World Enough and Time

by Lauren Gallagher

  Though Xena was a handful and a half even when I wasn’t tired, I rode her first. Today, she was in one of her devious moods, when she would decide at the last possible second that no, she didn’t feel like going over that particular jump. When she was like this, I had to be completely focused, staying one step ahead of her, lest I end up in the dirt.

  And that was perfect for my current state of mind. Concentrating on her meant not thinking about Connor. For the duration of my ride, my thoughts were consumed by lead changes, making sure we made it over every jump, and anticipating Xena’s every move.

  When we were finished, we hadn’t even cleared the arena gate before Connor and last night came crashing back into my awareness. I was so tangled up in thoughts of him, I overshot the door to the barn, leading Xena right past it and continuing down the path beside the pastures. We were halfway to the back paddocks when one of the other mares called to Xena and she answered back.

  I shook myself back into the present. I’d been aware, on some level, of where I was, but suddenly remembered where I was supposed to be. Sighing, I turned Xena around and we went back to the barn. At least if anyone saw me, they’d just assume I was walking her around to cool her down. They didn’t need to know she’d long since cooled down. It was a convenient excuse, one I’d use if the need arose.

  I cross-tied Xena, unsaddled her, and went about grooming her. My brain couldn’t process all the simple tasks, but muscle memory took me through the motions, and eventually, Xena was back in her stall.

  I hung her halter on the door, then picked up my saddle and shuffled into the tack room. That saddle was probably the lightest and least cumbersome piece of equipment I owned, but it still required a monstrous effort to heave it up onto the rack. A thick mixture of numbness and exhaustion congealed beneath my skin, turning even the simplest movements into slow, difficult tasks.

  Susan appeared in the tack room doorway. “Hey, girl, you okay? Leslie said you hurt your back the other day.”

  I watched my fingers play with the braided leather of a set of reins. “Just playing hooky.”

  “Uh huh, so you—” She stopped. “Are you okay?”

  I sighed. Turning away, I looked in the dusty mirror on the wall and decided my ponytail needed to be rearranged for the ninetieth time since I’d left the house. I pulled the elastic band out and focused my attention on gathering my hair up into it again. My arms ached and my fingers protested, but I forced both mind and body to obey.

  “Dani, what’s wrong?”

  Satisfied with my ponytail, I looked for something else to do with restless hands. “Just, some things…” I swallowed. “With Connor.”

  She stepped inside the tack room, eyes wide. “What happened?”

  I dropped onto one of the tack trunks, resting my elbows on my knees and my chin on my hands. Tears threatened, but I forced them back.

  “Dani?”

  Taking a breath, I said, “He asked me to marry him.”

  “He—” She shook her head, blinking rapidly. “He what?”

  “You heard me.”

  “Like, down on one knee?”

  I nodded.

  “Diamond in hand?”

  Biting my lip I replayed the proposal in my mind for the thousandth time. An engagement ring hadn’t even occurred to me, and only now did I realize he hadn’t offered one. I shrugged. “Well, no, no diamond, but—”

  “No diamond?” She cocked her head. “I’m surprised. I would have expected him of all people to pull out all the stops and—”

  “Not that it matters,” I said through my teeth. “I said no.”

  “What?” She almost shrieked, clapping a hand over her mouth and glancing over her shoulder in case someone was nearby. Then she turned back to me. In a loud whisper, she sad, “You turned him down?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “He’s leaving soon. I can’t. And this was so sudden. Just, completely out of nowhere.”

  She took a breath. “Maybe it was a heat of the moment thing. He wants you to go, so maybe this was his Hail Mary pass.”

  I blew out a breath. There was only cold comfort in the possibility that Connor’s proposal had just been a desperate, last ditch effort to keep me. Maybe he’d known deep down I’d say no, but figured he had nothing to lose.

  Rubbing the back of my neck, I said, “It’s a moot point anyway. He knows I can’t afford to take Jester and Calypso, and there’s no way in hell I’m leaving them behind.”

  “Okay, fair enough,” she said. “Have you guys considered the long distance thing?”

  I shook my head and stood. “We ruled that out a while ago.”

  “You also ruled out any kind of relationship, but look at you now,” she said.

  “Look at us now?” I laughed bitterly, the only thing I could do to keep the tears at bay. “More like, look at us up until the day before yesterday.”

  Her eyes widened. “You two split over it?”

  “What else could we do?” I didn’t feel the need to fill her in on everything we’d said the night before. Telling her meant hearing myself say all the things I shouldn’t have said. It meant reliving the moment he’d walked away from me just like I’d walked away from him.

  Instead, I sighed and shrugged. “I said no, so we called it quits.”

  “Are you out of your mind?” she asked. “Dani, he’s—”

  “What am I supposed to do?” I snapped, tears blurring my vision. “I can’t go with him. He knows it, I know it. Why he asked anyway, I don’t—”

  “Look, Dani, it may have been in the heat of the moment, but I don’t think he would just say it.”

  “Maybe not, but could he really have thought it through?” I asked. “Maybe at that moment, he thought he meant it, but given a few hours or days or weeks to think about it, he might figure out it’s not what he wants. And where does that leave me? In San Francisco wondering what the hell I was thinking again.”

  “Or you could be sitting in your apartment in Seattle wondering the very same thing.”

  I clenched my jaw and let out a long breath. “How would that be different from the last few months?”

  She sighed. “Dani, Connor isn’t Matt.”

  “And I didn’t think Matt was like that either. I just can’t take that chance again, Suze.” I swallowed hard. “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

  Susan sighed. “Except Connor isn’t the one who fooled you the first time.”

  “No, and I’d rather not give him the opportunity,” I said.

  “Dani,” she said. “I know the man. I know him very, very well.”

  “You didn’t know he was the one who left his ex-fiancée.”

  She shifted her weight. “Maybe not. But I…” She trailed off.

  “See?” I said. “You didn’t think he’d leave her, let alone jump into another relationship with me before the ashes were cold.”

  “Okay, maybe I don’t know everything there is to know about him,” she said. “but I do know that he’s a good guy. A really good guy. You could do a lot worse than taking the risk and going with him.”

  “I could do a lot worse than staying here, too,” I said.

  “Oh? Like what?”

  I looked at her, then dropped my gaze. “Susan, I love him, but it’s over.”

  “You don’t want it to be, though, do you?”

  “I don’t want him to move to San Francisco, but he is.”

  “That wasn’t my question.”

  I swallowed hard, blinking back tears and starting toward the tack room door.

  “Dani…”

  Resting my hand on the doorframe, I looked at her. “The answer’s still the same.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  For the rest of the day, I forced myself to ignore all things Connor. I dried my eyes and threw myself into my job, doing everything I could to occupy myself with anything that wasn't him. Summoning every ounce of workaholism I could muster, I evicted his memory from my mind. Even during
idle moments and down time, I focused on not focusing on him or the leaden guilt in my gut.

  And for the most part, I succeeded.

  Running on auto-pilot, I made it through the day. I could do this. It was over, Connor was gone, and just like I’d moved on from Matt, I would move on from him. I’d thought I couldn’t get over Matt, but I did, eventually replacing pain with cold apathy as a soundtrack to the memories we’d made.

  I would do the same with Connor.

  It was over.

  Life would go on.

  I would go on.

  The cold truth, however, wouldn’t be denied, and it waited patiently until I was in bed. Until I let my guard down. Then it settled in and made itself known, molding itself against me as the emptiness where Connor used to sleep beside me. I’d slept alone plenty of times since we’d started dating, but there was a world of difference between “without him now” and “without him.”

  I sat up to avoid his absence, hugging my knees to my chest and inching away from the place that was once his. It made little difference, though. Sitting like this was only marginally better than lying where he used to hold me.

  This was nothing like my split with Matt. That breakup had hurt. I’d grieved for our relationship, begged him to reconsider, cried into my pillow night after sleepless night. But deep down, I’d known it was over. The ground had moved beneath me and it was up to me to find my footing again.

  This, however, wasn’t right. The echoes of the slamming door still rang in my ears, emphasizing the hollow silence of his absence. This place—my bed, my room, my world—wasn’t right without him. All the places I’d tried to hold on to were empty and I had no one to blame but myself.

  Icy tentacles of truth coiled around my heart as the epiphany settled itself deep in my gut.

  I’d said no to Connor because I couldn’t compromise myself again. I couldn’t uproot my life and follow someone while he followed his dreams. I couldn’t lose myself in trying not to lose him.

  It was a mistake to follow Matt to Seattle, but I could no longer tell myself I regretted coming to this place. If I hadn’t, I never would have met Connor, and no matter how much it hurt to be away from him now, I could never convince myself I regretted my relationship with him. I regretted what I’d done to him, the fact that I’d walked away from him, but not the fact that it happened.

  And I was lying to myself if I thought the best place for me was anywhere Connor Graham wasn’t. All this time, I’d worried about going with him and making a huge mistake. Now it was clear: the only mistake was letting him go. For all my fear of getting hurt, I’d hurt the best thing that ever happened to me.

  This was the wrong ending. Whether or not I ultimately ended up going with him to California, or if we just peacefully went our separate ways, it couldn’t end like this. I had to make this right.

  I picked up my phone off the bedside table and flipped it open. It was almost one in the morning and normally, I wouldn’t consider calling anyone at this hour unless there was blood or fire, but I couldn’t let this go.

  Still, I couldn’t bring myself to call him. Whether it was cowardice, consideration, or a combination of the two, I decided to text him instead. If he was asleep or close to it, a text could be ignored more readily than a call.

  Or so I could tell myself when he ignored my text.

  But what to say? He deserved more than an apology by text, and a friendly, if non-committal, salutation would probably just make him roll his eyes. I needed something in between, something to bridge the gap and make a connection. From there, I’d figure it out.

  With a shaking hand, I typed a few words: Can we talk?

  I stared at the message for a long moment, then deleted it. The question invited a “no” I wasn’t sure I could handle.

  I’d like to talk.

  No. If I sent that, then once the message disappeared down the line, every second of silence would be agony. It would be impossible to tell when “hadn’t gotten the message yet” became “the silence is the answer.”

  I finally wrote: Are you awake?

  It was a start. It was something. And before I could think twice, it was sent.

  Hugging my knees to my chest with one arm, I stared at the phone in the upturned palm of my other hand. When the vivid blue backlight shut off, I stared at the darkness where its glow used to be.

  And I waited. Hoping for a response, afraid of what it might say. Hoping for a Connorgram. I tried to laugh at that word, but the sound that came out was more like a whimper of pain, which is exactly what it was. That was what he’d called his messages back when everything was right in the world. Somehow, it just didn’t seem to fit in this situation.

  A burst of shrill beeping and bright blue light made me jump, and my phone tumbled onto the bed beside my feet. With shaking hands, I flipped it open.

  Yes.

  The simple message was just ambiguous enough to keep both hope and disappointment at bay. I’d made contact, he’d reciprocated, but that was all he’d given me.

  Now what?

  I stared at the flashing cursor on the blank reply screen. After a few minutes of agonizing over every possible response—from either of us—I said, I’d like to talk. Just before I sent it, I added, In person.

  Like last night, I wasn’t sure I could deal with seeing his face, but I owed him that much. This wasn’t a conversation that could be had via text messages, and if that meant showing my face to the man I’d stupidly walked away from, the man I’d pushed away, then so be it.

  I just prayed he’d give me the chance.

  A full ten minutes of silence passed, just long enough for me to be certain he’d given me his answer, when another message came through.

  When?

  I gulped. When indeed?

  It was after one in the morning. I was awake. He was awake. Why wait?

  With my heart in my throat, I sent back, Now.

  A few minutes later, the sound that broke the silence wasn’t my text beep. It was my ringtone. I stared at the phone for a second, disbelieving, unsure if I could handle hearing his voice, but before I could stop myself, I answered.

  “Hey,” I said, my mouth dry.

  “You really want to get together at this hour?” His voice was flat. Neutral. Offering nothing. He’s a difficult man to read unless he wants to be read, Susan said in my mind.

  I cleared my throat. “I’d rather not wait.”

  He was quiet for a moment except for a long exhalation. Even that was unreadable. Frustration? Indecision? Finally, he said, “I’ll be up for a while if you want to come by.”

  Before I could convince myself that I couldn’t face him, I said, “I’ll be there in a few.”

  Chapter Forty

  Connor didn’t look at me when he answered the door. He simply pulled it open and stood aside, gesturing for me to come in. After it was closed and the deadbolt was in place, I followed him into the kitchen.

  “Coffee?”

  “Please.”

  When the ritual of cups, cream, and sugar had run its course, we stood on opposite sides of the small kitchen amidst stacks of sealed boxes. I stole a few surreptitious looks at him, not sure if I was trying to gauge his mood or simply drink him in just in case this was the last time I saw him.

  His glasses didn’t quite mask the dark circles under his eyes, and there was both exhaustion and tension in his posture. Whenever he turned his head, he did so slowly, as if the muscles were simply too tight to cooperate, yet his shoulders were hunched low, almost slumped.

  Stanford University was emblazoned across his gray sweatshirt in red block letters. I wondered if he’d done that deliberately to throw a little salt on the wound or if it was just the next clean shirt in the drawer when he’d dressed.

  Just looking at him made my chest ache. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to run to him or away from him. I thought it hurt to be this close to him right before I walked away the other night, but that was nothing compared to this. The
dust had settled and there was no longer the panic, the adrenaline, the heart-pounding need to escape. All that remained were pieces to be picked up and the uncertainty of who would pick up which pieces.

  I wasn’t sure just where to start, and his expression offered me no clues. Testing the waters with mundane conversation, I said, “Is Evan home?”

  “No.”

  Silence.

  I tried being a little more direct. “You look exhausted.”

  With a half-shrug, he patiently played along with my feeble attempt at small talk, though he still kept his eyes down. “Haven’t been sleeping.”

  “You never sleep.”

  His eyes finally met mine, if only for a second. “Not lately, anyway.”

  More silence.

  So we were going to play this game again, this dance around what needed to be said and heard. But this wasn’t something we could dance around. Tonight was a night for uncomfortable truths, the kind that couldn’t be skirted with humor or contained in the occasional lyrical bit of memorized poetry.

  On with it, then. I couldn’t quite maintain eye contact. “Listen, I want to talk about the other night.”

  “I figured,” he said, his tone flat. He folded his arms across his chest and rested his hip against the counter.

  I forced myself to hold his gaze. “I made a mistake the other night.”

  “That makes two of us,” he growled.

  I flinched and dropped my gaze, the words hitting me in the chest and making breathing nearly impossible. “Connor, I’m sorry.”

  “So am I.” By the sound of it, he was speaking through clenched teeth.

  “Will you at least hear me out?” I said.

  His eyebrows lifted and his jaw set even tighter as he challenged me with a silent glare. I struggled to suppress the anger that wanted to come out. Whatever contempt he gave me, I had earned. If I had any hope of breaking through that contempt, I had to keep myself together.

  Taking a deep breath, I said, “Look, I never should have walked away the other night. I mean, even if we can’t do this, it shouldn’t end like that. Or like it did last night.” I preemptively flinched, expecting another icy dig, but he said nothing.