All This Time

38 ⦿ in which i close a door

Neither of us speaks for what seems like an eternity. The silence strains between us, and for once, I don't find it stifling. When it seems like he can't take it any more, I hear the soft rustle of fabric, feel barest brush of air, and a second later, the room floods with light.

The unexpected movement forces my eyes shut and when I open them, the room looks blurry, but I seek Wolf out, auto-focusing on him like a camera. 

He smiles at me, a feeble, weak thing that sends a crack right through my heart. "I didn't think—" He stops himself, and I can see the struggle playing across his face like the rapid, turning pages of a flip book. 

Wolf clears his throat. "Of the two of us, I didn't think it would be this way. You hurting me."

That brings a bittersweet laugh to my lips, although even to my own ears it sounds like a pained cry. "What, you thought you had the exclusive right to hurt people?" Hurt me goes unsaid.

He reels backward and only too late do I hear the words echo back to me. They sound sharp, like the blade of a knife, and from the briefest expression of surprise across his face, I see that without thinking, I have reared back and let the knife find its mark.

"Of course not," he says in a voice so soft that I almost don't hear him.

A succession of memories begin an insistent slideshow in my mind, more effective than a time travel device or a polaroid. Seeing Wolf's picture for the first time, being struck by his good looks, and more than that, the genuine friendship in his eyes as he and Xander posed for the camera. The way he looked when I saw him watching Xander and I hug at the airport, baleful and sinister. The way he caught me when I was slipping on the ice and the way he kissed me just because. The look in his eyes when I told him I didn't like him, but wanted to learn how to. All of us laughing on the way home from Efteling, like a Hallmark channel Christmas movie.

The question still haunts me. Is love something you can learn, like riding a bike? Only most people don't learn how to ride a bike by themselves. There's a mother or a father there to encourage, push them along, run along behind them so the child didn't fall off in a moment of imbalance. With Wolf, imbalance is all I know, and there's no one to catch me when I fall. There's only getting back up again, dusting myself off, and trying again, hoping to get two steps closer to him.

It strikes me then: Love shouldn't be this hard.

I feel old in that moment. I wish I could go back to the woman I used to be and shake her. No, not the college girl who came to the Netherlands with rose-tinted lenses, but the woman who stood in her office and thought she could handle Wolf. No one ever told her that wild things can't be tamed.

And then it seems like my answer is clear.

"Wolf," I say, the words strange and foreign in my throat, "I think, despite my best intentions, I've done something really stupid."

His face holds no judgment. "Tell me."

"I've gone and done the one thing you told me not to do." 

Gray eyes implore me to continue.

I rip the Band-Aid off before I can steel myself. "I've fallen for you."

This isn't a happy moment, not for either of us. His entire body goes still, the poised tension of a deer staring down oncoming traffic. He senses, I think, that my pronouncement will not lead to a happily ever after.

"It's not pretty, it's not sweet. In fact, it's damn excruciating most of the time. Like I'm flesh and you're sandpaper." My toes clench and my arms lose sensation. "You asked me to marry you because I would be easy."