“But, what if I’m in town for two and a half years? What if—”
“No. Twelve months. That’s it. Take it or leave it.” His tone was unyielding. As though to drive home the fact that he wasn’t willing to bend on this point, he set his jaw and glowered at me. His glower reminded me of the Duane Winston I used to know, the kid who used to pick apart my arguments and challenge me to think about perspectives other than my own. That Duane had been irritating. That Duane had also been right nine times out of ten.
I felt a spasm of some sort in my chest, like a spike or surge of panic, making breathing a bit more difficult. Absentmindedly, I pressed a palm to the center of my ribcage as I studied him and his stony features.
I opened my mouth, determined to try one more time, because his granite resolve on the issue didn’t make much sense, but he cut me off before I could speak.
“And, if we do this, you’re not to bring up the possibility of an extension again. You don’t even ask about it. It’s just understood. One year from today we’d be over and done and that’s it.”
I studied him for a long stretch, saw he was completely serious, and seeing this made me feel out of sorts.
Therefore I asked the first question my panicked heart wanted to know. “Would I still see you?”
He shrugged. “You’d see me around I guess. This isn’t a big town.”
“Would we still be friends?”
“I don’t know.”
“Would you talk to me? If you saw me after? Or would you ignore me?”
“I’d be polite.”
“But not more than polite?”
“I don’t rightly know, Jess,” he whispered, and his whisper sounded a bit sad.
Meanwhile, my voice lifted as I challenged, “Well, you need to know, Duane. Because I don’t think I could just date you for a year and then turn my feelings off.”
“But you could leave me for Timbuktu and that would be no problem?”
I huffed, my defensive hackles rising. “I don’t like being made to feel guilty for having dreams and goals. I already get enough sass about this from my family.”
I saw his chest rise and fall with an impressively large and silent breath. His eyes moved between mine for a few seconds before he glanced to his right, shaking his head.
“This. Right here. This is the reason for the twelve-month limit.” When he brought his gaze back to mine it was clear and sober, determined. “If we limit things to the twelve months, then we both know what’s up. We avoid having this conversation ever again—because you leaving doesn’t make any difference. We’ll already be done. You can go and not feel like you’ve left anything behind.”
I considered him, his words, for nearly a full minute, seeing the sincerity painted all over his features.
“You’ve given this some thought.” This came out sounding like an accusation and I didn’t know why.
“Yeah, I have.”
I felt…irritable. But then I realized his proposed plan meant he’d been thinking about me over the last week. He’d been thinking about us and what to do. And that realization made me feel gooey and sentimental.
Therefore, inspired and touched by his consideration of the matter, I blurted before thinking about what I was going to say, “What if we—” then stopped when I realized I was about to say, What if we just do this for real, no time constraints, and I put my travel plans on hold indefinitely?
And that was the moment I realized how much I liked—really liked—Duane Winston. I mean, I knew I liked him before. But my reflexive panic at the thought of a time limit with him, one set in stone, made me feel trapped by my dreams of world travel.
Oh, my dear friend, Irony. How I have not missed you…
I licked my lips then chewed on the bottom one, again as a way to stall speaking my thoughts. My daddy liked to say You can’t have fried pie and not get fat. It was a distorted and much cruder version of the popular You can’t have your cake and eat it too, but the sentiment was the same.
“What if we…?” he prompted when I took a bit too long to continue.
Looking at him, knowing he was serious about this time limit business, I decided to take a different approach: negotiation.
“What if we did a trial period first? Before the twelve months started?”
His eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Why would we do that?”
I had no choice but to wing it, make stuff up. “Because…because it would…be weird and…depressing to pick a year from today, November fourteenth, as the day things end. Right before Thanksgiving and Christmas? No. We should do a six-week trial period and start the twelve month countdown on January first.”
His eyes narrowed more, but his mouth twisted to the side like he was fighting a smile. “You’re just trying to get thirteen and a half months instead of twelve.”
I shrugged. “You caught me. So what if I am? What’s six more weeks in the scheme of things?”