Evan has never told me he loves me.
Recently, Evan confuses me, blows hot and cold, and the original, guarded Evan is sneaking back in. I’ve asked about Lucy, but she’s well, so now I’m worrying. The fact he’s never told me he loves me begins to eat at me for the first time.
There’s one thing I suspect is causing his mood changes and I think it’s about to hit us. I knew this conversation was coming and now we’re here. The number of times Evan cuts me short when I talk about my year away has increased. And every time we go into my bedroom, he shuts the laptop, hiding the screen saver photographs of exotic places.
“Are we finally going to talk about this?” I ask him.
“Maybe later.” He focuses on his food, pushing the rice around his plate.
“I want to talk about this now, I don’t want to sit through a meal with a cloud over our heads.”
Evan takes a drink. “Okay.”
“Ask me then. About my plans.”
Evan shakes his fringe away from his eyes. “When are you going?”
“June sometime. I’ve almost saved what I need, then I’ll book the flight.” Evan’s hand grips his glass, inhales. “Why is this such a surprise?”
“You haven’t talked about your plans recently. I didn’t realize you were going so soon.”
I fold the napkin from my lap and place it on the table. “You haven’t wanted to talk about any of this.”
“No.” Evan sets down his fork. “Because I don’t want you to go.”
My heart beats quicker, in anticipation of the oncoming conversation. Wow, he chooses his moments. “I’m coming back.”
“I know. But you’ll be gone for a year.”
He’s said he doesn’t want me to go. The words I wanted to hear, but so desperately didn’t want him to say. The pull to stay with Evan has become gravitational over the last few weeks, dragging me off course, away from my decision. Evan, who I’ve spent so much time with, who’s touched my life, filled a void and overwhelmed my world. But hasn’t given me the one last part of himself.
“Why?” I ask, pushing him to say more. Maybe tonight he’ll tell me.
He rubs an eyebrow. “Because I want you here. With me. I know, it’s selfish…”
Reaching across the table, I touch his hand. For once, his fingers don’t curl around mine. A cold tingle climbs down my back. “We should talk about this.”
“Yeah.” Evan removes his hand from mine and picks his fork up, resuming his meal.
My hand rests on the table, the cold sensation spreads through me. We’ve left this too long, fooling ourselves living day to day is enough for our relationship. Letting go of the past, living for each day makes perfect sense. But even though the future may come one day at a time, it’s never far away.
****
NESS
Evan is quiet on the walk back to the car after our meal. The evening cools to match the mood, and I rub my hands on my bare arms, my optimism about the spring evening being warm unfounded. In response, Evan wraps his arm around my shoulder and pulls me to him; I sink my head against his chest, hoping he’s not going to let me go. The atmosphere in the restaurant killed the mood of the evening, now is the right time to get everything out in the open. Otherwise the unsaid will eat away at the weeks we have left.
“Can we talk about this?” I say, stopping.
Evan’s arm stiffens around me. “I told you, I don’t want you to go. I’m selfish. I shouldn’t have said anything, forget it.”
Pulling from his embrace, I turn to him. “Why don’t you want me to go?”
“Because you’re a big part of my life now. Because I can’t imagine not seeing you for so long.”
He’s not saying what he needs to. I carry on, reaching his car, and lean against the door, waiting. He catches up in a few strides.
“Is that such an odd thing, Ness? When we spend so much time together?” Evan’s hands are buried in his pockets, his mouth thinning and I’d do anything to replace the look with a smile.
“What do I mean to you, Evan?”
“A lot.”
I bite the inside of my lip, knowing Evan still keeps his emotions tightly packed away, but he can’t do that anymore. Not now.
“A lot?”
Evan moves towards me, reaching a hand from his pocket to my face. His thumb brushes my cheek. “Everyone has a reason for waking up in the morning, and you’re mine.”
I turn my head and grit me teeth against what I need to say. Forced myself not to say for months, because the words sound so needy.
“You’ve never said you love me.”
Evan drops his hand and steps back. The cold sensation in my veins returns at the look on his face. “You need me to tell you that? To say ‘I love you’?”
His surprise unbalances me. “No, not if you don’t mean it.”
Evan rakes his hand into his hair, gripping on for a few moments. “I never saw you as someone to put significance in empty words. On Valentine’s Day you told me not to buy a card because it was an exercise on consumerism. ”
“No, I said people shouldn’t only tell each other how they feel on one day of the year. And they’re only empty words if you don’t mean them.”
Evan inhales. “Fine. But you’re being unfair.”
The more he says without giving me what I want, the heavier my meal feels on my stomach.
“I’ve said so many other things, so much more. I’ve told you how you’re the center of my world, my strength. The person who holds my heart when they hold my hand. You see into the dustiest corner of my soul and I’ve never let anybody do that.” Evan catches my hand, pulls it to him. “How many times have you felt my heart beating next to you, only for you?”
Through his shirt, his heart thumps against my palm and in his face a deep line creases his brow. He’s hurting, the dusty part of his soul he talks about is in his eyes.
“All the time,” I say hoarsely.
“Then why are we having this conversation? People say ‘I love you’ all the time and it means nothing. Throw away words. They lie. Love isn’t about how much you say ‘I love you’, but about how much you prove it’s true. I’m really surprised at you.”
I pull my hand away and step back. Unwanted tears are pushing behind my eyes and the goosebumps on my arms hurt now. One comment about me leaving and the evening turns to crap. “Take me home, please.”
Evan looks at me as if I’ve accused him of cheating on me. “And you? Have you ever told me you love me?”
“No.”
Evan’s keys jangle in his hands as he hesitates, brown eyes staring into my hidden hurt. Imperceptibly, he shakes his head and crosses to the driver’s door. The silence of the drive home is filled with the drone of his engine and the air blowing from the vents. Nothing else is said.
Chapter 23
NESS
The stalemate between us continues over the next few days. Evan refuses to speak to me on the drive back and I ask him to go home when we get to mine after the restaurant. All I get is a peck on the cheek and he leaves. His words tumble around my brain, the sense of what he’s saying won’t sink through the romantic cliché strangling my emotions. Evan shows me everyday how he feels about me but now he’s admitted the refusal to tell me he loves me. After so many months, isn’t it logical for the person your with to have told you? At least once.
Then I get irritated, he’s making me feel like I’m trying to get him to marry me, the words would bind him to me forever, or something. I shudder at the idea.
Quietly gnawing at me is the need for him tonot tell me he loves me, and the reason I haven’t told him. Because a tiny part of me wants to use those words as an excuse to change my mind about leaving.
For the first time in months, doubt about our relationship sets in.
My work shifts and his study schedule misalign over the next few days, then it’s the weekend and he disappears to Lancaster. Evan doesn’t go back as often as he did, once a month now. This t
ime I expected him to forego his trip to sort through our huge, immobile issue. The feeling Lucy is the third person in our relationship returns, and I push away the hurt. His twin. A sister coping with a lifelong illness. Of course his pull to her is greater at times. We text, but don’t talk and the unease begins to strangle me.
Abby sits in the lounge, feet covered in huge socks and resting on the coffee table. She cradles a mug in her hands and slurps coffee as she watches TV.
“No Evan tonight?” she asks.
“No, he’s in Lancaster.”
“And there’s been no Evan here this week?” She turns her concerned face to mine. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Um. Don’t believe you. Misery face.”
Abby’s got over her hedonistic phase, now settled into the ‘I came so close to failing, I’d better study’ stage. Perhaps my battery farm existence has shown her the waynot to go. Whatever the reason, we get on better now. Like we did before university. She’s seeing another guy from her department, Kyle, quieter and genuinely nice. He’s miles apart from her usual guys. And nothing too serious, which is strange for her. And kind of ironic considering the anguish I’m applying to my relationship.
“It’s fine.” I set my mug down.
“He’s pissed off about you leaving?”
“He’s said he doesn’t want me to go.”
Abby nods, her whole shoulders moving, like a wise woman. “Can you blame him? You two have a good thing going.”
“I have to go. To do this. For me.” The words are more forceful than I intended.
She holds her hands up in defense. “Hey, you don’t need to argue with me too. I just don’t get the need to get going so quickly.”
I’ve considered this. Over and over. “Because if I don’t go now, I’ll never go. Something will get in the way and stop me if I wait. This is the right time. For me.” The words sound like a prepared speech, to convince someone. Myself, maybe.
Abby moves to the TV and switches it off. “Even if you lose Evan?”
We look at each other and I see the girl I went to primary school with, the friend who helped me through my first heartbreak at fourteen. The person who knows me as well as I know myself - aware of where I’ve come from, and came from there too.
“Abby…”
“You guys are close. Like, really close. I haven’t come across two people like you. And you manage to be like that without it being intense and weird.”
“If we’re close, a year apart won’t matter.” The words come out of my mouth I haven’t vocalized before. A year apart. From Evan. Am I in denial? If I want him to tell me he loves me, how can I want to leave him too? My head spins with the contradiction whenever I consider this. And I consider the situation a lot.
Abby tips her head. “That’s naive. Things will happen. You’ll come back a different person and he’ll be the same as when you left. He’s a guy, however much he says he loves you, I doubt he’ll stay celibate.”
I swallow the lump pushing against my throat. “He hasn’t.”
“Hasn’t what?”
“Told me he loves me.”
Abby’s head moves back, in the way people do when you hit them with words they don’t expect. “Seriously? Not once?”
“Not once.”
“Not even after…you know. Or when he’s drunk?”
“No. Never.”
“But he loves you.” Abby says the words with blinding certainty, as if no doubt existed in her mind, and I wish she could extend the certainty to mine.
“Maybe.”
“Come on, you love each other. Five months in and barely an argument? Jeez, I wish a guy would look at me how he looks at you.”
“How?”
Abby stands towards me. “Like the stars would go out if you weren’t there anymore.”
I don’t say anything, she’s right. I’m stupid.
“He never said it when you said it to him?” she asks.
I pick at my sleeve. “I haven’t said it either.”
Abby shakes her head. “Then you’re as bad as each other.”
Sitting back next to me, Abby puts a hand on my knee. “Ness, you’re not thirteen. It’s not a competition over who says ‘I love you’ first. And if it’s going to wreck your relationship, why hang onto this?”
After weeks of keeping this in, I have to voice the truth I won’t admit. “Because if he says he loves me, I might change my mind about leaving.”
“And if he loves you, he won’t let you.”
****
EVAN
I know I need to see Ness again, but my inability to say the right thing puts me off. In my time back in Lancaster, I retraced old steps and return to places from my childhood. The childhood I’m supposed to leave behind. Lucy comes too, and she’s my old Lucy. My funny twin with bright eyes, and a brighter personality. I’m proud of what she’s achieved, more so than Dad. She’s reconnected with friends and made new ones. Moving away from home worked for her, as leaving town did for me. She has a boyfriend too, Julius. They share a love of photography. And cats. As soon as I return to Lancaster I’m greeted with a pictorial run down of their relationship. I laugh when she tells me they were ‘meant to be’ because their cats like each other. So her life has moved beyond what she wants from me, at last. She’ll never be free of her illness but at least it’s not controlling her anymore.
“How’s things with Ness? I haven’t seen her since Christmas.” Lucy tucks her phone into her pocket, her picture album finally exhausted.
This is twin sixth sense when I was thinking about Ness already. I sit with Lucy in the small garden of our childhood home, watching the birds flit around.
“She just had a birthday.”
“Oh, I’d like to have given her a present, why didn’t you say?” Lucy pushes me.
“She doesn’t like presents.”
“I have some great pictures I took of you guys. I could frame one.”
“She doesn’t want too much stuff to move.”
“Why? where’s she going?”
I close my eyes. Now I have to open up to Lucy too. Acknowledge the reality. “She’s going backpacking. For a year.”
Lucy’s face lights up. “Cool! Are you going too?”
“Yeah right. I’m at uni. And I have no money.” God knows how many times I’ve had the thought, attempted to hold in the frustration of the situation and not let the irritation mar an evening with Ness. Sure, I could take a year off university. If I had the money, and if Ness wanted me to go with her. I don’t have the money. And now I’m unsure Ness would want me anyway.
“Good point.” Lucy stands and walks across the garden to the late daffodils, bending and touching their delicate yellow petals. She picks one, and twirls the flower in her hands. “Do you love her?”
My twin regards me with eyes identical to my own, a perfect reflection of myself looks back at me. I can’t reply. “Tell her how you feel. I can tell you don’t want her to go.”
“I did tell her. Kind of. But I can’t ask her to stay.”
Lucy sits back next to me. “Why not?”
Of course Lucy would see the situation simplistically. Her raw emotions wouldn’t stand for something this complex. Life is black and white to her.
The realization hits me. Lucy’s the reason. She pursued me when I escaped, tried to stop me living my life. Didn’t want me to leave. I don’t want to stop Ness doing what she needs in the way Lucy stops me.
“I’m not asking anyone to change their plans for me. Ness wants to do this. I’ll wait for her to come back.”
Lucy hands me the daffodil and wanders off to pick another. “Well, she doesn’t love you then.”
Her words are spoken in such a matter of fact way, but they twist my stomach. Our shared fear of abandonment, mine hidden so deeply I’ve never acknowledged the feeling. The reason I can’t tell Ness. Because she’s rejecting me by leaving.
“I think she does, Lucy.”
My mind runs through our times together, the natural easiness of being with her. The surging inside when I see her after even a few hours away, reflected back at me in the warmth of her eyes. The way she touches me, holds me - and understands when to let go.
“People who love you don’t leave you,” says Lucy.
The twisting in my stomach moves to my chest and in Lucy’s eyes there’s a hardness I’ve seen before. A couple of years ago, at the bottom of her blackest hole, when she cried like a child; like the five year old child who couldn’t understand why her mother left. The memory jabs at the wound in my own heart and the realization hits me, illuminating the last hidden corner of my mind. I can’t give myself to someone who’ll leave.
Chapter 24
NESS
After I speak to Abby about the situation, I try and contact Evan. He’s still talking to me, but he’s in Lancaster and I’m irritated by the power Evan’s past has over him and how he won’t admit to this. Evan has things in the ‘now’ that need his attention. He’s short with me on the phone, tells me he’ll call me when he gets back. I lie in bed, heart pumping unease through me, a physical sensation of everything shifting in my world.
We arrange to meet and the butterflies spin around inside as if we’re going on a first date. Dry mouthed, I wait for him in the park near the university buildings. His choice of neutral ground and open space, away from people, fuels my anxiety. I wait on a bench, shadowed from the spring sunshine by a large oak tree. In the shade, the breeze is cooler and I shiver, wishing I’d brought a jacket to wear over my summer dress.
On the path close by, students walk towards the university. Couples. I scroll through Facebook, focus on other people’s lives so I don’t have to think about mine.
When Evan arrives, he’s jacket-less, wearing a band T-shirt I bought him, the muscled arms I hide in for comfort are bare. My heart rate speeds up, a mixture of fear and desire for him.
Because of Lucy Page 12