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Sixty-seven
Conner
As soon as she fell asleep, I got up.
Got dressed.
But that’s as far as I went. As far as I could push myself.
I’ve been sitting on the side of her bed for almost an hour now, trying to talk myself out the door.
Nothing good can come of you being here.
Nothing has changed.
She isn’t going to stay.
My backpack is sitting on her dresser. The one I gave her when we were kids. The one she refused to carry because it has my name on it.
She’s carrying it now.
I don’t want that to matter.
Can’t really afford to.
Behind me, she shifts across the bed, moving closer to me. I’ve got my back to her, but I know she’s waking up. Her breathing pattern changes. She’s realized I’m not in bed with her anymore.
I know she sees me sitting here.
Trying to make myself leave.
“I didn’t.”
“You didn’t what?” she says it softly, like she’s afraid she’ll spook me.
“Fuck Kaitlyn. Ever.” I rub a hand over my face, the sound of my palm rasping over my three-day beard. “We’ve had coffee five times. She’s come to the library to hang out with me twice.” I don’t tell her that I broke things off. That they ended the second I saw her again.
“Are you happy?”
“No.” I answer her honestly. “But I’m trying to be. I want to be.”
She sighs softly. “I want you to be.”
Then stay with me.
It’s what I want to say but I can’t. I’ve asked her too many times to be considered healthy, so I say the only other thing I can.
“That night you came to my parents’ house—I was reviewing Jeremy’s trust fund. All it says is that he has to be married by the time he’s thirty—not that he has to be married to a woman. The provisions were written in 1995—I doubt his ultra-conservative, homophobic parents even considered for a moment that same sex marriage would be legalized in the state of New York, where the trust was written, or that could produce a gay son.”
I look at her. She’s sitting up in bed, sheets pooled around her waist, Bradford’s diamond weighing her down like cement. It would be so easy for me to say yes.
Yes. marry Bradford.
Yes, I’ll wait for you.
Yes.
I regretted not saying it the moment I realized she was gone. The second I realized I lost her again.