Page 74 of After You

But she couldn’t read too much into it. An unplanned walk downtown with her was not the same as being spontaneous with bigger things. He definitely needed to go off-script once in a while.

“I do get why you love it here,” she said after they’d walked a couple of blocks.

“I know youdo.”

She looked over. “Do you? You don’t think I’ve abandoned everything because I didn’t appreciate it adequately?”

He shrugged. “I did think that for a while. But that’s not you, I knowthat.”

That surprised her, honestly. “I’m glad. I do love thistown.”

“It’s just not enough foryou.”

She would not put it like that. “It’s not that it’s not enough. It’s probably…because it’s too much.” She almost regretted the words, but it was the truth and at this point, she wasn’t sure it hurt anything more for her to tell him what truth she could.

He didn’t reply right away to that. They walked another block and turned toward Main. Finally, he said, “And I was too much, right?”

Oh boy. She hadn’t expected this walk to turn into some deep conversation. But she couldn’t shy away from it. They needed to talk. She thought about her response. Okay, time for some honesty. She stopped walking and turned to face him. “You were…you. You were exactly who you have always been. You knew what you wanted and you made no secrets of it. So, actually, you were…easy. In a way.” That much was definitely true. There wasn’t any question what her life here would have beenlike.

“Because I’m predictable?”

“Yes.” And God knew that there was a lot to be said for predictability. “I knew exactly what you wanted and needed and…I realized I wasn’tit.”

“On your own. You decided for me that you weren’t what I wanted and needed.” He definitely sounded angry.

She took a deep breath. Here went nothing. “I’m not a PT because I can’t be. Not because I’d rather do acupuncture—though I do love it—but because I don’t have a PT license and I can’t get one. Even if I could, I wouldn’t be able to do the work. I can’t lift and transfer patients, I can’t handle squirmy kids, I can’t do the manual work with the orthopedic patients. I also can’t be here and do the scrubbing and window washing and lifting and helping that my family needs. I can’t help repaint the gazebo or build parade floats or help haul tree branches out of the park. And I’m scared ofsex.”

Kyle was watching her. Not staring exactly, but also not frowning. He was watching and listening. There was a little flicker of something in his eyes at her last few words.

She took a deep breath. “My neck is fused at two levels and my C5 is held together by a metal plate. I was in therapy for months, and even after all of that, the pain continued. I wasn’t able to finish my last rotation, so I couldn’t graduate and I couldn’t get my license. They offered to let me come back and repeat that last rotation so I could graduate, but I needed so many pain pills to get through that…it wasn’t worth it.” Okay, maybe not the whole truth. She wasn’t sure why, but she didn’t want to share her addiction story. It was behind her. And she sure as hell wasn’t proud ofit.

He was staring at her. Hannah was vaguely aware that there were people driving by and possibly looking out the windows of their homes, seeing them standing here talking like this. Well, it would hopefully just perpetuate the story about Kyle trying to win her back. And her resisting.

“So,” she went on when he still didn’t respond. “I couldn’t be what you all needed me to be. It was easier to stay where no one really needed or expected things like that. And where I didn’t have to face disappointing all of you,” she added softly. “I took so much pride and reward in doing things, like you do. It was such a part of my identity, very much how I thought of myself. And when I realized I couldn’t do it anymore, it was really devastating. I didn’t think I had anything else to offer all ofyou.”

Kyle didn’t even respond tothat.

So, again, she kept going. “If you think about it, we never just talked. We planned and plotted. We analyzed our plans. We talked about the future. But we didn’t just sit and chat. Or sit and not chat. We were always doing something. Same with my parents. I was always working around the house while my mom was working outside of the house. We didn’t just sit around and talk. I don’t know my mother’s television habits—or if she even watches TV—but I know that she gets up every morning at five thirty a.m. and puts a load of laundry in the washing machine, makes her coffee and lunch, and takes only about forty minutes from shower to walking out the door to work. I don’t know my grandmother’s favorite memory of my grandfather. But I know where all of her cooking utensils are and that she loves rosemary and that she always plants four rows of petunias and four rows of marigolds in her garden every year. I don’t know your favorite class from med school and why, but I know that you went to the gym five mornings a week and were in class until four and took a half hour to watch the news each night before starting to study and were in bed by eleven. I know how to do things with and for the people I love, I know their schedules and routines, I know favorite things if they have to do with something like food, or flowers I made or planted. But that’sit.”

“And you know MichaelKade?”

Those were Kyle’s first words, and she definitely noticed the flash in his eyes. But she had to nod. “I do. We were in a pain support group together. That’s how wemet.”

“You still go to the group?”

“Sometimes. And I don’t know if we just got in the habit or if we actually learned that talking can help or what, but we still talk even outside of the group.”

“You didn’t tell me about your surgery. Or your therapy. Or your pain,” Kyle finallysaid.

“You were in residency. And there was nothing you could do. And I knew that would kill you. That not being able to be there and fix it would be so hard on you. So no, I didn’t tellyou.”

“Or your parents or Alice?”

She laughed humorlessly. “God no. They would have been beside themselves. For one, what could they have done? And for another, they were never the ones that fixed things, you know? That was me. I was the one that held stuff together. They wouldn’t have known what todo.”

“It’s bullshit that you didn’t tell us,” he said, scowling.

“Really?” she asked. “Really. I’m right about all of it, Kyle. You couldn’t have done anything and you would have gone crazy.”

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