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My voice crackedand my own tears started to fall, because his honesty had brought up something so obvious that I was only now seeing it clearly for the first time. Sometimes the hardest things to see are the most obvious ones.
“Why don’tyou letmebe the judge of what I should want?” I asked him.
“And, why should you wantme?”Elijah asked in return.
“Can’t you see?Elijah, it wasn’t your money and your status and your success that made me want to let you do it to me. It wasn’t what you have; it wasyou.It was the way you look — and the way youare.” The growing honesty hung in the air over us for a silent moment, until I finally put out the most important words, the words for the obvious thing that I was finally seeing.
“I fellin love with you. Withyou,the man I’m looking at right now, the man you are this very minute. Not with your past, that’s not a part of you anymore. I wantedyou.I fell in love withyou.”
Elijah wasas speechless as I was surprised at myself for actually saying it. But there it was, and it couldn’t be unsaid.
CHAPTER29
Elijah. Friday night
I didn’t know what was more incredible: the fact that Corinne told me how she felt about me, and meant it, or the fact that once I heard it, I didn’t pull her into my arms, kiss her, and fuck her on the spot.
Instead, we did something that somehow felt more meaningful than that. We relaxed together.
After all the fear and anxiety and tension — and honesty — the two of us put into that conversation, it somehow seemed to mean more that we both relaxed, as if the shared weight of the world were off our shoulders, and instead of stripping us naked and re-enacting that first time banging her on this couch, I just reached for her hand, and we sat back, holding hands. It seemed to symbolize the new understanding that I hoped we now shared.
It was one more honest moment when I said to Corinne, “I don’t know what I ever did to deserve a girl as special as you.”
She gave me a soft little smile. “You gave yourself a second chance at your life. You gave yourself another chance to get it right. Not everyone gets that, Elijah. Or, not everyone turns it around the way you did. And as angry as you are with your Dad, I think you should go and talk to him.
“You know, my mother passed away long ago. When I think of how it would have felt if we had been on bad terms when she died… You never know when someone you love might suddenly be out of your life forever. What if something happened to your father and the last words that you had between you were such angry ones? How would you live with that? You have to do something, Elijah, because you never know when it might be too late. You don’t want your last memories of him to be memories of regret. Don’t do that to yourself.”
No one had ever said anything more true than that to me in my life. Corinne’s words weren’t just true, they were profound. It was a truth I couldn’t have seen myself, the way things were then. Someone had to show it to me. That was what Corinne did for me. And to me, that made her even more precious than she already was.
“Promise me you’ll talk to him,” she said. “I don’t know exactly the last things you said to each other, but don’t leave it at that. At leasttryto get it to some better place. Please?”
“I will,” I promised her. And after all, I didn’t get to where I was by not keeping my word.
Corinne saw me to her door. I paused with her there, just to thank her and give her a kiss, a gentle, grateful kiss on the forehead. And I left her apartment with her words in my heart.
Her words — and her love, much as I couldn’t believe it. Herlove.
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The surprise on my mother’s face when she opened the front door for me was something I’d never forget. She had a right to look surprised. After so many years of mostly harsh words with my father, I’d become a stranger in the home of my own parents. But tonight, I was a stranger with something to say.
“Where’s Dad?”
Finding her voice, Mom answered, “He’s…lying down.”
I checked my watch. “It’s only eight o’clock.”
“He’s been struggling since the last time you talked.”
The worry on her face made her look as if she’d aged ten years. It made me feel worse than anything that Dad had ever said to me, knowing she looked that way because he must have repeated to her my last words to him. Here was another thing I needed to make up for.
“Can I come in, please?” I asked her. “Can I see him?”
As if my mother would refuse to let me into my family’s home. She nodded and opened the door wider, lettingme step inside.
“He’s upstairs,” said Mom.
That meant their bedroom. I looked at the stairs, which seemed just now like a mountain that I had to climb. “Okay,” I said.