Right. Not happening. I quickly stop in the bathroom, smoothing my hair up into a ponytail and squirting a bit of Crest into my mouth. I know he won’t apologize, so I’ll play it cool. I will take the keys, write him a check, and send him on his merry way.
I take a few deep breaths when I reach the door, to steel myself. I will be tough. I will be iron, I chant to myself.
“Hey,” he says when I answer. My resolve crumbles immediately. He has his baseball cap backwards and his hands dug deep in his pockets, like a little boy. I melt like a popsicle on the hottest day of summer.
I look past him, at the car, because those eyes will do their thing and make me even more his than I already am. “You fixed it,” I say, trying to keep my voice hard.
He nods, pulls open the screen door, and motions me to follow him outside. “Yeah. The engine’s so fucking sweet it puts all other cars to shame. Your brakes were shit, too, so I got new pads. . .” He keeps going on and on. I walk behind him, into the fading daylight, as he leads me around it, showing it off. There’s no doubt—the car is beautiful now. Not good as new, but better than I’ve seen it looking in years. Did he . . . give it a new paint job? What the hell . . . are those new hubcaps? He keeps talking about a mile a minute, about all the improvements he made. Half of the things he says go right past me. Most of it goes right past me.
Because all I want him to do is stop talking about the fucking car and hold me.
“It’s nice, but I can’t pay you for all this,” I break in, while he’s going on about how he changed all the fluids. “I don’t have the money.”
He pulls the key out of his pocket and lays it on my palm. “No charge.”
I take the key and step away. This is his penance. It’s his way of apologizing for screwing me over. But I’m not going to tell him it’s all right, because it’s not.
“Thanks,” I mumble, turning to go back inside. This is it. This is the end.
How can it be the end when every pore in my body is still screaming out for him?
“Wait,” he says.
Thank God.
I whirl around. “Yes.”
“I shouldn’t have done that to you, Katydid. I tried not to. But you’re so damn sweet, and sexy, and . . . I tried to control myself. I really did.” He squeezes his eyes closed for a second. “It’s no excuse. It never would’ve worked between us.”
The excuse only makes me angrier. For me, this was real. Maybe it was even love. But for him, it was his inability to control his stupid libido?
Pathetic.
“I’m so sorry for your lack of control. Maybe you should see a doctor for it.” It takes every ounce of strength I have to shrug with indifference, like him walking away won’t be the most painful thing that’s ever happened to me. “And, sure. If you keep saying it’ll never work, that’s one way to make sure nothing ever works,” I say. “Goodbye, Dax.”
I stomp toward the porch and thankfully, he’s on my heels. He puts his warm hand on my bare arm and whirls me around. “Come on, Katydid. You really think someone like me could ever . . .”
I laugh bitterly. “What does it matter what I think? It’s what you want. You always got on me for doing what my parents expected me to. But you’re so much worse, trying to do what everyone expects you to, keeping up this image as a bad boy who doesn’t care about anyone but himself.”
He holds up his hands. “Now, that’s not right. I—“
“It’s true. And really, at this point I think you’re right. All you’re good for is screwing girl after girl. You said it yourself. That’s who you are and you’re not about to change. And I know why. It’s because you’ve always been scared of change.”
He lets the words sink in, and for a split second, I think that maybe I’ve gotten to him. Maybe I’ve wounded him, just a little bit. But then he rubs the back of his neck and looks at the ground. “Yeah. Huh. That’s what I said.” He lets out a heavy breath and looks back at my VW. “But I’m not all bad, am I, Katydid? Fixed your car.”
He gives me this little boy grin that makes it impossible to hate him. But I fucking do hate him. I hate him for being such a man and for not being enough of a man. “How will you get home?”
“I could do with the walk,” he says. “It’ll give me time to think. You leaving for the city tomorrow?”
I nod, wondering if he’ll have room in that brain of his to even think of me while I’m gone. Or if he’ll forget so easily, like last time.
“Guess this is goodbye, then, huh?”
I don’t want it to be. I need him to grab me and tell me to stay. I think back of when I left for college, and how he told me to go. How I kept wishing he’d show up at my dorm and say he made a mistake. It didn’t happen then, and it won’t happen now.