His head jerks up. “Me? Me?! I’m . . .” He scoffs. “I don’t even—”
“What do you want me to say?” I yell, cutting him off. “That every time you look at me, touch me with those stupid gloves, it’s like I can’t catch my breath? That I’m desperate to feel your skin on mine, even if it kills me—literally? Is that what you want to hear?” I take a deep breath, an instant relief washing over me at the release, even though I simultaneously want to throw myself under the couch and hide. But it’s out there now, and I can’t take it back.
“Yes,” he says. “Because even though you’re quite possibly the most stubborn woman I’ve ever met, and have obviously never learned how to use a comb on that crazy mane of yours, and you possess excessive amounts of inane and useless trivia, inexplicably all I want to do is touch you with my stupid gloves.”
I stare at him. “Was that supposed to be a compliment?”
“No,” he says. “But this is: Driving you home from the library is easily the best part of my day. Of any day. And despite your wild hair—or maybe because of it, hell if I know—you’re more beautiful than anyone has a right to be. But more than that, you have somehow become the light shining into the dark and narrow tunnel that has been my life these past few years. And I don’t want to let you go.”
My breath catches in my throat. “You don’t?”
“No.”
Tears spring to my eyes as we stare at each other, a heavy silence settling over us, fraught with tension. I sit there waiting for the euphoria—the great joy at knowing it wasn’t all in my head, that he feels the same way I do—but it doesn’t come.
“Well, I don’t see what any of it matters,” I say, the anger at his leaving blooming fresh again.
“But what about the treatment?”
“What about it?” I snap.
“Don’t you want to at least try it?”
“What’s the point?” I say, though not even a month ago, when the thought of not being able to ever touch Eric became unbearable, I was almost convinced to do it. Almost. “What—are you going to wait around in New Hampshire to see if it works?”
“Yeah, why not? It’s just five hours. We could still see each other.”
Though I’m flattered, I know he’s still just holding on to the fantasy that I’ve been living in the past few months. It’s time to face reality. “Eric, listen to yourself! Your whole life is there, your daughter. Mine is here. But even forgetting all that, Dr. Zhang said it could take up to a year to even find the protein, never mind the time it will take to do the therapy. And what if it never works? You’d just wait forever—not move on with your life?” I sigh, some of the anger dissipating. “I wouldn’t expect you to wait—I could never let you do that.”
“Then don’t do it for me!” he explodes. “Do it for yourself. Stop living your life like you’re terrified of it, squirreled away in your house with all your books. You deserve more, Jubilee! God, you deserve so much more.”
I stare at him, stunned. I open my mouth to shout back at him—how dare he tell me how to live my life? But then I see his olive-green eyes, the passion in them, the same pain that mirrors mine—and the last bit of fight left in me drains away.
A lump forms in my throat. “I’m going to miss you,” I say, my eyes filling, blurring my vision.
“But you don’t have to, you know,” he says. “We can keep in touch. I’ll call. Email. I want to know how you’re doing. What you’re doing.” Then he smiles and adds: “What you’re reading.”
I stare at him, taking this in. It sounds so tempting, staying in his life. Hearing his voice on the phone. But I realize I don’t want just his voice. I don’t want just a piece of him. Maybe it’s greedy, but I want all of him. And I can’t have him. And inevitably someone else will. What happens when he starts dating someone? Am I supposed to grin and bear it like I’m just another friend in his life? The thought alone guts me.
I shake my head at him slowly. “I can’t,” I say. “It’s just . . . I can’t.” I want to tell him why, to explain that it’s not fair to me—or to him, really—but what does fair have to do with anything? The world is unfair. Merciless and punishing. And looking at the pain in his eyes, I realize that’s something he already knows.
He bobs his head slowly like a boat rocking on gentle waves. And then rubs both hands over his face. I stare at them, the knobby knuckles, the strong veins coursing from his fingers to his wrists, and I feel a last pang in my heart, knowing with utter, devastating confidence that I’ll never feel their touch on my skin.
“So this is it,” he says with a finality that I knew was coming—that was inevitable—but that I wasn’t really ready for. An ache starts in my core and radiates throughout my bones, my limbs, like the reverberation of a gong that’s been struck by a giant. And I realize then that I have never known pain. Not really. Not when the kids taunted me on my bench at recess, not when Donovan kissed me and set fire to my throat, constricting my airway, not even when my mother died. Not until this moment, staring into Eric’s eyes and feeling the full unfairness of this being the end, when we never even got to have a beginning.
“What do we do now?” I ask, my voice cracking with emotion. I’m barely aware of water dropping to the floor from my eyes.
Eric stands up, and I know this is it. This is good-bye. And I almost wish he had never come at all. Almost.
“Now,” he says, his eyes growing dark as he grabs the blanket draped over the back of the couch. He starts unfolding it, bit by bit. He holds an end in each hand, stretching is out as far as his arms will reach. “I am going to suffocate you.”
My body involuntarily pulls back, confused, and then I remember our conversation in the car. Me blubbering on and on about my mom. And a chuckle escapes my throat, and then I’m full-on laughing.
“C’mere, you,” he says.
I stand on shaky legs and fall into the blanket, into him. He wraps me up like a burrito, holding me tight. My shoulders shudder from laughing, but he doesn’t let go.
Not even when his shoulders start to match the movement of mine. Not even when neither one of us is laughing anymore.
twenty-six
ERIC