Page 46 of As a Last Resort

“My plans don’t change.” TV stand, bar counter, by the fridge…

“You can’t say you don’t feel anything for me.”

“That doesn’t matter.” Kitchen table, coffee table, kitchen counter…

“ Everything matters.” He stepped in front of me and blocked my path. “Tell me you feel the exact same way about me that you did a month ago.”

The truth was I felt safe a month ago.

I knew what was expected of me. I knew my job, my responsibilities.

I knew where I fit and didn’t. I knew nothing was guaranteed but if I worked really hard, there was a smaller chance I would be surprised by something and it would hurt.

I could deal with an overconfident, selfish boss and a cocky coworker who made inappropriate sex jokes.

What I couldn’t deal with was someone laying out their heart for me and expecting me to do the same.

For God’s sake, where were my keys?

I looked past him toward the door and there they were, in the key dish.

“Stay.” The intensity in his eyes was blazing.

They were pleading, aching, begging me to say something.

He crossed the distance between us and cupped my face in his hands.

His fingers laced into my hair and his mouth desperately consumed mine.

My knees betrayed me as they melted underneath his touch.

The familiar smell of the ocean cradled me as the room stilled.

Alarms fired in my head for every reason this was wrong.

I felt the emotion pulling me down. If I didn’t stop, it would drown me.

There wouldn’t be any coming back from this.

It would mean everything would change. This life I had built brick by brick would come crashing down.

No, not crashing down—bulldozed and set on fire with semi-grade gasoline and lit with a blowtorch.

I saw it play out in my head. I’d move back home and run into my old elementary school teacher at the grocery store newly pregnant, with a one-year-old screaming in my cart.

I’d work in the concession stand on Friday nights at the football field handing over greasy aluminum-wrapped hot dogs to pimple-faced teenagers.

I’d have a high school class reunion every Saturday night at Harpoon’s where I’d strike up small talk with people I used to lock myself in my room over, their words spearing through my fourteen-year-old self-worth like a hot iron through ice cream.

I’d give up everything I’ve worked so hard to build the last seven years, and all for what?

For the hope that this little flutter would grow into something more and actually be worth it?

Trust that it would never leave me on the floor of my bedroom covered in tears and drowning in snot because he decided I was a little more broken than he thought I was?

Or maybe I didn’t want three kids and a dog but I wanted a corner office with a view and that just wouldn’t work here?

Could I really roll the dice and hope he’d never get sick with a brain tumor, or trust that he wouldn’t crack and break if something too hard came our way?

I pulled away from him. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t say yes and give up everything.

His lips followed after mine.

“Don’t.” I put my hand on his chest and took a step back.

“Don’t leave.”

I grabbed my keys off the dish and walked out the screen door.

I refused to look back. This wasn’t going to be one of those endings where the girl changes her mind at the last minute, turns back, and runs into her lover’s arms. My life didn’t work like that.

Pain didn’t just go away. Ghosts didn’t just decide to lie down and take a nap.

“What about your mom?” he called out.

“What about her?”

“What about when she comes back? You don’t want to be here for that?”

“I’ll pass on taking a front-row seat to the inevitable destruction that’ll follow that one.”

“How can you say that?”

“You haven’t been here for every other time she’s been doing great . It’s great until it’s not, then it sucks your soul dry.”

“What about Lexi’s wedding? She’s getting married next weekend.”

“Lexi doesn’t need me there.” I answered him without even turning my head as he followed me down the shell driveway.

“She wants you there.”

“Don’t use her to try and guilt me into staying. I don’t have a choice, Austin.”

“You always have a choice.”

I kept walking. Just a few more feet and I could tie this up and shelve it right next to all the other boxes from this place. “You really don’t think you deserve to be happy.” It wasn’t a question.

“My definition of happiness is very different from yours.”

“You just want distractions to keep you from wanting more.”

“You have no idea what I want.” I opened the driver’s side door.

“But I know what I want. I want you.” He pushed the door shut behind me and pinned me to the car.

I blinked back the tears welling in my eyes. “It’s not that simple.”

“It is.” He lifted my chin. “Sam, look at me. Everyone writes a story in their head that eventually becomes their life. If you don’t write it for yourself then everyone else is going to write it for you.”

Other people’s circumstances dictated my entire life. It’s how it had always been. It was time for me to choose what I wanted.

“You want me today. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe even in a few years. But there will come a moment when I won’t fit anymore.”

“Why can’t you just trust me?”

“I do trust you. That’s not it.”

“Then tell me what it is,” he pleaded.

“It’s nothing, it’s just not worth—”

“Not worth being happy?”

“It’s not worth the pain when you eventually leave.” The words burned like acid pouring out of my mouth. “Everyone always does.”

There it was. The reason why I worked so hard.

The reason I buried myself in distractions.

In this awful thing called real life , I could do everything—bend myself until I broke, give up every dream I’ve ever had, put everyone else above and before me, and it still wouldn’t be enough for someone to stay.

There was still a chance they could leave, whether they choose to themselves or not.

I belonged in the black-and-white of the world I’d built that respected time, energy, and effort.

There were calculated risks for things I was willing to bargain with, and outcomes based on data.

There weren’t bad scans one day showing something under the surface that shouldn’t be.

Business proposals rarely got up and walked out the door because they didn’t measure up to what was originally promised.

At least, not on my watch. I didn’t have to be enough to keep my work around, but with people I did.

There was an overwhelming sense of the possibility that if I did something wrong or didn’t do enough, they’d leave.

God forbid I miss an expectation they had and I come up short.

“That’s not fair.”

“People leave. That’s what they do.”

“Not if they love each other.”

“Love is never enough. I’ve learned that twice over.”

His chest sank as he stepped forward and rested his hands on my neck. “I’m not your father. Or your mother. And I don’t deserve that.”

“You deserve a hell of a lot better than what I can give you.”

“Good things don’t always get taken away, Sam. That’s not how it works.”

“Oh, my bad. I guess I forgot the universe was fair .” I hated how the crack in my voice betrayed how deep the anger ran.

“That’s not what I’m saying.” His thumbs traced my collarbone gently, leaving a trail of ache behind them.

“I’m due for something to work out, right? I mean, what are the chances? Enough bad has happened, I’m bound to have something good turn out. But that’s not the way this world works. People leave. Sometimes they choose to. But sometimes they don’t have a choice.”

He was pleading with his eyes. I had to get away soon or I’d be done for.

I wanted to change my mind. I wanted to sink into his arms and let him carry me inside and cook bacon for me every single morning for the rest of my life.

I wanted to stay and pretend like the world could be kind, and life could be fair and predictable, but it couldn’t.

It wouldn’t.

I gently pushed him back and looked into his eyes. They had turned more brown than green.

I got into my car and pressed the start button.

I didn’t have to look in the rearview mirror to know he stood there, willing me to turn around.

This was the right decision. I fit in a world of perfectly squared off city streets buzzing with life and electricity.

Busy corners and traffic lights and merchants shouting at you.

Magazine stands and tiny outdoor spaces a foot wide people convince themselves are big enough to be called patios, coffee shops on every block and an entire district of Korean takeout.

Pencil skirts and work calls, conference tables and happy hour at O’Keefe’s. That’s where I belonged.

Not here. Not in this place that had only ever taken things from me. Not in this place where my heart swelled and hurt and leaped and felt everything I didn’t want it to.

In the early morning hours, I sat on the old vintage couch in Mom’s living room, the one that reminded me of grandparents I never had.

I paid an arm and a leg to arrange for a private boat to pick me up and head to the airport and needed to leave soon.

The clock on the wall ticked down second by second as I blinked through the pictures of me smiling on the mantel.

Me on the beach holding a crab by its claw.

Tick.

I remember the way the water pooled at my feet and made little swirls in the sand under the waves.

Tick.

Me smiling with a Lisa Frank Caboodle on Christmas morning under a tree of ripped wrapping paper with sleep still in my eyes.

Tick.

I remember walking into the living room with my hands over my eyes as Dad guided me out, Mom holding a video camera on her shoulder that looked like it weighed a hundred pounds trying to catch my reaction to Santa visiting in the night.

Tick.

Me and my mom smiling at graduation, my arm wrapped in a bandage and sitting in a wheelchair.

Tick.

I remember the way the rubber on the wheels whirred as I rolled across the stage for my diploma. Mrs. Peabody built a ramp so I could cross just like everyone else. Except I was no longer just like everyone else.

Tick.

I had slept, but barely. My eyes stung. Even Taylor Hanson winking at me from the back of my door couldn’t put a smile on my face.

Lexi’s name flashed across the screen as my phone rang beside me.

“I told you this was going to happen.” Her voice was kind but tired, like she had already talked about this at length with Austin.

“I can’t just pretend I don’t have a job and play house the rest of my life.” I tried to exhale the weight of the coming day. “I was never going to stay. He knew that.”

“Then you should have stayed away from him.”

I closed my eyes and took a breath. The house smelled stale. “Lexi, I can’t do this right now.”

“Oh, okay, cool, just hit me up in seven years and we’ll pick up right where we left off like nothing happened.”

A tingle crept toward the front of my face and the burn of tears stung my eyes. “That’s not fair.”

“Neither is you coming back, uprooting his life, and giving him hope for something you knew wasn’t going to be anything other than a fling.”

“I didn’t plan on it happening, Lexi. And by the way, it’s not like this whole situation is only my fault.

” The tone of my voice surprised me. I was so angry.

I was angry at Lexi for calling me out and for me realizing that’s exactly what I did.

At Robby for being an asshole and still coming out on top.

At Glenn for caring more about bourbon and golf than work ethic and intelligence.

At Mom for collapsing when I needed her most. At having to make my own breakfast, and lunch and dinner because she couldn’t get off the couch.

At being scared to cook bacon, for God’s sake.

At my dad for dying.

And at Austin for worming his way into my heart when I tried so desperately to keep him out.

“It doesn’t have to be that hard, Sam.”

I knew she was trying to make me feel better, but it made me feel worse.

“Love isn’t exactly a fairy tale for everyone else,” I spat back.

“We all don’t get to bat our eyelashes from behind a bar where we’re slinging beers for tourists and have some college coach swoop in and rescue us from our shitty bartending job that we didn’t even need because our parents would float us the rest of their lives anyway.

” My face felt hot and my hands were shaking.

I was pacing in front of the fireplace. “You get to play house with your cute little Cinderella story and pretend you did something to deserve it all. It’s not like that for everyone else. ”

The line fell silent. My breath was short and fast and tears stung my eyes.

Her voice came a few moments later as a whisper.

“You want to know why I stayed here, Sam? Because of my family. They were worth staying for.” Then her voice came through, angry and full of steam.

“And then Rex. He was worth staying for. And my friends. And the life I’ve built here.

That was all worth more to me than chasing some dream somewhere else. ”

“Yeah, well, we’re not the same person.”

“No, we’re not. I decided to stay because of the people I care about. You decided to run to get away from the one person who didn’t care about you.”

It was a slap I never saw coming. If anyone understood what I carried, what I went through, it was her. For her to throw it back in my face wasn’t just cruel—it hollowed me out, leaving me with nothing to fight it off.

“What I wanted to be didn’t exist here.”

“Don’t pretend you left to chase a dream. You left to escape her at the cost of everything.”

“You have no idea what it’s like to have something ripped from you. To live in fear that every single thing you care about eventually gets snatched away or leaves.”

“I’m sorry, Sam. I’m sorry for what you went through but it doesn’t mean it’s always going to end up like that.”

I needed to be at the boat dock five minutes ago. “I have to get to the airport. I need to go.” And I hung up.

I looked at the graduation picture again.

Anger welled in my eyes as I walked over to it and slammed it face down.

I didn’t even bother to wipe the tears away this time.

I just let them fall to the floor, along with all the expectations and hopes I had that maybe, just maybe, home could mean something different this one time.