The Christmas Conversation

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S A N T A

T E L L

M E
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Adam ran his fingers over his eyes, letting out grunts of frustration. I sat cross armed, determined to not break eye contact with him. He shuffled out, about to disappear, again. Frustration manifested in my own body.

"If you leave, I'll forget you ever existed." I clamped my mouth shut, realizing the gravity of my threat. It wasn't a threat I'd ever go through. Adam was apart of me. Memories of him filled in my mind more than memories of myself.

His back straightened, his feet plastering to the floor like glue. I internally sighed with relief when he came back to the booth.

"I want to know why you didn't show up to say goodbye." It was the day I left for California. I eagerly waited for Adam at the airport but he never showed. "And why you stopped speaking to me."

"Because I didn't want to," Adam simply answered.

A piece of me broke away, cracking. "You didn't want to?" I feebly repeated. "Why?"

"I couldn't see you leave knowing you weren't going to come back." His eyes were hooded and fingers curling into his palms. "And I did speak to you after you left. It got harder to speak to you."

My heart pitter pattered from the small truth Adam revealed. This whole time I assumed he forgot, I felt faded away. "I know I got busy but I always—"

Adam wildly shook his head, halting my sentence. His palm ran through his already disheveled hair. "No. It got harder because you weren't here." Adam sickly laughed, sounding tormented. "I think a part of me hoped you'd hate being over there but when I spoke to you and realized that wasn't the case, I..."

"You what?" I prodded.

"I lost it," he painfully confessed. An imaginary spear shed through my chest. "The one person who I ever cared about no longer needed me. You were happier."

Wetness pricked my eyes. Not just from his confession that made all my assumptions crumble, but because he never knew my reality. "Happier? Yes, I was excited by the prospects a new city would bring me but I was alone. I knew nobody. I spent months afraid."

"You always sounded better off."

"I didn't want to worry you. I wanted to show you how well I could hold myself up, that I could succeed without your help." In college, Adam always went out of his way for me. As much as I appreciated it, I felt incompetent. When he offered to find me a job, I knew I couldn't take it, I wouldn't. "When you stopped calling it hurt me. Then, you stopped replying to my texts." My eyesight was blurry as I began to choke up. Everything hurt. My head, my heart, my eyes. "I needed you and you forgot about me."

"You forgot about me too. You wanted me to fight for you but you never fought for me. You let me leave and only one of us ended up having an accomplished life out of it."

"You can't blame me for continuing my life. I was under the impression that I was nothing more than a fleeting memory to you."

His throat rumbled and his eyes turned into tiny slits. "You don't get it do you? You never did," he whispered.

"Get what?" I grumbled. Impatience festered in me. "Get what?" I repeated with more conviction.

A moment later Adam responded, "My heart beats for you." His hands now rushed frantically in his hair and over his face. I could tell this blatant truth was one he hid for ages. "You're in my blood and I wish you weren't."

I remained stunned, even as he rushed away.