It wasn’t necessary. I could have stayed at the table. I could have finished my meal and told him to take me home and stay at his place. I could have done lots of things. I had plenty of options. But at the time it felt like I had one option and that option was to take my coat, put it on, call him an asshole under my breath, and walk out.
It wasn’t until I was standing in the rain without the valet ticket that I started to realize all of the other options I had. I saw him through the restaurant’s front window. I saw him look around for a waiter. I saw him flag one down and hand over a wad of cash. I saw him grab his jacket. I just stood outside in the cold rain, hugging my jacket tighter around myself, shivering a bit and wondering what I was going to say to him when he came out. I was starting to feel pretty stupid for walking out. I was starting to feel like the stupidity of my walking out had eclipsed his insensitivity.
As he headed out to the front door, I saw through the window that he checked his phone and it was lit up again. I saw him put the call through to voice mail for the third time in ten minutes, and I grew angry again. Jealousy was so ugly. It made me feel so ugly.
I felt the gust of warm air as he opened the door and came out. When it shut, I went back to being freezing cold again.
“Elsie—” he started to say. I couldn’t read this tone. I didn’t know if he was going to be contrite, defensive, or irritated, so I interrupted him.
“Look,” I said, closing my jacket tighter, raising my voice to be heard above the sounds of car wheels speeding through shallow puddles. “I may not be conducting myself all that well right now, but that’s a hell of a thing to say to me!”
“You can’t just walk out on me in the middle of a goddamn restaurant!” he yelled. I hadn’t seen him yell like that before.
“I can do whatever I—”
“No!” he said. “You can’t. You can’t punish me for something that happened before I met you and you can’t punish me for what Amber—”
“Don’t say her name!”
“This is not a big deal!” he said to me. “If you knew the way I think about you and the way I think about her, this would not be a big deal.” He was choking over his words as the rain snuck into his mouth.
“What does that even mean?” I said. “Don’t you think that if the situation were reversed—”
“I would be jealous, yeah. To think about another guy touching you, or you . . . touching him. Yeah. I’d be jealous.”
“See?”
“But I wouldn’t leave you there in the middle of a restaurant looking like an idiot. I wouldn’t worry you like that.”
“Oh, c’mon. You weren’t worried.”
“Yes, Elsie, yes, I was.”
“What did you think was going to happen?”
“I don’t know!” he said, raising his voice again. I was so cold. The rain was so loud. “I thought maybe that this was . . . ”
“Over?”
“I don’t know!”
“It’s not over,” I said. “Just because I got upset doesn’t mean that I don’t want . . . ” Suddenly, I wanted to hold him and make sure he knew I wasn’t going anywhere. His vulnerability was so tender and touching, I almost couldn’t stand it. I put my hand out and smiled at him. “Besides,” I said. “We can’t break up for another few weeks.”
He wasn’t smiling. “It’s not funny,” he said, his shoulders hunched, combating the rain. “I don’t want to lose you.”
I looked him straight in the eye and I told him what I couldn’t believe he didn’t already know. “Ben Ross, I’m not leaving you.” Before I could even get out the last syllable, he had thrown his body against mine, his lips against my mouth. It was sloppy and imperfect. Our teeth hit, making the side of my lip sting. But it was the moment I knew Ben loved me. I could feel it. I could feel that he loved me in a raw and real way, when it’s not all rainbows and butterflies, when sometimes it’s fear. I could feel his fear in that kiss and I could feel the desperation in his relief. It was intoxicating and it made me feel just a little less alone. The way we felt about each other, it made him do stupid things too.