Page 31 of The Lover
“Ellie is on a break.”
“Okay, Jake. But don’t take her back. I’m not going out there again.”
I slammed open the emergency exit, because that felt good, and moved Ellie out the door in front of me. Fortunately the back lot was empty of any smoking dishwashers.
“Talk. Now,” I said.
“You know, Jake, I don’t think you should be using that tone with me.”
“Ellie…”
“But you’re surprised, so I’ll allow it this time. I quit school.”
“Ellie…”
“No. Wait. You can’t bark at me to talk and then interrupt me when I do.”
I snapped my jaw shut, took a deep breath, and waited.
“Right. So here’s the thing. I’m a rancher. I belong on a ranch. My ranch. The whole school thing felt… stupid and pointless, and I told you that. But you didn’t want to listen, and I figured we probably needed more time to work out our stuff. After my birthday, I realized it was even more stupid to stay. I had already made the decision I wasn’t going back, so I didn’t see the point in sticking around for another month to take tests I could care less about the outcome. I came back here that Saturday. I’m renting the room over the Hair Stop and as you can see, working at Frank’s.”
I worked through her logic. Then something stuck. “The money! That’s how you were able to give me that money.”
She nodded. “Yes, it was certainly more important for you to have it to build a house than for me to waste it at school. Except you don’t have a house.”
“Why does that bother you?”
“Jake, can you say right now you’re committed to being with me forever?”
I must have looked like a deer in the headlights. I felt like a deer in the headlights. Like I couldn’t blink.
“Exactly. You can’t, and that’s okay. But if I came back to the house, even if you didmoveto the bunk house ormoveto the cabin, do you really think it would be anything but us boinking twenty-four seven?”
It was harder to know what annoyed me more. The rabbit-ear quotes aroundmoveor her use of the termboinking.
“It would be too easy for you, Jake. We would fall into this pattern, and it wouldn’t be about us choosing each other. It would be about us settling. You settling, to be more specific. And damn it, I want more!”
“Okay, that’s fine. But why not tell me that? Why not discuss it with me? This is the second time you’ve gone off and done what you wanted without once running it by me. We should be making these decisions together!” I shouted back.
“Why!” she shrieked. “Why should we make them together? We weren’t an actual married couple. I told you then, it was my money and my decision to go to school. That is still the case. My money, my life, my decision. Not yours. Until we are in a real relationship, I don’t have to consult you on any of the decisions I make in my life.”
“What is not real to you about our relationship? Because I have to say Ellie, you are pretty much the most real thing in my life.”
I didn’t know what that meant, I only knew it was true. And it seemed to make Ellie happy because instead of shrieking back, she was smiling at me again.
“I know. We are real. We just have to change things.”
“Like what?”
“I want to go on dates. I want to get more flowers. I want you to call me sometimes. I want to be wooed, Jake. That’s why I’m staying in town. If I was out at the house it would be too easy for you. You want me, you’re going to have to make an effort. Then we can see, like any other normal couple does, if we have what it takes for the long run.”
I hated it when she made sense. Because if we were arguing and she made sense, it meant I was wrong.
I worked my way back through the fight to see if I had any justification to hold on to my anger.
“You said you came back here after your birthday. You’ve been lying to me for weeks.”
“I know. I’m sorry about that, but I thought it would be better this way. To let you find out for yourself. You were going to know by the end of the semester anyway. This was always the plan. I just accelerated it.”
