by Claire Raye
We walk out to the waiting car as if we’re two people who don’t know each other, silence bouncing off the space between us. We climb in as strangers and the driver, like us, says nothing only adding to the already awkward tension that beats heavily in my chest.
This is who we are now, silent and stubborn, allowing society to break our bond with its ideals and norms.
The ride is short and I want to call out to the driver to keep going because this feels like all we have left. I ache with pain, dull and constant at the thought of him leaving, and leaving this way. There’s so much that will be left unsaid, so much left unfinished.
But when the driver pulls up outside JFK, Elliot opens the door without giving it a second thought. He says he isn’t angry but his actions say otherwise.
He’s hurt and his hurt is masked in anger. I’m broken and disappointed, muted now because everything I want to say feels trapped on my tongue.
I follow Elliot out of the car, shooing the driver off even though I asked him to wait for me. This isn’t going to be quick and we already have the eyes of every traveler on us. We don’t need a bigger audience.
“I don’t want you to go,” I say, reaching for him, but he shies away, making me pull in a ragged breath.
How the hell did we get here so quickly?
We went from desperately trying to find each other to now behaving like strangers. Everything about it feels wrong.
“I don’t want you to write the book, but we’re still there,” he replies sharply and it’s like a slap in the face. His words are harsh and they make me hate myself just a little, but they also enrage me as if he’s trying to push me toward making a decision. Ultimatums are not a good look.
“I’m sorry, but that’s not what I hoped you would say,” I bite back, falling into the same trap we were in last night.
“Why are you sorry?” The sneer on his face says he’s ready to argue, his lips curled up, his forehead creased. But we can’t keep doing this. It’s not becoming on either of us and it’s ruining everything we’ve held onto for so long.
I don’t answer him, not needing to continue because we can’t walk away from each other angry. I pull him close, my hands on either side of his face, I kiss him, long and slow, and as our lips touch, they tell him everything we both can’t say to each other right now.
“Call me when you land,” I murmur, my head now resting on his chest.
“I will.”
“We need more than this,” I say, shaking my head. “We need more than a weekend, more than a few days to figure all this out.”
“We do,” he agrees, closing his eyes, a pained tension to his body now. “We owe each other more than just a few arguments before we decide this won’t work.”
“Let’s take a few days and decide what’s important—”
“I know what’s important, Nora. It’s you. It’s us and I’m determined to make this work.”
“Then you have to understand I can’t just give up my career because you aren’t comfortable with it,” I say, defending myself again, and I bite down on my lip, shaking my head.
“I don’t want to argue, Nora. Not when I’m about to get on a plane and be hundreds of miles away from you. We both need to think long and hard about what we want out of this and why it was worth fighting for in the first place.” He lets out a hard sigh and everything he says is right. We do need to think about why we spent all this time looking for each other if in the end we were just going to fuck it all off over a few arguments.
“All relationships take work and ours is going to take more than most. This is something I keep telling myself,” I murmur, almost as a reminder to myself rather than to Elliot.
Again we’re both nodding, the agreements passing between us, but the tension still lingers. Is it because he’s leaving? Is it the fact that we have no definitive plan for what our life together looks like? The questions are insurmountable and far too vast to answer on the sidewalk outside a bustling airport.
“This isn’t goodbye forever. It’s just goodbye to sort things out. I didn’t come here with the expectation we would be moving in together. I came because I needed you. Because my life isn’t complete without you.”
His words are all consuming and each one makes my heart feel as if it might shatter even more than it already has. We’re overwhelmed and influenced by far more than just each other.
“Neither is mine. Go, get on your plane and we can talk every night this week.”
“I love you, Nora,” Elliot says, my name something I’ve longed for years to hear him say.
“And I love you, Elliot.”
I can’t go home when I finally walk away from the airport. I waited for what feels like hours on that small strip of sidewalk outside the terminal. I did nothing but stand there. My thoughts blank and my heart feeling like it lost a piece of itself, like Elliot took it with him.
I take the subway to Alice’s despite not even knowing if she’s home. She owes me anyway after all those times I found her asleep on my couch.
Boy, how the roles have reversed.
I forget knocking and use my key, startling Alice a little when she sees it’s me coming down her narrow hallway.
“I thought you were James,” she says, going back to examining a proof sheet. “You okay?”
“No. Elliot just got on a plane back to Chicago and I have no idea what happens now. We had a fight. I mean it wasn’t like a knock-down-drag-out-screaming-match or anything, but I was stubborn and shitty. I told him I was writing the second book even if he didn’t like it.”
Flopping down on the couch, my head falls into my hands. I don’t want to cry anymore. I swore once I found him things would be better and my life would feel complete. And while it does feel different, there’s so much to deal with that I never took into account. Selfishly I believed love would conquer all.
“Comfort and happiness can be found anywhere,” Alice says, her voice stern and authoritative. She’s angry with me because she knows me better than I know myself. I bailed, because things became sketchy, things became unknown and I was about to have what I had always wanted, but it scared the shit out of me.
What if it doesn’t work? What if I’m making a huge mistake?
“What are you running from, Nora?” Alice questions now, her words replay in my head. I don’t even know the answer. Am I running from the fear of the unknown, of falling in love, of commitment or is it bigger than that?
“I don’t know what I’m running from. What was I running to when I spent all that time searching?” It’s all just questions with no answers and my head swirls with all the bullshit everyone will dish out at me if this doesn’t work, or worse yet if it does.
“When was the last time you lost someone and the pain was so unbearable?” Alice asks, her face is still and her expression quiet. She knows the answer to this question because she knows the same unbearable pain.
“When Mom died, but you know that already.”
“I still feel it. It never goes away. It’s this dull ache in my chest and every once in a while it comes back and knocks me on my ass.”
“Me too,” I say, pulling in a hard breath.
“The pain was worse when I thought about losing James. When we left Astoria and he was all I could think about. It was compounded and layered and it made me sick to my stomach. My heart knew I needed him to dull the pain of Mom’s death and living without him wasn’t an option. Ask yourself if the pain is worse without Elliot?” She looks over at me, her lips pursed and I can’t even believe I’m sitting here taking advice from Alice, but fuck me if she isn’t so close to right.
I take in her words, listening and learning. The crushing weight of my broken heart feels suffocating and I swallow hard, but it does nothing to stifle the pain.
“When you lose your mother you walk around looking for something you know you’ll never find. Let Elliot be that missing piece, Nora.”
Chapter Thirty-Five: Elliot
I’d
like to say with the distance everything somehow miraculously becomes clearer, but it doesn’t. It’s been twenty-four hours since I left New York and while Nora and I have spoken several times, we’ve always danced around the issue of what happens next or where we go from here.
It shouldn’t be this hard, not when we both know we want to be with each other. But there are bigger forces at play here and they are testing us before we’ve even had a chance to really begin. Exhaling, I shove a rough hand through my hair as I step into the elevator in my apartment building, wishing I could find a way to make all of this work.
It’s obvious now that Nora doesn’t want to leave New York and that’s fine, that’s something I can work with. My company has offices there and a transfer is something I can arrange, something I’d be willing to do. Hell, I’d even change jobs entirely because it’s not like I actually love what I do. Not anymore.
It’s the other stuff I can’t find a way to deal with. The second book, the publicity and attention, the idea of turning our lives into a TV show. How we’d be putting everything we’ve spent the last twelve years searching for out there for public consumption, for people to comment on and judge us for.
That’s what I can’t stomach.
The night is cool as I step out onto the street and shove my hands into the pockets of my jeans. Matt is in town for work and even though I’m sure he doesn’t want to hear about all of this, he did suggest we catch up for dinner. Maybe it’s his way of apologizing for ever questioning what I was doing. Who knows.
I do know he finds this whole thing with Nora impossible to understand. To him, everything I had with Bridgitte was perfect and right and then I went and threw it all away for a girl I’d spent one night with over a decade ago.
I knew on the surface that it did look and sound ridiculous. But I also knew how I felt, what I was risking letting go of if I gave up on Nora and me.
And the second we’d reconnected in New York six days ago, I knew everything had been worth it. In six short days, I’d felt and had more with her than I’d ever had with Bridgitte and regardless of what happened moving forward, it showed me that I should never settle for anything less than perfect.
I pull my phone from my pocket and hit redial on Nora’s number, needing to hear her voice.
“Hi, I was just thinking about you,” she says, as she answers.
I smile. “Dirty thoughts or…?” I tease.
She laughs, instantly calming me. “Maybe,” she teases back.
“I miss you,” I say, my smile fading as I wish she was here with me and I was taking her to meet my best friend so he could see why giving up everything I had with Bridgitte wasn’t a hard decision for me.
I want to show him who Nora is, give him a chance to get to know her so he can see what I see, which is an amazing woman who makes me want to give her everything.
“I miss you too,” she says, her words quiet. “What are you up to tonight?”
I sigh. “I’m going to have dinner with Matt, he’s in town for work.” I’d told her all about Matt and his wife during our six days together. Everything, minus the fact that Matt thought I was an idiot for chasing a dream I didn’t know existed anymore.
“That sounds like fun.”
“It would be more fun if you were here with me,” I admit, immediately wishing I could take the words back when I hear her sigh down the phone.
“How are we ever going to make this work?”
“What do you mean?” I ask, even though I know exactly what she’s referring to.
“You have a life and a home in Chicago,” she says, her tone flat. “Friends, a job. All the things I have in New York.”
I take in a deep breath, my hand gripping the phone as I continue my walk. “I told you I can transfer my job,” I start. “It might take some—”
“And what happens if you end up resenting me for it,” she says, cutting me off. “What if we break up and you hate being stuck in New York or you never even like it in the first place?”
She stops, neither of us speaking now. I can hear her breathing down the phone and as much as I wish we weren’t having this conversation like this, there’s no turning back now.
“Why would you think we’d break up?” I eventually ask.
Nora exhales and I can almost feel the exhaustion through the phone. It feels like we’ve gone round and round in circles with this. “I don’t know,” she admits, her words quiet. “I guess I’m just scared that one day you’ll hate me for making you move.”
“You aren’t making me do anything,” I tell her. “I want to be with you, Nora and I don’t care where that is as long as we’re together.”
“Really?”
The doubt in her voice nearly kills me and we aren’t even talking about the biggest obstacle in all of this. Where we live is nothing. People move all the time. What they don’t do is share their life with the world; open themselves up to questions and judgement and unwanted opinions.
“Yes, really,” I tell her as I arrive at Matt’s hotel.
“Okay,” she whispers, but I can tell she still isn’t convinced.
“Listen, I’ve got to go, I’m at Matt’s hotel. I’ll call you later?”
“Yes, okay. Have fun and say hi from me.”
I nod, even though she can’t see me. “I will. I love you.”
“Love you too.”
I hang up and slide my phone into my pocket before walking inside. We’re meeting in the hotel’s bar and when I walk toward it, I can see Matt already there, waiting for me. He’s got his back to me as he sits at the bar, nursing a beer and watching the TV hanging on the wall.
I take a deep breath and walk over, slapping him on the back as I take a seat on the stool beside him.
“Hey,” he says, offering a smile.
“Hi.”
The bartender walks over and takes my order and Matt and I sit in a weird silence as we both watch him grab a beer for me. When he places it in front of me and walks away, I immediately lift the bottle to my mouth and take a long sip.
“So,” Matt eventually says, turning to me. “How’d it go?”
It surprises me that he’s coming right out with it, but maybe he figures we should just get this conversation over and done with. “It was good,” I tell him. “We obviously found each other and I got to meet her sister and her dad, saw where she worked.”
Matt nods, turning back to the TV as he takes another sip of his beer. “And you’re like…together?”
“We are.”
He glances over, his eyes meeting mine. “So what, is she moving to Chicago or are you leaving?”
I exhale. “We haven’t sorted the details yet,” I admit. “But I’ll probably move to New York.”
“What and just give up the life you have here?” he immediately says and I can already hear the accusation in his tone.
I take a sip of my beer, forcing myself not to get annoyed by his comment. “I’d be making a new life with her.”
“Seriously?” he asks.
“What?” I ask, no longer able to hide my own anger. “Just say it, Matt, whatever it is you’re thinking, just say it.”
I watch as he takes a deep breath, letting it out slowly as he crosses his arms over his chest. “You’ve known her for a total of six days, Elliot,” he starts. “Before that you knew her for one night. One night that happened twelve years ago.”
“And,” I prompt.
“And how the fuck can you be so ready to give up everything you have here for something you have no idea will even last?”
“Of course that’s the first thing you’d think of,” I mutter, taking another sip of beer.
“I’m just trying to look out for you,” he says, his hard stare meeting mine.
I lift a brow. “Really, and here I thought you’d just want me to be happy.”
“Exactly,” he half shouts, his arms out wide. “And I know that if you give up everything you have to move somewhere you know no one, you’ll regret
it.”
I finish my beer, gently putting the bottle on the counter. “I do know someone, Matt, I know her. Nora, the woman I’m in love with.”
“You used to be in love with Bridgitte,” he shouts back, no longer bothering to hold back.
I glance around the bar, grateful there aren’t many people here before turning back to my best friend. “I was,” I tell him. “But it was different and I know I can’t make you understand any of this and I realize how incredibly crazy it all looks, but you have to trust me when I say, I do know Nora and I do love her. In ways I can’t even begin to describe.”
Silence falls between us now and a part of me wonders if I shouldn’t just go, leave now before one of us says something we’ll regret. But then Matt signals to the bartender for another round and I realize that no matter how hard this is going to be, I can’t walk away from this either.
By the time we order dinner, the tension hasn’t really lifted. I’ve asked how Maggie is going and what they’ve been up to and aside from the short, one-word answers, Matt hasn’t really said much. Which is why it surprises me when he suddenly says, “She read Nora’s book.”
“Oh yeah, and?” I ask, my breath catching in my throat.
“She says it’s so romantic,” he says with a dramatic eye roll.
I can’t help the chuckle as I reply, “Obviously a little different to the real life version.”
“I wouldn’t know, I haven’t read it.”
His words shouldn’t surprise me, but they still feel like a punch to the gut, as though Matt really doesn’t care about any of this, but especially about my happiness.
“They want her to write a sequel to our story,” I say, needing to talk to someone about this, even if it is Matt. A part of me wants to protect Nora, especially given Matt’s reluctance to accept our relationship. But at the same time, I need to know if what I’m thinking, what I feel about this whole thing with publicizing our relationship, is justified or an overreaction.
“And?” he eventually asks.
“And I’m not sure,” I eventually say.