“No?” Miles gives a hoarse laugh. “How is that a response to what I just said? I just told you I love you, Daphne.”
“And I’m telling you no.” I undo my seat belt with trembling hands. “You don’t get to say that to me. You don’t get to disappear, and then show up and buy me fucking fudge and pick me up from work, and tell me you love me—”
“I do love you,” he cries.
My breath comes fast. “You can’t just throw that out there like it makes everything better. I didn’t need an I love you or a box of fudge or whatever big plan you had to make it up to me. I don’t even like surprises! None of that stuff matters when you don’t show up for the little things, and if you loved me, you’d know that.”
I fumble with the lock on the car door, shove it open.
“What are you doing?” Miles asks, his voice wrenching upward.
“I’m getting out,” I stammer.
“Why?” he says.
It’s mostly stopped raining now. Even if it hadn’t, the storm wouldn’t have stopped me.
“You know the worst part?” I force out as I turn back to him on watery legs. “I wasn’t even worried when I walked out of work and you weren’t there. I didn’t worry for the first hour. And when I did, it was for you. That’s how much I trusted you.”
How safe I’d felt.
His lips part, the hard lines of his face going lax. “And, what?” he says, his voice so thin it’s nearly a whisper. “All of that’s just gone now?”
The softness in his eyes and voice makes me feel like something inside my rib cage is tearing. I don’t want to hurt him.
I just don’t want him to hurt me either.
I can’t let myself be absorbed into this.
“There’s a job,” I blurt. “Close to my mom. I’m interviewing, next week.”
His mouth falls open again, his eyes oily dark. He presses his lips together again, swallows. “So that’s it. You’re leaving.”
“That was always the plan.” The words quiver out of me. I steel myself to go on: “We knew this wouldn’t work. No matter how much fun we have together.”
His features flash first with hurt, then acceptance. After a second, he says, “Got it.”
The clouds overhead are breaking up, and the tears are working their way down my face. “Storm’s over,” I whisper. “I’ll walk from here.”
He looks back to the steering wheel, and quickly wipes at the corner of his eye, which makes my heart feel like it’s shattering.
I shut the door and turn away, listening to his engine receding, unable to watch him disappear.
After a minute, I start to walk. The fairy-tale cottage’s drapes are open, its windows aglow.
Inside, three people amble past. A blazer-wearing woman slightly ahead of a young couple, arm in arm, laughing at something she said.
A Realtor selling a couple on the life they could have there.
The late nights binge-watching The X-Files on the couch they picked out together, the early mornings making toast while they’re still too tired to speak, the kids who will earn their first scars in the backyard and badly practice instruments at inconvenient times, and the way their favorite candle’s scent will gradually infuse the walls so that every time they come back from a trip, exhausted, and dump their bags inside the door, they’ll smell that they’re where they belong.
All those moments throughout the days, weeks, months that don’t get marked on calendars with hand-drawn stars or little stickers.
Those are the moments that make a life.
Not grand gestures, but mundane details that, over time, accumulate until you have a home, instead of a house.
The things that matter.
The things I can’t stop longing for.
There’s only one place that feeling exists for me, only one person with whom I belong.
“Honey?” Mom answers right away. “What’s up?”
“You’re busy,” I say.
“No, no, hold on a second.” The voices fade, then cut out as she closes a door. “What’s up?”
“Mom. You’re clearly in the middle of something,” I say.
“I’m never too busy for you,” she says. “Tell me what’s going on.”
Where to start? “Dad came to visit.”
“Oh, shit,” she says. “That’s what he wanted your address for? I thought he was just mailing you something.”
