You have to figure it out,” he said quietly.
I looked to the floor, trying to hide the fact that I had begun to cry. It was frustration more than sadness. Alex dropped the bread and enveloped me in a hug. “If you already knew the answer, what would it be?” he whispered.
My mind worked surprisingly quickly.
Going to New York had never seemed like a long-term plan. It was something I needed to do to be with Adam, but I’d always considered it temporary. It was an adjustment I was too selfish to make permanently. It wasn’t surprising that I’d never looked at the bigger picture before now. Leaving everything to chance was my usual modus operandi, but Adam – the boy who loved small details – had somehow managed to overlook them too.
Once broken down, it was simple. I was not a girl who had it all together. The list of things I’d never done was far too long. Adam knew his place in the world, but he was prepared to bend and twist his life to keep me in it. I couldn’t let him do that. I had to let him go.
26. La La Land
If Adam thought it odd that I called him at six in the morning he didn’t let on. Nor did he question me when I told him that I needed to see him. I don’t know what made me suggest meeting at the lookout on the cliff. We hadn’t been there since the day after we’d first met.
He borrowed Gabrielle’s car. I took mine, never suggesting that we go there together. He never questioned that, either.
Nothing about the view from the top of the cliffs ever changed. Even the weather remained the same. Cold blustery winds that sting your face and freeze your hands the second you get out of the car are constant. The only thing that had changed since the last time was us. We no longer sat at opposite ends of the rickety wooden seat, cautiously trying to figure each other out. We sat together, bound by something neither of us had ever really managed to understand.
“What are you thinking, Charlotte?” Adam’s eyes were locked ahead, fixed on the angry ocean below us.
I tightened my grip on his hand, sucked in a breath and prepared to let go of everything.
“Going to New York would be a mistake for me, Adam. It would be a mistake for both of us. I don’t belong there.” I wanted to sound strong but my tone smacked of indecision.
“Would you like to tell me why?” he asked seriously.
I pulled my hand free. “This isn’t your real life. Your life before me was exactly as it should have been.”
“I’ll happily make room for you in my real life,” he said, forcing a smile.
“I don’t want you to. It won’t work,” I said coldly, watching his expression crumple. “You have everything worked out. You’ve always known who you are and what you want. I don’t know anything.”
His frown intensified into a scowl and he focused back on the ocean. “Perhaps it seems that way because until a week ago, you didn’t know where you’d come from. Your father has to own that one. Seventeen years of angst and guilt and displacement could have been avoided if he’d just been truthful.”
It was the first time Adam or anyone had ever referred to Alex as my dad. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Perhaps that was the crux of my problem. I might have been far less complicated if I’d known the truth from the beginning.
“Please don’t bring Alex into this.”
“I know he’s been in your ear, Charli,” he replied.
Annoyed with the direction the conversation was headed, I stood up, unsure of my next move. Adam made it for me, grabbing my hand and pulling me back down.
“Alex has nothing to do with this,” I insisted. “I’m trying to tell you that – ”
“You’re trying to run away,” he interrupted. “I know we have some figuring out to do, but I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure you’re happy in New York. And if I can’t, then we’ll work something else out.”
He made it sound simple, but I couldn’t swallow away the lump in my throat. There was no way I could let him change anything about his life for me. I wasn’t a safe bet at the best of times. Gambling his whole future on me was the riskiest long shot ever.
“It’s not enough,” I said grimly. I made no attempt to stem the tears down my cheeks. I deserved to feel woeful.
“Tell me why,” he demanded.
“It’ll never work, Adam. Eventually I will make you miserable and all the little quirks you find so endearing now will drive you crazy.”
“Charlotte – ”
I snatched my hand away, overcome by frustration. He was still trying to reason with me. I wasn’t used to being the sensible one.
“I’m not Charlotte, Adam. I never was. I’m Charli Blake, scattered and a little bit crazy most of the time. ”
He didn’t hesitate. “And I am Adam Décarie, the guy who never took a chance on anything before you. I never even believed in anything before you. And somehow we found each other. You’re telling me that means nothing. What are you suggesting we do, exactly?”
“You will go. And this will end. That’s what I want.” I sounded remarkably strong considering I was dying inside.
“You can’t even look at me when you say that,” he pointed out.
I had spent the entire night wrestling with myself, searching for solutions to problems we hadn’t even faced yet. I could justify everything by telling myself that I was saving us both a lot of heartache in the future. Punching holes in his chest and tearing out his heart was harder to defend – and impossible to watch.
Adam stood, digging his hands into his pockets as he looked at the grey sky.
“Please understand,” I begged.
He closed his eyes. “I can’t understand. And I don’t believe you. The only way there could be an ounce of truth in what you’re saying is if you don’t love me.”
Whether he meant to or not, he’d given me a way out. I had never once told him I loved him. I’d never figured out how to say it in way that gave it the merit it deserved. That omission might be the only chance I had to make him give up on me.
“You were a great distraction for me, that’s all.” It was one of Alex’s descriptions of him. “For a while, you saved me from this place. I used you and now it’s over. You go back to your life and I’ll go back to mine.”
The mean girl from fifty-three days ago was back with a vengeance. I hated her.
He stood staring at me for far too long. “
You think I saved you? That’s rich, Charli. I thought you would have realised by now that you’re the one who saved me. You gave me everything.”
What could I have possibly given him? He was the boy who had everything to begin with. He was whole before he met me. So why couldn’t I just shut up and leave him unbroken?
“What did I give you?”
“La La Land.”
I blinked in disbelief. “You don’t belong in La La Land, Adam. Trust me, when you get back to New York you’re going to wake up every morning feeling relieved because I’m not there.”
He didn’t move. “Tell me you don’t love me.”
I hesitated, studying his devastated face.
“I don’t love you. I never loved you.” I said slowly, leaving no room for misinterpretation.
Turning his back he puffed out a hard breath, standing motionless for a long time. I waited for him to speak, or for lightning to strike me down for telling the blackest lie in the history of all lies.
“Well, I guess that’s it then,” he said, finally.
“I’ll make sure Norm forwards you the cheque for the boat,” I said unsteadily, making sure all loose ends were tied.
An angry noise escaped him. “I don’t want the damned money, Charlotte. I want you to keep it, and use it well. Use it to figure out who you are and what you’re looking for.”
“And what will you do?”
He didn’t hesitate “I love you with my whole heart. The best I can hope for is that I can find a way to change that.”
I’d given him every reason not to love me. I was wretched and cruel. I kept being wretched and cruel. “Soon I’ll just be a girl you used to know.”
The look he gave me wasn’t kind. “And what will I mean to you?”
“You’ll be the boy who once saved me from myself,” I said bleakly.
I was truly a hateful person. Calling it quits and walking away wasn’t enough. I had to keep chipping at him until the only thing he could possibly feel was loathing. Then I’d know it was truly over.
He walked over, reached for my hands and pulled me to my feet. His lips pressed gently to mine and my body betrayed me by trembling, just as it had a million times before. Only this was different. This would be the last time.