“Brooding?”
“Yeah. Like you belong on the moors or something. Were you shopping all day? That would make anyone brood.”
“Not you,” I point out, striding across the store and tucking the bags in the corner so she doesn’t peek at them.
“No, but you know what, I prefer online shopping much more. You don’t have to deal with…people.”
I can’t help but smile. “Funny words coming from someone who deals in customer service on a daily basis.”
“Yeah,” she says. “Thank god for the online part though. You know, I’ve been thinking. If my online store ends up being more popular than my retail one, I may just shut all this shit down.”
This is news to me but she looks completely serious. “Really? But you put your heart and soul into this store.” I gesture to all the little finishing touches and details that she put there herself. “Your love for this place is everywhere.”
“I know,” she says. “But I love the online store too. It’ll still be love, just in a different form, that’s all.”
I can’t help but stare at her over those words. She may be able to go from loving a brick and mortar store to loving one made of bytes and pixels, but I can’t go from loving her like this to loving her like a friend. It won’t be the same. I won’t recover.
“Linden?” she asks. “You’re getting all brooding again. Look, I’m not saying I’ll do it for sure. But I’d be crazy not to. With online, I can manage it by myself and if I need help, it’s a lot easier to hire someone for a warehouse, for packaging and shipping shit than it is to be in customer service. A lot easier. Hiring is a complete bitch. Plus I’d make more money with no leases or crazy expensive rent to pay. And you know, if you hadn’t pushed me to start looking at my options, I wouldn’t have thought of having an online store to begin with.”
She walks over to me and pushes a dainty finger between my brows. “Stop frowning. You look like you have something to say to me. Say it.”
I can’t do it. Not tonight. I need to know what I’m saying goodbye to before I say goodbye.
“I love you,” I tell her. I grab her face in my hands and peer deep into her eyes. “I love you so much. And these words still aren’t enough.”
Her eyes shine in the dim light. “I love you too, cowboy.” She takes my hand and puts it on her chest. “Right here. Two hearts.”
I close my eyes and rest my forehead against hers. I want to hold on, just keep holding on.
“Let’s do something special tonight,” I murmur to her. “Anything you want?”
“Anything?” she muses. She wraps her arms around my waist and stares up at me. “Well, you know I like to do you. I could do you special style.”
I smile. “I have no doubt about that. But before. What’s the appetizer?”
She licks her lips, thinking.
“Come with me.” I pick up the packages and take her by the hand.
Thirty-minutes later we’re high on Hawk’s Hill, overlooking the bay and the Golden Gate Bridge. I used to bring chicks here when I was younger and they’d ooh and aww over the sights. Tonight, there is no one here. It’s cold and the wind is picking up, but it’s moving the thick layer of fog below so that every so often the red-orange span of the bridge appears before it’s clothed again up to the tips.
I bring out a bottle of red wine and two coffee cups I got at the gas station and pour us both some cheap merlot. We sit on a rock and watch the show. The view is as dramatic as it can get and the fog glows like a radioactive sun from the city lights.
“This is beautiful,” she says softly. I turn to look at her. She’s the one that’s beautiful. Her perfect nose, her expressive lips and those soul-baring eyes that still take my breath away. Nine years later, she still takes my breath away.
I grab for her hand and hold it tight.
We go back to her place later and make love. It is slow, passionate and intense. She cries when she comes and I feel like I’ve given her every part of me and I never want it back. It hers to keep.
She curls her body into me and I hold on even tighter.
In the morning I’ll let go.
CHAPTER TWENTY
STEPHANIE
Before I even open my eyes the next morning, I know something has changed. I reach over with my hand but already know that Linden isn’t in bed with me. The place where he was sleeping, the whole night pressed against me, isn’t even warm. He’s been gone for a while.
He’s never left without saying goodbye. He’s never left while I’ve been asleep. I start to panic, thinking maybe there was something wrong with him, that he’s sick, before I hear cupboards closing in my kitchen.
I release a deep breath and sink back into the bed for a few moments longer. He’s not gone. He’s here.
But even so, as I lie there, he doesn’t come back to the bedroom. I can hear him, clearly because the walls are so thin in this tiny place, puttering around in the kitchen but he never comes out. For some reason I end up holding my breath again.
Eventually I get out of bed and slip on the robe that’s draped over the laundry basket and step out into the hall.
For all the commotion I heard, I thought maybe Linden had made breakfast as he usually does. But there is nothing except a carton of almond milk and a half empty glass. And Linden, fully dressed in a thin black Henley that shows off every curve of his muscles, dark jeans and a furrowed brow. He’s leaning on the counter and staring at a blank space in front of him. His jaw is set in a hard line and the air around us feels thick and charged.
My woman’s intuition amps up and I try my best to just breathe as normal. There is nothing foreboding or scary about Linden in my kitchen.
But when I move to the other side of the bar, he looks up at me. And in his eyes, I see something I’ve never wanted to see. They are dark and dull and full of what looks like regret.
I’m not sure if I can handle this blow.
“Linden?” I ask, smiling, trying to keep my voice light, hoping that if I act okay everything will be okay.
“Hey,” he says hoarsely, then clears his throat. “How did you sleep?”
There is no intimacy in his eyes. I think that’s what’s making my limbs feel so suddenly numb.
“Fine. You?”
He just nods and wiggles his jaw back and forth, dropping his gaze. He’s breathing heavily and I look at his hands. They are gripping the counter, the veins in his forearms standing out.
“Baby?” I whisper. I can barely breathe now. “What’s wrong?”
I hold my breath as I watch him. I watch every little tell-tale spot on his face, every movement of his body. I’ve known this man for so long, it’s so easy to tell when something is right or wrong. And right now, something is very, very, horribly wrong.
I feel like I know before I even know it. Isn’t that what everyone fears when they’ve fallen in love? That they’re about to keep falling, with no one to catch them this time? That they’ll drop and drop and drop forever?
“Linden. Please, what is it?”
He keeps still for so long so that when he finally exhales, so harsh and loud, I nearly jump.
“I’ve been doing some thinking,” he says slowly. He has to clear his throat again and again. “Um, about us.”
Oh no.
Fuck no.
He gives me a pained smile, so pained it looks like he’s trying to smile through a gunshot wound. “It’s just been getting too hard lately with the sneaking around, you know? Having to hide. I’m just not sure if we can do it anymore. It’s no longer fun.”
I feel scooped out, hollow.
“Then shouldn’t we tell people? And no longer hide. Stop the charade. I’d be happy to stop the charade.”
“I can’t do that to James,” he says and looks away.
“Can’t do what to James?” I take a step toward him. “Linden, James will get over it. I promise you.”
He shakes his head. “No he won’t.”
“He wi
ll,” I say, louder now, hating that this has become such an issue. “And if he doesn’t, then it’s his problem, not ours.”
“I can’t,” he says flatly.
“I don’t understand,” I tell him, wishing I could just smack some sense into him. “What does it matter what he thinks? Why do you care so much?”
He sighs loudly and runs a hand through his hair. “You’re right,” he says softly. “You don’t understand.”
“So then explain it!” I yell, throwing my arms out. “Tell me what the fuck is going on. What are you getting at Linden? Are you breaking up with me?”
He swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing but somehow he manages to look me in the eye. “I think we should…we need…to go back to being friends. Just friends.”
I am being split in two. “Just friends?!” I nearly spit it at him. “I’m fucking in love with you! You said you were in love with me. How the hell could we go back to being just friends?”
“Don’t get all upset,” he says.
“Fuck you! Of course I’m upset!” I put my hands on my head and tug on my hair, feeling the anger shoot through me, fighting the urge to scream. “Just friends? I can’t be your fucking friend Linden. Not ever.”
His eyes sharpen. “You said you would hold on.”
“No, you did!” I retort. “And you’re not. Over James? Fuck James.”
“Hey, he’s your friend too.”
“I don’t give a fuck whose friend he is,” I tell him. “If he’s a friend, he’d understand two friends falling in love. And if you actually loved me, you wouldn’t give me up for him.”
“That is not fair!” He roars at me, jabbing his finger in my direction. “You have no fucking idea what I’ve been dealing with.”
I blink in shock. “No idea? Linden, I’ve been with you for the past fucking two months, don’t tell me I have no idea, I’ve lived it. And I’ve hated it.” His eyes widen and I go on, “Yeah, sometimes I’ve hated it, the fact that it’s all hidden, that it’s a secret, that you’re ashamed of us.”
“You wanted to keep this a secret! Until it was all figured out.”
“Well then I finally fucking figured it out. I thought that was pretty obvious when I told you I was in love with you. Christ, Linden, none of that other shit should matter.”
He is despondent. “But it does.”
My face is growing redder by the moment and the apartment is feeling more and more like a firepit, like there will be no air soon, that this terrible, fucking unfair moment will consume us. But god, it can’t be over yet. It can’t be over. I won’t let it be. I love him, us, everything that we are about to give up that easily.
I take in a deep breath but it’s still shaking. I’m shaking, “Linden,” I say, putting my hand on the counter. “Look, I know it’s hard but let’s just talk this through. Okay. There’s a way out of this, I know there is. One where people don’t have to get hurt.”
He shakes his head and walks out of the kitchen and past me. He doesn’t even touch me as he goes. “Where are you going?” I ask.
He grabs his coat from the couch. “It’s over.”
“What the fuck?” I run over to him and shove at his arm. He barely moves. He won’t look me in the eye. “What the fuck happened between last night and now? How could you stop loving me overnight? How could you just stop…”And now tears are threatening to unleash down my face. My mouth fills with water.
Finally he looks at me. “I still love you, Steph. I’ll always love you. But I’m doing the right thing.”
My mouth drops open. I can’t even form words.
“Please, trust me,” he goes on and now his eyes are wet too. “I didn’t want it to be this way but it’s just something I have to do. It’s for the best. You and I will recover. We’ll get through this.”
I shake my head until the tears fall. “No. No. No we won’t. We won’t.”
“Then don’t let go,” he says. “And I won’t either.”
He goes to move but I reach out and grab his arms, holding him in place, as I stare up at him through my blurry, hot vision. “Linden. Why? What aren’t you telling me?” He doesn’t say anything. Again his eyes are searching the wall, the door, everything but me. “Tell me!” I scream, shaking him.
“He’s in love with you!” he yells right back and his voice is so loud, so broken, that I feel frozen to the ground. “James is in love with you. He even broke up with Penny because of it. He told me this. He told me you two slept together last year.” Oh no. Oh no. “And ever since then, you’ve been in his system bad. And he’s so fucking glad that you’re the one thing that I never had.”
“What?” I ask dumbly.
“I lied to him,” he says through gritted teeth. “I told him I had never been with you. He was asking. I had no choice.”
“You could have told him the truth.”
“And what kind of friend would I be?”
“The kind of friend you are!” I yell and it looks like I’ve slapped him. “Jesus, fuck, Linden. Listen to yourself. You’re giving me up for him, because he’s apparently in love with me? Why, because you feel guilty, you feel sorry for him, you hate yourself? You hate that you were with me to begin with? Which fucking is it, Linden, which fucking is it?!”
He doesn’t say anything.
“So all of the above?”
He licks his lips. “I did the right thing. He deserves you. Not me. I have everything. He doesn’t.”
I put my hand to my forehead in disbelief. “Oh my god. Are you listening to yourself? Are you? I don’t love James, I’m not in love with him. I love you. You! Always fucking you. How dare you try and throw that away. How dare you?”
Now he’s starting to look sorry. “We have a…our relationship…it’s…”
I’m not sure if he’s talking about me or James now but I don’t care. I am broken, in pieces, fused together only by molten anger.
“So that’s what it comes down to then. James tells you he’s in love with me. You try to hand me over. Like a sacrifice. To appease your guilt, so he doesn’t hate you, so you don’t hate yourself. Is that it?”
“No,” he whispers. “Please, baby…”
“Don’t you fucking dare call me baby,” I hiss at him, taking a step back. “And don’t you fucking dare talk to me again either.”
“No, Steph.” He reaches out to grab me and I rip out of his grasp.
“Get the fuck out here, Linden,” I growl at him. “You’re a fucking idiot if you think you could do this and still be my friend. You fucked this up, fucked me over, big time. So congrats. Go back to your James and your eased conscious. But I’m not going to be there.”
He really does look shocked. No, he looks destroyed. He really thought we could go back to the way things were. All I know is that if he truly loved me the way he said he did, there’s no way he could survive it.
I point at the door. “Get out. And the next time you tell a girl you love her, make sure you know what the word means. I don’t think you have a fucking clue.” I pause and drive the final stake in. “You should have went on keeping it to yourself.”
His breath hitches and it’s almost like I can see a world crumbling behind his eyes. But I don’t care. I have my own ruins now to deal with.
He turns, slow, stunned, pauses a moment and then walks to the door. As soon as he’s gone I quickly slam it behind him and lock it.
I wait a few seconds, unsure whether to cry or scream or what. Then I see the Christmas presents still in the Nordstrom bags. I immediately pick them up and throw them against the wall, screaming my lungs out. Some smash like broken glasses, others land with a thud. I kick them and kick them and kick them until I’m sweating and the bags are torn and the boxes are all bent inside. I kick and stomp until they feel like my heart.
Then I fall to the ground among the carnage and I cry.
And I cry.
As the world that I loved slips past, right out of my fingers.
***
&n
bsp; The next few days I do something I have never done before. I don’t open the shop. On day one I don’t even drag myself out of the apartment. I don’t shower, I don’t get dressed, I don’t eat. I don’t even charge my phone or turn on my computer or my TV.
I just lie there on the couch, on the bed, on the floor. I lie there and I cry. I am ruined with debilitating sorrow, a loss that’s pulled straight from my chest until I feel like I must be concave, that I could never straighten again.
Then I scream and I kick and I yell and curse the world. I am anger reborn and frustration unjustified. I am brutal hate and cold, dead winter. I am turning, tumbling in despair and there is no light, no warmth, no world, no heart.
I feel like I’ve died. But death should bring peace. I have no peace. I am not even numb. I am just stuck in this life that wasn’t the one I was living a few days before.
In this life I’ve lost everything.
On the second day, I still don’t go to work and I still don’t charge my phone or go on the computer. I don’t shower but I do manage to put on clothes. I clean up around the apartment a bit. I throw away the presents but then my curiosity wins and I fish them out of the trash. I sit on the floor and open each smashed bag.
One is a shattered ceramic bowl with lemons on it, like my mom loves to collect. That would have been Linden’s present to her. The other is a stainless steel cigar cutter. That would have been his present to my dad.
Then there is small jewelry box. I assume that’s for me. I almost can’t open it. I’m too afraid, like he’s watching somehow, like I’ll be even more hurt than I already am.
But I do open it. It’s a silver bracelet with skull shaped diamonds all around it. It’s expensive and it’s beautiful. And there is something inscribed on the inside.
Thank you for showing me your soul.
I.
Break.
Down.
Later, when I’ve had enough of being alone with my thoughts and after I’ve shoved the bracelet in the back of my closet, far, far away, I get in my car and drive all the way out to Petaluma. When I cross over the bridge, I am no longer afraid of falling but I have tears in my eyes. Hawk’s Hill, the site of our last night together, the last time we were in love, is off to my left.