Page 114 of Bad at Love
I have her mind and body and every little piece of magic that she’s put together with.
I have her and yet I feel like I’m barely holding on.
She’s slipping through my fingers like sand.
And she doesn’t even know it.
“You all right?” Scooby asks warily. “You seem more dark and moody and tortured-writer than usual.”
“I’m fine,” I tell him, squeezing past him in the door way and heading down the hall, grabbing my keys from the hook.
“Maybe you need more lycopene in your diet,” he says, waving the tomatoes around.
Seriously, I’ve never met a stoner who ate so many vegetables when he got the munchies.
I get in my car and head out to the Murdock compound.
Along the way my thoughts begin to drift. I think about Marina.
I think about what's next for us.
I think about what's usually next for me at this point.
But there's never been a point like this for me before.
All those girls I've dated, none of them mattered in the end and they didn't matter because I didn't want them to matter. I just wanted the company. I wanted someone by my side, someone who was dependable. That's what my girlfriends became, someone to count on, a warm body in my bed, a presence in my life. Growing up, I never had that. With them, I did.
But I kept my heart safe, I never invested. I never opened up. I never shared the real me with them. I never even came close.
It was the only way I could not be rejected.
That's not saying I was always the one doing the dumping.
Two girls I dated (no, not at the same time), Carlee and Jill, they dumped me way before I had a chance to do the same to them.
I know that sounds extremely callous but it's the truth.
Only I didn't mind. I didn't mind because I didn't care. Ihad pushed them away from me from the start, kept my distance, and some women know when they want more and know when they won’t get more. I knew that the sex and company they provided would eventually be taken up by someone else. If you don't invest your heart in someone, you don't get hurt.
It worked well for me.
It worked well until I fell head over heels for Marina.
Now, this was someone I cared about deeply, more than anyone else in my life. This time, there was a big, terrible chance that I could get ruined by her, by us. That every fear, every scabbed over emotional wound would become raw again.
I have no playbook anymore. I have no game plan. There is no experiment. I wish I could just let us take it one day at a time and stop thinking about the future. Just enjoy the sex, the company, the intimacy that both soothes and startles me.
That's what I've been trying to do but each day I'm with her, I'm so...sunk. Just in her, underneath her, that I can't even see straight. Can't think straight.
And those words, those beautiful words.
"I love you."
The more they mean to me, the scarier it gets. The more I want to run.
But I can't. I can't do that to her. I can't do that to the person I care about most.
I won't...
