Page 70 of Open Water
"No."
"All weekend."
"No."
He nodded like that meant something to him, which it probably did. He didn't push it.
"Can we not do this on the bridge?" he said. "It's freezing and the river's loud and I can't. I need to be able to hear you."
"Yeah."
We walked. Off the river path, through the gap in the birch trees and the overgrown holly, back to the bench nobody knew about.
We sat. The bench was small. Our legs touched. Neither of us moved.
He took a breath. Opened his mouth. "So. Here's what I've been—"
"No."
He stopped.
"I go first," I said. "And whatever you came back with, I don't want to hear it yet. Because what I've got to say can't depend on it. I've been reacting this whole time."
He closed his mouth. Sat back. Waited.
I'd rehearsed this. Two days in the boat, in the dining hall, lying in the dark with the whale sounds off. I'd had whole speeches. And now my mouth was dry and none of the rehearsed lines would come, so I just started, raw, wherever it came out.
"When I was a kid my dad left. But what actually fucked me up…" I couldn't believe I was telling him this, I paused and my chest started beating harder. I couldn't look at him in the eyes but I felt him lean in closer.
I took a deep breath.
"He said he wasn't going to. Sat at the kitchen table the week before and told me, straight to my face, that everything was fine. And then he left a week later. Gone."
As I said the word, I could see the scenes pass through my mind. My dads face. The headlights. Then that feeling of emptiness and the pressure behind my eyes.
"People say they'll be there and then they aren't."
I ran my hands over my face.
"And then you," I said. "End of summer before freshman year — gone. The morning after the party — you called me a mistake. Twice. You pulled away twice and both times it was like… this again."
His jaw moved. He wanted to defend it.
"So when you sat in a room and agreed to end us." I shook my head. "That wasn't new to me."
The cold was in my teeth. I kept going because if I stopped I wouldn't start again.
"Here's the thing though." I turned and looked at him. "I'm done."
The look on his face crumpled.
"Not done with you. I'm done waiting and being scared." I swallowed.
His face shift again from defeat to curiosity, his eyebrow ticking up in the way it did.
"I'm done waiting to be chosen. I spent the other night at dinner trying to say what we have isn't a relationship."
"Liam—"
