Alternative

January 5, 2009 at 2:18PM

Couple days of winter break left. No real obligations.

I lie to Alex and tell him I have a headache when he asks if I want to get some food. I walk around my house in a daze, grabbing things from the fridge occasionally, patting Hank, and mostly just staying in my room. Mom asks me where Beth is; asks if I'm feeling alright; asks if I have any plans; asks me to shovel snow and walk the dog. I respond with one-word answers, keep my head down, and do the chores she asks. 

When I sense a potential fight, I just walk away. I don't have the energy.

I pushed Beth away. If there was a reason, I couldn't really make sense of it. The last time I was with her, she was being nice to me, wanting to understand what was wrong, trying to figure out how to make me feel better.

After losing her mom, she was the one trying to make me feel better.

Some part of me misses her, misses us being together. That feeling comes in waves and then disappears. I'm not sure if we're broken up.

I get a text from her:

Can we talk?

I start typing.

Sure, when? 

We're meeting at the subway station near my house. People are skating in the rink across the street, something the two of us had done just over a week ago.

I walk slowly next to her, waiting for her to say something.

"I don't want to do this if it's too much for you," she says. "You've been different in the past few weeks and I feel like something's changed with us. You really hurt me the last time we hung out. I felt like you just wanted to get rid of me, like I was just this nuisance in your life or something."

"I'm sorry."

"What do you want?" she asks.

I really try to think about this, but my brain doesn't work. Words aren't coming easily.

"I don't think I'm good enough for you. I don't think you really want to be with me," I say.

"Do you really believe that or are you just saying it because you're trying to let me down easy?"

"I don't know. The first one... I never told you the real reason I came to Harvest."

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"I had no friends at my old school. And I was pretty much failing most of my classes. I was a loser. My mom thought that Harvest would be easier for me. That I could actually survive there."

I wait for the look: the one that signals the shift in how she sees me; the one that aligns with how other people see me. The one that signals they've finally seen that thing.

But it doesn't come: her face stays the same.

"I don't care about that. And you're not a loser, Tim."

She takes a breath and runs through something in her mind.

"If you're freaked out about what happened to my mom and needing to be my 'rock' or whatever, it's not your responsibility. I'll be okay. I can take care of myself. It's not up to you to make me happy."

"I wanted to be there for you, to help. I just feel like I'm completely useless."

"How can you say that? We were good—you were good with me."

"I don't think I was. I don't think I can be."

"Seriously?"

"I'm sorry."

"The thing that really bothers me is that you're doing this now. That while I'm going through this, after I just lost her, you're making me doubt myself and—like—putting all this attention on you, on us."

"That's the last thing I want. I don't deserve any attention. I'm sorry."

"Stop saying you're sorry."

"Okay."

"You know how difficult it was for me to be vulnerable with you, to let you get close to me? I've never done that before. I've never been able to do that with anyone."

She doesn't want me to apologize anymore so I just keep my mouth shut.

"You can hate yourself all you want but there was a time where you were able to make me happy, and like I had..."

She doesn't finish her sentence. Just looks at me, expecting me to say something.

"Well," she says, "guess you're not going to make any decisions. Just going to force me to be the one to..."

She turns away from me.

"I guess we should stop seeing each other."

I had wondered what this moment might feel like. But it didn't really feel like anything. It was just a bunch of random words strung together. I knew what it meant but all I could feel were the separate words in the sentence, and how meaningless they sounded when you extracted them.

"Okay," I say.

"I'm not coming back to school this semester, so we won't have to see each other."

"Okay."

"Alright. Bye, then."

She turns away, and then pauses. Moves back towards me and wraps her arms around me.

I don't know what's happening. But something suddenly shifts inside of me.

"I care about you. I hope you know that," she says.

"I care about you, too," I say.

And I feel it. I actually feel it. She sees something good in me and I see so much in her. I suddenly remember what it felt like when I told her I loved her: having no control over those words coming out of my mouth; when I looked at her and she was the most beautiful person I'd ever laid eyes on. Studying together, skating, lying next to her, riding the streetcar together. How had all that so completely escaped my mind? And why was I only remembering it now?

I don't want her to leave anymore, but it's too late. She has to get home. It's freezing outside. She's already said goodbye.

She releases me from the hug and walks away.