She knew it was over before he said it. Maybe because he wouldn’t sit down. He stood near the window with his hands in his pockets, wearing that maddening composure she knew so well.
“So that’s it,” she said. He looked at her. “I don’t know what else you want me to say.” “Something.” “We’ve said everything.” “No.I’ve said everything. You’ve mostly stood there.”
His jaw tightened, and she felt a small, mean flare of satisfaction. There. At least she could still get to him.
“You’ve made up your mind,” she said. “You’ve made up yours.” “No. I told you what I wanted.” “And I told you I can't give you that.” “Can’t or won’t?” “Does it fucking matter?” “Yes!” The word landed hard.
For years they had managed not to look too closely at the difference between what she wanted and what he was willing to give. What they had was too good to risk examining the edges.
They had laughed constantly and fought spectacularly. They had talked about everything and nothing, knew each other’s moods and silences and tells, could irritate each other beyond reason and be laughing again five minutes later. They had been friends before they were anything else. Maybe that was why this hurt so much.
“I was happy with us,” she said. “I know.” “Stop saying that.” “What?” “I know. Like knowing makes this better.” “What do you want from me?” “I want you to care that you’re losing me.”
His expression changed, something moving fast behind his eyes. “You don’t get to say that.” “Why not?” “Because you know better.” “Do I?” “Yes.” The word cracked between them. “You know exactly what you’ve meant to me.” “Then why are you so fucking calm?” “You think I’m calm?” “Look at you.” “I’m trying very hard to be.” “Well, stop.” His eyes narrowed. “Why?” “Because I don’t want your restraint right now.” “What do you want?” “You.”
The silence that followed had weight. She hadn’t meant to say it. Or maybe she had.
“I wanted you,” she said, quieter now. “That’s all this ever was.” “And you had me.” “Parts of you.”
He flinched. She saw it, and some small vicious part of her thought: good.
“I would have stayed,” she said. “I would have kept figuring it out, because losing you was the one thing I never wanted.” “You think I wanted this?” “I think you’re choosing it.” “You keep saying that like I had a good choice.” “You had me.” “And you had me.”
She shoved him. Hard. He barely moved, he had always been bigger than her, annoyingly, ridiculously bigger, and somehow that made it worse.
“Don’t,” he said.
She shoved him again. His hands closed around her wrists.
“Let go.” “No.” “Why? Afraid I might make you feel something?”
His grip tightened. “Don’t do that.” “Do what? Get through all that fucking control?” “You have no idea what I’m feeling.” “Then show me.” His eyes flashed. “Careful.”
“No.” She pulled against his hands and got nowhere. “God, I hate you when you do this. You shut everything down and stand there being reasonable while I’m fucking falling apart.” “You think I’m not falling apart?” “I think you’re a coward.”
Something in him broke. She watched it happen, watched it move across his face like weather.
“Take that back.” “No.” “You don’t mean it.” “Don’t tell me what I mean.” “I know you.” “Apparently not well enough.” “That isn’t fair.” “Neither is losing you!”
The words tore out of her, ragged and too loud. For a second neither of them moved. Then she pushed against him again, uselessly.
“Let me go.” “No.” “You’re an asshole.” “So you’ve mentioned.”
She almost laughed. Goddamn him. Even now, even here at the end of everything, he could still do that. Then she looked at him, really looked, and whatever almost-laughter had existed disappeared.
“You know what I hate most?”
His eyes stayed on hers.
“You’re going to walk out of here knowing exactly what you’re giving up.”
His face changed. Just slightly. But she knew him well enough to see it. She had always been the one who could find the crack.
“I know,” he said. “Fuck you.”
He kissed her.
She pushed against his chest. Not really fighting him. Not really trying to get away. Still angry. Still heartbroken. He kissed her harder, and his hands changed, restraint turning suddenly to need as he pulled her flush against him. She should have stopped him. Instead her arms went around his neck and she kissed him back, furious, desperate, wanting him anyway.
He lifted her, her legs wrapping around his waist, as he pushed her against the wall. His kiss was almost consuming, every pent-up emotion pouring into it at once:
Anger. Grief. Want. Years.
She couldn’t tell anymore whether the kiss was angry or sensual. His mouth demanded and hers answered, their bodies speaking the language that had always come too easy to them.
Don’t leave. Don’t ask me to stay. I can’t lose you. I can’t give you what you need.
Powerful and destructive at the same time, because nothing had changed. Tomorrow still existed. The ending still existed. But she couldn’t let go of him yet.
Eventually their mouths broke apart, and they stayed pressed together, breathing hard, his forehead against hers. His thumb swept across her cheek.
“I never wanted to hurt you.” Her throat tightened. “I know.”
And somehow those two words hurt more than everything that had come before. Because she did know. That was the problem. There was no one to hate.
She touched his face. “I love you.”
He went very still. He didn’t say it back. Instead he kissed her hard again and carried her to the bedroom, her legs still wrapped around him, and dropped her onto the bed, coming down on top of her. He didn’t return the words then either, probably because he was too busy tearing their clothes off, frantic to be inside her.
When his mouth found hers again, there was nothing careful about it. She met him with the same urgency, pulling him closer when there was nowhere closer to go, kissing him like she was furious with him for leaving and furious with herself for still wanting him this badly. Because God, she wanted him. Even now. Especially now. He shoved her legs apart with the same rough urgency and thrust into her, and she cried out in surprise, grateful her body had always responded to him so easily, because it could have hurt otherwise.
There was anger in it, but not only anger; there was too much history for anything between them to be only one thing. Years were in his hands. Years were in her mouth against his. Laughter and arguments and stupid private jokes, long conversations and comfortable silences, desire that had never needed explaining. The ease of knowing each other this way and the frustration of never quite wanting the same thing at the same time. Every time she had reached for more, every time he had held the line, and all of it was here now.
He was rougher than usual, urgency overriding finesse, and she answered him with equal desperation. He took her wildly, passionately, almost violently, gripping her hips and arching her up, taking her like there was no patience left between them, no reason to save anything for later. There wasn't going to be a later. The thought nearly broke her, so she pushed it away and pulled him closer instead.
He knew her too well. Even angry, even unraveling, he knew exactly how to touch her, exactly how to make her forget for a few seconds why they were there. And she knew him. She knew the difference between his anger and his need, and tonight they were tangled together along with everything else. Want and frustration, tenderness and grief, fourteen different kinds of love they had never bothered to name. She kissed him harder because she couldn't bear to think, and his hands tightened on her as though he couldn't bear to think either.
For those few frantic minutes, there was no argument to solve and no impossible thing standing between them. There was only this terrible, familiar chemistry, the two of them knowing each other by instinct, their bodies refusing to understand what their minds already had.
A tear slipped down her cheek. Then another.
He noticed. Of course he noticed. His expression changed, and his hand came to her face, and that tenderness was worse than the anger.
"Don't," she whispered.
He stilled.
She shook her head and pulled him back to her. "Don't stop."
So he kissed her again, and this time she could taste her own tears between them. She clung to him and let herself have the whole impossible thing at once: the pleasure and the anger, the years and the wanting, the man who knew how to make her laugh until she couldn't breathe and the man who was about to walk out of her life. It was messy and desperate and achingly familiar. It was them. One last time.
When the orgasm tore through her she cried out his name and shuddered and wept all at once, pleasure and grief impossible to tell apart. Her body loved him without complication, the way it always had, even as her heart shattered beneath him. He thrust three more times and stilled inside her, breathing like a man who had run a long way to get nowhere.
She buried her face against him and cried. He held her through it, and that nearly destroyed her too. Because even now, at the very end, he was still himself. And she was still herself.
And together they were still so fucking good.
The room grew quiet. Whatever fury had carried them into bed had burned itself out, leaving only the sadness underneath it. She lay beside him, her head on his chest, his hand resting against her hip.
“As far as the sex goes,” she said finally, “I could have stopped it.”
He turned toward her, his brow raised.
“I knew what was happening. I knew you were angry. I just loved you enough to take your anger, knowing I partly deserved it.”
He groaned and closed his eyes. When he opened them again he said, “You didn’t deserve it.” “I pushed.” “You didn’t deserve it.” “I brought us back to the one thing we could never agree about.” “So?” “So maybe I should have left it alone... I could have.” “And then what?”
She didn’t answer.
“You would have swallowed it again until the next time it bothered you.” “Maybe.” “You wanted something I couldn’t give you.” “Wouldn’t.” A flicker of irritation crossed his face. “Fine. Wouldn’t.”
She looked away. His fingers found her chin and turned her back toward him.
“That doesn’t mean you deserved to be punished for wanting it.”
Her eyes filled again. “Then why does it feel like we’re both being punished?”
He had no answer. He pulled her against him instead, and they stayed that way for a long time.
“I wish what we had could have stayed enough,” she whispered. His arms tightened. “So do I.”
She closed her eyes. That was almost worse than if he’d disagreed. Because what they had had been enough, for years. It had been beautiful. Complicated and imperfect and occasionally infuriating, but beautiful. They hadn’t stopped being good together. They had simply reached the place where one of them needed something the other couldn’t give.
Eventually he moved. “I should go.” “Probably.”
Neither of them moved. A minute passed. Then another.
“You’re doing a terrible job of leaving,” she said. “I noticed.”
She smiled against his chest, and then immediately started crying again.
“Shit.” She pressed closer. “I’m going to miss you so fucking much.”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. She felt it in the way his arms tightened around her.
Eventually he dressed, and she watched every ordinary movement of it. Shirt. Pants. Shoes. She wondered why nobody ever told you that this was what endings looked like. Not screaming in the rain. Someone putting on his socks.
When he was ready, they stood facing each other. Then she stepped into his arms, and he held her immediately, like he’d been waiting for permission to. She pressed her face against his chest and breathed him in.
“I love you.” The second time. The last time.
His arms tightened. He didn’t say it back. She hadn’t expected him to.
After a while she whispered, “You have to let me go.”
He didn’t. Not immediately. That was an answer too.
Eventually his arms loosened. She put on her robe and walked with him. At the door, he looked back, and years lived in the silence between them.
“I’m going to miss you,” she said. “I know.” She gave a watery laugh. “I fucking hate you.” His mouth curved into that familiar smile. “No, you don’t.” “No,” she whispered. She didn’t. That would have been easier.
Then he left, and she closed the door quietly behind him.
For several seconds she kept her hand on the knob. She could still open it. She could run after him, tell him she had changed her mind, that she could live with less, that she would stop asking, that they could go back to the way things had been before they pulled at the one loose thread in something otherwise beautiful. But she knew better now. Eventually they would find themselves here again. So she let her hand fall.
And that was when she understood what was actually going to hurt. Not tonight. Tonight was enormous. It was tomorrow she was afraid of. Tomorrow there would be something funny she would want to tell him. Next week she would hear a song and think of him. Months from now something wonderful would happen, and for one unguarded second she would reach for him before remembering there was nowhere left to reach. She would keep collecting all the tiny things she had handed him casually for years, because she had assumed there would always be somewhere to put them.
They hadn’t stopped caring. That would have been simpler. They hadn’t stopped wanting each other. They hadn’t even stopped being good together. They had simply reached the place where caring about each other could no longer solve what they wanted from each other.
She slid down against the door and let herself really cry. There was no betrayal to let her hate him. No cruelty that could make the years ugly.
@HikingMan It is fiction, mostly, but it's my way of processing grief. Thank you for reading it and for your kind words. I know it's long. I just kept writing. 😄 I love that you liked it.
@HikingMan Thank you so much. That means a lot to me, and I really appreciate that you like my writing. I just write what I feel. And I also appreciate your sincerity and authenticity. Those are becoming rarer in this world, especially online.
