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Chapter Twenty-One

Dallas

The weeks slip by, and there comes a point where we can’t wait any longer to go get Sarah’s things.

We’ve been in a bubble. We meant to leave it a month, but we let one roll into two.

She’s still been paying her rent – but she had warned her landlord she’d be moving out.

Now the landlord is getting edgy because they need to know when they can find a new renter which is fair enough. So we need to break the bubble.

I don’t mind driving her everywhere, I really don’t, but there’s no point her paying for an apartment she’s not living in, and it would be better if she had everything she needed.

She’s tense when we load up for the trip to Sisters, and I don’t blame her. I almost can’t believe she’s the same girl that I met there a couple of months ago. Because so much has changed since then.

She’s changed. She’s happier.

I like to think some of that has to do with me .

What’s truly amazing is how much I’ve changed. I used to have this idea of what the most important things in my life were. I used to feel like I had a certain amount of anger, self-destruction to work out before I could claim anything like a normal life. Now I don’t feel that way.

I feel like there are no mountains left to climb. I’ve found my home, my homestead, and I want to settle down.

But I’m also very aware that Sarah is twenty-one, and has lived her life with terror, trauma, and the ghosts of her past following her around.

I’ve had a decade to heal, and while there were parts of me that were still bound up, in a lot of pain, finding my dad, having that chance at normal, at support, it’s meant a hell of a lot more to me than I think I’ve even given it credit for. I can see how it changed me over time.

She hasn’t had that. She’s been scrapping and fighting the whole time. Healing has been theoretical. She hasn’t had the support system I’ve had. Support systems make all the difference. Mine sure as hell did.

I know she’s going to need time. I know she’s going to have to go on her own journey. I just feel impatient.

I rent a small moving trailer that my truck can pull, which should fit all her stuff. Once we get out on the road, she rests her elbow on the window and turns her head to look at me.

“Just so you know, Allison’s stepmom has a cottage in town that I’m allowed to stay in. I mean, I can rent it. And it’s affordable for me. I think they’re giving me a really good deal.”

“Huh?” Her words are a shock at first, and then, as I process them, like a stab straight to the chest.

She wants to leave ?

“Yeah. I… I don’t feel right about mooching off yo u. And really, it seems like the right thing to do for me to get my own place. I mean we’ve been… whatever this is, we’ve been doing it for a little over a month and nobody would have the person they’re fucking move in after a month.”

The person she’s fucking ?

Like that’s all we are? Like that’s all it is.

She eats dinner with my Goddamn parents.

I don’t know what she’s doing, and I really don’t like it.

I tell myself that I can just calm down and listen to her, and we can discuss it more in depth later, but…

I put the brakes on, and stop the truck right in the middle of the long, lonely highway. “What are you talking about?”

She looks around. “Why did you stop in the middle of the road?”

“Why are you saying crazy shit?”

“It’s not crazy shit. I moved in with you because I was in a desperate situation, and you’ve been great, but I don’t need to take advantage of you like that.”

“Do I look like I’m being taken advantage of?”

“We haven’t discussed it, Dallas, and that’s why I’m bringing it up. I want you to know that I have other options. I feel like it’s really important that you know that.”

“Well, I know it. But I don’t like it. I want you in my bed.”

“I know you do. I can still be in your bed sometimes.”

“No,” I say.

“Don’t,” she says. “Don’t be inflexible and ridiculous. I have to… I’m trying to do school and work and figure myself the fuck out. I need to figure myself out.”

I feel like I’m bleeding out here in the middle of the desolate highway, like I’m losing her all over again. “You can’t figure yourself out with me?”

“I can I just… I feel like I’m your parasite.

I latched onto yo u with my sharp little teeth and I’m feeding off you.

Like I don’t function if I’m not with you, and I know that we spent ten years apart.

I know that. But it just feels like I’m pathetic without you, and I don’t want to feel pathetic. I don’t want to feel dependent.”

My heart is pounding in my ears. “Being in a relationship with someone is not being dependent.”

She looks away from me. “We haven’t really discussed what we are.”

“What do you think ?”

I feel defensive, and raw, and that’s not the right way to behave and I damn well know it. She deserves for me to be gentle. For me to listen to what she’s trying to say, but I feel hurt, and it makes me want to lash out.

“Sarah,” I say. “Haven’t I made it clear that you’re not a burden?”

“Yes, but… Dallas, we are from dysfunction alley. Okay. And it all just feels a little bit too neat, don’t you think?

Like we’re falling into a pattern rather than actually making a choice.

Like this feels like the easiest thing for us to do.

And I just feel like… You told me that you want to get married someday.

There’s this theoretical woman that you’re going to meet in your thirties, when you’re both older and you’re established and…

you know, I think that’s smart. I don’t know what I want.

Honestly, until recently, the idea of getting married…

It never even crossed my mind. Much less having kids. I’m just not there at all.”

There’s a car coming up behind me on the road, and I have to start driving again.

The only sound is the tires on the asphalt, and there are a lot of things I want to say.

A whole lot of things, but they would require me exposing myself, and I don’t want to do that.

So I keep my mouth shut. And I just drive on .

“Don’t be mad at me,” she says, her voice small. “I’m not… I’m not ending anything.”

“I know,” I say.

I didn’t know. Suddenly, I feel like I can breathe a little better, even though I’m still angry.

“You’re acting upset.”

“Yeah. I’m upset. Because you talked to Allison, clearly, and you didn’t talk to me.”

“She’s my friend. And this is me talking to you. Don’t be petty.”

“I’m not petty.”

“You’re a little bit petty.”

My abandonment issues have issues, and this is scratching at all of them, and she’s right. She didn’t say she wanted to break up.

She’s also right — under no other circumstances under which I would ever be cohabitating with somebody after this short amount of time.

But she’s not just anyone. She’s special. She’s trying to turn this into a normal relationship. When it just isn’t.

Then I think about what my uncle said. About how he had to wait for his wife.

She was married to another man. I can’t even imagine that.

Her marrying somebody else. Her belonging to someone else, the idea of letting somebody else touch her makes me feel like committing a murder.

But maybe there’s something to what he said.

That sometimes you have to wait until the right moment.

The right person will always be there. Hell, we found each other after ten years. Maybe we just need ten more.

That makes my stomach feel sour.

Yeah, she’s not breaking up with me, but she’s putting distance between us. I don’t like it.

“Please don’t be mad,” she says. “I just want… I think it ’s important for me to figure out how to stand on my own feet.”

If I look past my own shit, I can see that. I can understand what she’s getting at. What she thinks she wants.

And I have to try. I have to try to listen. And maybe I need to figure out how to say the things that are rolling around in my chest like knives, stabbing me. But I’m just afraid that I’m going to end up stabbing her .

Liar. You’re afraid that you’re going to expose yourself and then get hurt.

I ignore that. I focus on the road.

“How many different houses did we live in together?” she asks.

I tap my hand on the steering wheel. It’s a weird segue, but I’ll allow it. I sure as hell don’t know what to say about anything else.

“Seven,” I say.

“Wow. Over three years.”

“Yeah,” he says. “It was brutal.”

And without even having to pull it apart, I can understand why she needs her own place. I can understand why she needs something that feels like stability for herself. A life that’s her own. And I have to be secure enough to let her get grounded in that so that she can get grounded in me.

“Every new experience was so scary,” she says.

“But not you. You were there and you were safe. Did I ever tell you that… he molested me for six months. Until a teacher at my school noticed that something was really wrong with me. I wasn’t eating, I wasn’t social anymore.

And I got really upset when people touched me.

Even accidentally. He would come into my room at night…

everything he did hurt. It made me feel gross and dirty and bad. I…”

“You don’t have to tell me,” I say. I tighten my hands on the steering wheel. “But you can . It won’t make me think there’s anything wrong with you. It won’t change how I see you.”

My eyes sting as I stare ahead. I could blame the bright light of the sun, but it’s emotion. Rage. Hurt. I hate that someone did this to her. I hate him. If I ever get my hands on him…