Diana smiled at me, a half-smile that made my stomach drop to my knees because it was unexpectedly the most beautiful expression I’d ever seen. “Other than Ari and the money mystery, how was today?”
“Today. Today was medium good. Bad warmed over.” What she meant was, how sad was I today. How much did I miss Win. “It sucks, though. Because the days that’re not total shitshows, I feel guilty. Like do I deserve to be fine, helping customers, watching TV, drinking this coffee?”
“You do,” she said. “What good would it do if you’re never allowed to be happy again?”
“What good would anything do? Who says good things have to happen?”
She stirred her water with the straw. “I used to think that there was a fixed amount of good and bad for every person. That they had to balance each other out. That my cat’s kidneys failing meant that I was paying for having fun on the weekend or something. That he’s sick not because he’s old but because—” She looked at me, flushed, and looked down again. “Because I spent time with you.”
“I never touched the cat.” I had to make a joke or melt into the floor and die, and she rolled her eyes, like she should. “But you know that whole theory’s bullshit, right?”
“I don’t know. It’s sort of what hekamists do. They mix up what you’ve been given, but there’s always a balance.”
“That’s different from real life. Sometimes things suck ass and they don’t get better. Some people have no worries in the entire world forever—there’s no balance.”
“I mostly agree.” She bit her straw and looked at me. “But you should listen to yourself. Just because Win died doesn’t mean that you’re not allowed to be happy.”
I drank my coffee. I didn’t let my hands shake. I breathed normally. Looked around the diner—anywhere but at Diana. It was funny to me that I didn’t used to think she was pretty. I must’ve only seen a fraction of her, like looking through dirty glass. She was too beautiful now. And I didn’t care what she said. I didn’t deserve to be happy.
The diner was full of people, and I knew most of them. I could’ve gone up to any of their tables and started a conversation about nothing and they would’ve accepted me—no, they would’ve loved to have me there. The surface Markos could do all the work, and it would have been painless. We wouldn’t have to talk about anything serious. We could make up new jokes, instead of missing the ones we used to have. I could ask one of the girls out. Easy, not painful. I wouldn’t care enough to be afraid to do anything beyond hand-holding.
So why else was I torturing myself with Diana, if I didn’t think I should be living in pain?
The room started to feel stifling, and I grabbed a couple dollars from my pocket. “I gotta go,” I said.
“Really? But we’ve only been—”
I was at the door already, ignoring the shouts hello from the other tables and Diana calling my name. Out in the parking lot in the humid night I gulped down air like I was drowning, and I felt a pressure on my hand.
It was Diana. She ran after me. She was holding my hand, looking at me, concerned.
I kept walking to the car, but she didn’t let go, and when I got there I was dizzy. Too dizzy to pull my keys from my pocket. The streetlights pulsed and I closed my eyes.
Diana stepped in front of me, between me and the car door, facing me, holding my hand. I could smell her hair and her body and could feel it through the layers of clothes between us. With her free hand she reached into the front pocket of my jeans for my keys. I wasn’t breathing. Her breath moved the fibers of my shirt against my chest. She was there. Right there. In between me and the car door. I was a statue—a man trapped in marble, blood pumping, without the strength to break the stone and move.
Holy shit.
It hurt so bad. A hurt that told me I was alive.
Any second she was going to turn and open the car door and the incredible pain would be over, but I didn’t want it to be. I wanted to hurt like this forever.
Her pulse beat in my hand.
I guess you could call it self-control keeping me from kissing her, but it was more that I wanted the pain more than I wanted her.
But then it occurred to me that if I leaned forward, this type of pain—the wanting type—might end, but a new pain would begin. The pain and regret and remorse and stupidity of having ruined something wonderful.
And that’s what I’m good at—ruining things.
I took a breath and so did she and I leaned in and I kissed her and she kissed me and the parking lot and the car and the diner and Win all vanished. It was the perfect horrible moment, everything I’d wanted for weeks and everything I was scared of, the beginning and the end all at once.
She kissed back and I could feel her smiling, and that ache for her didn’t go away; it grew and grew.