Page 136 of Almost Not Quite Engaged

“That dead-eyed stare you get whenever they start talking about the wedding. Or anything really but especially the wedding. Like glass comes down over your face. That’s your problem, the wedding.” He points at me and enters the bedroom but keeps his distance.

“What wedding? It’s fake! Remember, not real. So what’s the harm in me leaving? You clearly don’t want me here or need me. I’m set dressing for our lie. We’re fake and it’s our problem.”

He sits down on his Wilco shirt on the big chair in the corner and I lean up against the bed facing him. We stare at each other and I don’t want him to look this beautiful.

“I don’t know what we are,” he finally says.

“I know.” My voice comes out quieter than I intend. “I know how I felt. I know how I feel.”

“Well that clears everything right the hell up, Kat.”

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t be cruel.”

“I’m not being cruel.” He scrubs his face. “This is so fucking muddy.”

His leg starts bouncing up and down. “I don’t know what I would’ve done in the reverse situation. But I know I’d resent you and your family.”

“I don’t resent them. Do you resent my family?” I get worked up again.

He puts his hands out in front of him. “No. What I’m saying is if I were in this position, this newness that doesn’t feel new, of you and me. And it feels old and important and shiny and fucked up...” His voice cracks. Tears pop in my eyes and I swallow hard.

He finishes what he’s trying to say. “I know you would let me go.”

“I would.” The words cost me everything. I look at him and squat down in front of him holding his knees. “And it’s why you’re letting me go now.”

“Yes. Because I know you’re here for me. But you’re also losing you. And I don’t know how long this will be or how deep I’ll fall into this trap but you’re right. You don’t deserve this. And you’ve just explained to me why I’m going to let you go.”

“I don’t know how to do this.” I blubber out and stand up backing away from him. I’m holding my stomach. Then I move past crying. “I don’t know how to do any of this. I don’t know how to be there for you. I don’t know how to be there for me. I don’t know how to be new me or old me. I will miss you desperately. I don’t know if I’m settling because I’m fucking terrified to settle because of Chad. And I don’t know if you’re settling.”

“I don’t know what I am to you without them,” he says, and it’s the cradle of our problem.

I look at him for a long time. “Same.”

“You have to go.”

“I have to go.”

A beat and I breathe in and out. He says, “I’ll tell mine. You tell yours. Blame my career, everyone else does.”

“No. Let it be that we’re not ready. It’ll be fine.” I hoist the duffle over my shoulder and grab my camera bag and feel as if I’m ripping in half.

“I can give you three reasons you have to go,” he says.

I turn back and look at him. My eyes are wet but my chin is steady.

I tell him. “And I can give you three reasons why you have to stay.” But we don’t actually have to say them, we already know them.

He says it quietly, almost to himself. “Am I Chad?”

I throw my head back. “What?”

“Was I the easy choice? The one your parents approved of so you went along with it. Not because you wanted me but because I fit.”

He’s hurting and that’s over the line, but I understand why he went there.