I’m still working on regaining the power of speech.
“You didn’t say goodbye,” he says.
The best I can do in that moment is “I couldn’t.”
His brows pinch. The moment holds.
“Is that all?” I ask.
“What?”
“Did you drive all the way here to say goodbye?” I say.
He scratches the back of his head, glances sidelong toward the thicket of trees at the edge of the lot, then back to me. The corners of his mouth twist, and my heart mimics the motion, wringing every last bit of love into my veins.
“Why aren’t you on the plane?” he says.
“It’s going in the wrong direction.”
His brow tenses on a slight shake of his head.
“You said I need to figure out what I want,” I say. “That I can’t keep doing what other people think is right for me.”
“I meant it.” His voice rattles.
“Does that include you?” I ask.
“What do you mean?” he says.
“I mean . . .” I move close enough to breathe him in, my shoulders melting with relief at his nearness. “Do you get to tell me what will or won’t make me happy?”
His brow furrows. “I wasn’t trying to do that.”
“You were,” I say. “And I get why. I could come out to Montana, and maybe someday I realize I want to—I don’t know—get into clowning or something.”
One side of his mouth quirks. “Clowning?”
“Or marine biology,” I say. “I have to leave to study whales, or octopi.”
“Closer,” he allows.
“And everything could implode again,” I say. “Worse than last time. So badly we couldn’t find our way back to each other.”
His chin dips once, his voice abrading. “It could.”
“You’re right that I don’t know what I want to do next,” I admit. “I’m going to have to find some other job that I hate a little less and chip away at my loans while I figure it out. But I know what I don’t want.
“I don’t want to be tired all the time. I don’t want to be on opposite schedules from everyone I love, or on call during dates. I don’t want to be on my feet for eight hours at a time and have my knuckles bleed in the winter from overwashing my hands. I don’t want to feel like I don’t have time or energy to try anything new because everything I have is getting poured into a job I don’t even like. I don’t want to live my life like it’s a triathlon and all that matters is getting to some imaginary ribbon. I want my life to be like—like making pottery. I want to enjoy it while it’s happening, not just for where it might get me eventually.
“And I don’t want to be across the country from you. Or your family. I don’t want to miss a single holiday with them. I don’t want to go to sleep without being able to put my feet on your calves to warm them up, and I don’t want to say goodbye to your rodeo shirt, and I don’t want to let you leave here without understanding that I trust myself on this. And you can tell me to go right now, and I will, but you don’t get to think it’s noble. You don’t get to think you’re right.”
His eyes widen. “Right about what?”
“About all of it!” I cry. “That I don’t want you! That you can’t make me happy! That if I go back to California right now it has anything to do with what I want. That you’re the lucky one in this relationship when it’s obviously always been me. That Grocery Gladiators is a real game, and that it makes any sense to put glasses on the bottom rack of the dishwasher. You can tell me no, Wyn, but you can’t tell yourself it’s what I want. If you’re too afraid, if you can’t have faith in me, then tell me to go, but don’t convince yourself it’s what I wanted.”
“Harriet,” he says coarsely.
My heart teeter-totters in my chest, readying itself to fly skyward or plummet.
Wyn takes hold of my face. “I am scared.”
A beat of quiet. Nothing but our breath and the icy wind fluttering a curl across my face.
“Oh,” I breathe out.
His slight smile unzips me, vertebra by vertebra. His fingers slip back into my hair. His jaw works as he swallows. “When I woke up this morning, the bed was already cold where you’re supposed to be.”
His gaze lifts, so light and clear, hardly any fog.
“I would’ve done anything to bring you back to me for one last minute,” he says. “But I couldn’t, so I followed you. And if you hadn’t come out here, I would’ve bought a ticket. And if I got inside and you were already boarded, I would’ve gotten on the plane. I would’ve waited until we landed in Boston to talk to you. And if somehow I missed you in deboarding, I would’ve found your next gate to talk. And as I was driving here, watching this stupid fucking plan form for how I would get to you and say goodbye in person, I realized why we can do this.”
My heart whirs, lifts toward him as if pulled by a magnet. “Why?”
He smiles down at me, and it feels like a fist on my heart, a tight hug that verges on a heart attack. “Because there’s nowhere I wouldn’t go for you. And if you get out to Montana and realize there’s somewhere else you need to be, there’s nothing I’m not willing to do to make it work. I’d rather have you five days a year than anyone else all the time. I’d rather argue with you than not talk, and whether we’re together or we’re not, I’m yours, so let’s be together, Harriet. As much as we can. As long as we can. As soon as we can. Everything else, we’ll figure out later.”
“Wyn,” I whisper shakily. His fingers twitch, tightening through my curls. “Are you saying I can come home?”
“I’m saying,” he murmurs softly, “it’s not home unless you’re there.”
My arms twine around him, my heart speeding wildly as the wind batters us. “I love you,” I tell him.
“In every universe.” He kisses me then, a windblown curl caught between our lips. Like it’s a first and a last. The end of one era and the beginning of another.
This, I know, is exactly where I want to be.
39
REAL LIFE
A Monday
THE DAY I withdraw from my residency, I call my parents to give them the news.
They are, understandably, shocked. They want to fly to San Francisco immediately.
“Let’s talk this out,” Dad says.
“We can help you figure out what’s going on here,” Mom says.
“Don’t make any decisions until we can get there,” Dad says.
They have never once visited me.
The irony of it all strikes me then: working so hard to earn their love and pride, and it’s brought me no closer to them. If anything, I think maybe it’s kept them at a distance.
“I already made the decision,” I tell them. “I withdrew. But I’m going to pay back the rest of the loans myself. I don’t want you to worry about that.”
Mom starts to cry. “I don’t understand where this is coming from.”
“It’s out of nowhere,” Dad agrees.
“It’s not,” I say. “It’s taken me years to make this decision. And I already found another job.”
“A job? What job?” Mom asks.
“At a pottery studio,” I say.
“Pottery?” Dad sounds like I just pitched him a multi-level marketing scheme selling methamphetamine for dogs.