Page 37 of A Fine Line
My chest expanded and lowered rapidly. Saying it out loud…letting it all out…
“I don’t know if you’ll get it.”
“Try me.” His eyes were a challenge. Pushing, testing, trying hard to see a lie behind my eyes and I knew somehow if I didn’t tell him it was going to make our partnership even more strained. And if I did tell him, every horrible piece of it, the flood gates would open. Everything I refused to allow myself to remember would come rushing in and taking over my every reason.
Still, it felt like I had all of this pressure building behind my eyes. A geyser with a cork popped in it, ready to blow any minute. And the thought of releasing it…sounded better than any trip home or any five thousand dollar reward.
“The family I grew up with, the town I was in,” I paused and collected my ever growing thoughts. “Everyone knew everyone. And everything. I kind of hated it when I was in high school. If I even so much as bought UTI medication at our pharmacy it was spread around town like wildfire. The whole place just mademe angry. Everyone acted like I was so predictable, so easy and simple and I dunno…two dimensional. ‘That’s just Winnie’ or ‘Oh, you know Winnie.’ I wanted to prove them wrong, everyone wrong. So, I started dating a guy from one town over. Someone they expected least. Someone who was tolerable enough for me to actually love him over time, but also someone that my family would never truly see me with.”
I glanced up to see if Crew was following, his eyes didn’t showcase much- they were focused over my shoulder but still he nodded for me to keep going.
“So, we dated. For years and when the time came he asked if I wanted to move here with him for some kind of dentist thing, I thought this is it. No one would ever suspect this. I thought I would find something new and special about myself in a bigger, more crowded city where no one cared if I bought UTI medicine on a Thursday or that I was eating out for the fifth time this week. I told Marshall that I would come if we were engaged. So he rushed to get a ring that day and that was that. My entire family warned me not to. My nana especially. They dug into the fact that I belonged there and that he was awful for me. I just thought they didn’t know me, didn’t know him. I thought we would move out here and make a name for ourselves.”
One of us did. One of us got a billboard and a new exciting life and the other one was left with empty dreams, empty wallet, and a vastly empty apartment.
“But then I got here and I got lost. I wanted to go to pharmacy school like I thought about in high school, but the time came and went and I just didn’t. Marshall liked me at home more. I always liked baking when I was younger. I picked it back up again and I learned baking is kind of like science and that they go hand in hand so I baked…a lot. I was home all the time so I just would sit in the kitchen for hours and when he got home he seemed soexcited I thought maybe I was meant to just be a wife? Maybe this was all I was good for now.”
Crew let out a low grumble, confirmation he was listening enough for me to continue.
“I left everything behind me for him. I cut off family members one by one. I never made friends here, how could I? I didn’t work and I stayed in the kitchen all day listening to various podcasts and TV dramas. I just became nothing but his wife. And I waited and waited One day I walked in on him and someone else and I think it solidified it all to me. How much I can’t handle the city…the noises, the lights. It hit how badly I missed home. How I wanted to visit so bad but then I knew if I did, if I left, it would be admitting they were all right. Everyone who predicted everything there was right about me and my lack of purpose and I would have to crawl home with my tail tucked between my leg so I just…didn’t tell them. For a while. I kept the pictures up and just deleted all social media apps, not bothering to post or change anything. I just wanted it to look like to my family that I was too busy for such things. I kept it for so long, until like a year ago really when my nana kept pestering why I never talked about him anymore. I think she always knew, really.”
Crew took a moment. We both did.
I hadn’t meant to spill out that much. The plan, or lack thereof, was to simply say yes I was once engaged but we were separated. I didn’t change my status and when we met it was still like that even months and months had passed. But, like most things with Crew, my mind kind of took the backseat. And everything around me settled into nothingness. And truth be told, it felt incredible to say it to anyone who wasn’t Lottie.
“So, you actually weren’t engaged? You’re serious?”
I nodded.
He muttered the smallest, “Oh…” and we sat next to each other in almost complete silence, beyond the occasional car horn or steady traffic far off from his windows.
I sniffed a little and sat down in the barstool I pulled up earlier, my back hunched and shoulders slumped over.
When the silence between us got to be too much I said, “You can apologize now for being a dick.”
He cackled, loud and proud, vibrating all the way to my toes. It made me smile too. The corners of my lips unzipped slightly, tugging on the ends to match his halfway smirk.
His arms tightened around his chest. “Well, when you put it like that I don’t want to.”
Our eyes met, soft and slow. A trace of understanding between them. Between both of us. Knowing we were both in the wrong on this, and blaming just me or just him for us never simply communicating was going to be incredibly difficult now. Even if I’d started the whole thing, looking at Crew, I saw the guilt in his eyes too. Over lost time and wasted argumentized breaths. We’d both screwed this whole thing up.
Looking at him with the same gaze as before was going to be impossible. Labeling Crew as a reckless, bull-in-a-China-shop kind of man felt wrong now, knowing every bit of this was on me as it was him.
He turned from me, back to his cutting board. And I turned back to my bowl, playing this game of pretend as if I could do anything but let my mind run its course right now. My hands were useless, my fingers circling the rim of the bowl, shaking flour and sugar like there was anything worthwhile inside of it.
“Can we try again?” I whispered, as if my body felt treacherous just letting it out.
Crews consistent chopping paused, his movements frozen in time. “Try again?”
“Yeah, like hit a reset button or…something.”
“You threatened to feed MiraLAX to pigeons and lead them to my truck last week.”
I scoffed and rolled my eyes. For someone who can’t remember a recipe he sure could remember everything I’d done wrong in my life.
“Yes, but that was before. And I only said that because you brought up the laxatives first. If we’re going to get passed this you have to wipe the slate clean.”
Crew looked over his shoulder at me and for the first time in the last five years the half smile he wore wasn’t off, wasn’t a ruse for something else he was planning behind my back, wasn’t warning of danger signs and wasn’t giving me a headache knowing there was about to be an entire battle in our shared parking lot.