Page 61 of The Lover
“I don’t… what do you mean?”
“I’m going back to the room above the Hair Stop. I’ll see if I can get my job back at Frank’s. Chrissy will be heading back to school soon.”
I shook my head. Why the hell would she do that? This was her home.
“I’m not following.”
“I’m done, Jake. I can’t dothisanymore. We’re not married. We have no reason to be married now, and I’m done.”
This. She waved her finger back and forth between her and me when she said it. Our relationship. That’s what she meant bythis.Only she said it like it was some foul thing.
And she was done. With. Me.
“Done with me,” I repeated. I suppose it made sense, given how she had been acting. But I wanted her to say it again. I wanted her to say it completely so that I would hear it and understand what was happening right now.
“You don’t want me anymore,” I said again. “Why don’t you say it one more time? I’ve been feeling it for the past two weeks!”
Yes, I was mad. That she could even think about leaving me. We were happy. So fucking happy. Yes, a horrible thing happened. We’d had horrible things happen to us before. We had survived so damn much together, and now she was justdone?
“Oh no. You don’t get to make this about me.”
Was she getting pissed? She was sitting there dumping me, and she was getting pissed at me? Was she serious right now?
“How can I not make this about you?” I charged at her. “You’re sitting there telling me you want to go. You’re done with me. I don’t wantyouto go. I want you to stay. So yes, Ellie, this is about you and your choices. Not mine. Never mine.”
“Hey Jake.” She stood up then and braced her hands on the table. “Breaking news just in. I LOVE YOU. I HAVE LOVED YOU FOR YEARS. And you know it! You goddamn well know it. But you don’t love me. Oh yes, you care for me. I’m family. But you’re not in love with me. You know how I know? Because when we woke after my birthday you should have saidI love you Ellie. Come home with me.Because when I told you I was pregnant you should have saidI love you Ellie, please marry me and make me the happiest man alive.But you didn’t. Not oneI love you. Not once. So yes, I’m done, Jake. I deserve to be loved as much as I love you. I deserve the kind of happiness my parents had. I do.”
Wait. What? She thought I didn’t love her? She thought I wasn’t in love with her. How was that fucking possible? Yes, I screwed it up when she told me about the baby, I knew I should have said probably exactly that, but I couldn’t say those things. I wasn’t the kind of man who could just say those things out loud. It was about actions, not about words.
Because of her.
It felt like a ghost running across the back of my neck.
“I’m going to go back to the room over the Hair Stop. You are going to build your house as quickly as you can and move onto your land. Some day in the future we’ll find a way to get along somehow. And that is the end of the Jake and Ellie story. Goodbye, Jake.”
I watched her turn her back on me, watched her walk out of the kitchen, and I thoughtoh hell no. That was not how our story was going to end.
I wasn’t letting this happen because of my goddamn mother. I chased after her and caught up to her at the door.
“Don’t go.” I remembered. That’s what I had said to her that day so long ago.
She turned around but I didn’t see Ellie. I saw her. My mother.
“That’s what I said to her the night she left. She came into my room. I was eleven at the time. You don’t remember her, I know, you were just a baby. Anyway, she came in to tell me that she was leaving. That she couldn’t stay in Montana anymore and that it was better if I stayed with Dad. Then she said it would be cleaner this way. I didn’t realize at the time she meant she was just going to forget she ever had a son. Then she left the room, and I ran after her down the hall and I said,Mom, I love you. Please don’t go. And she left.”
“You never told me.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Who wants to tell that story? I told myself I would never say those words again. That wasn’t going to happen. No way. That… being rejected like that…that just hurt too much.”
I would certainly never ever beg. Never again. That’s what I told myself.
“Oh Jake, I’m so sorry.”
“I tried to show you. I thought I… did. I tried to give you presents I knew you would love so you would see. I tried to be there for you when you needed me. I tried to be the man someone like you deserved. I… in bed… I mean I tried to show you what I was feeling the whole time. I thought you knew. You had to see it. Feel it. Yeah, I thought if I could show you. It would be enough.”
But it wasn’t. This whole time I thought I was giving her everything I had. More than I’d given to anyone in my life. And she thought I didn’t love her.
Right. Because you had to say the scary words. Out loud. So I had to tell her. If I was going to keep her, I had to tell her.
