How to Love

“Ouch.” Sawyer exhaled, ran his tongue over his teeth. “You should talk to my dad.”

“See? That’s what I’m talking about. Poor you. When really you’re just full of garbage, and I don’t know why I let you get to me like that when I’m going to leave in a few months anyway, and probably never come back in a million years unless it’s Christmas and I need someone to buy me a coat. Or something.”

“I know you’re getting out of here, Reena.” Sawyer sighed. “You don’t need to play the smart card with me, okay? I know how smart you are. Look,” he said, grabbing my wrist again, pulling me around a corner with enough force that my backpack thudded off the side of the building. My heart was banging away behind my ribs. “I got a little skittish, okay? I do that sometimes. Get a little freaked. But I don’t want to do that with you. I don’t want to get scared.”

I huffed a bit. “Stop it.”

“I’m serious,” he said softly. He had both wrists, and then he slid his grip down so he was holding my hands. “And I know you have no reason to believe me. I probably wouldn’t believe me. I’d probably think I was full of shit. But I like you.”

I shook my head, stubborn. “Right.”

“I do. I like your brain.” Sawyer grinned. “And I like the rest of you, too, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

Somewhere in my head, a little pilot in a little airplane was doing his best to prevent a fiery crash, shouting mayday with no one to hear. “Cut it out,” I managed, but by this point I wasn’t fooling either one of us. “I’m not kidding.”

“Me neither.”

“You wouldn’t have ever said another word to me if I hadn’t been—”

“You’re wrong,” he interrupted. “It would have taken me a little time, probably. But I would have gotten there.”

“I sincerely doubt it.”

“I’ll have to prove otherwise.”

I shifted my weight from boot to boot, uncertain. A silent war was raging in my chest. “I’m serious about the college thing,” I told him finally, as if it was some kind of compromise—an escape hatch, a contingency plan, a way to protect my heart. “I’m gonna hear from schools soon. I’m not long for this world.”

“Duly noted.” Sawyer smiled. “But I want to be with you.”

“Do you always get what you want?” I started, but I only got halfway through that particular inquiry because Sawyer was leaning in and kissing me up against the side of the building, warm hands on either side of my face. And in the heat thrown from his body, somehow my questions evaporated into the humid Florida air.

29

After

Aaron takes me out for Mexican a few nights later (I spotted the Celine Dion drag queen in CVS with an Us Weekly and a family pack of peanut M&Ms, which makes it his turn to buy). We order margaritas and fish tacos at a table near the band. The restaurant is just around the corner from his place, and we head back there afterward, his steady fingers threaded through mine.

I keep up my end of the conversation like a star, frankly, so chatty I’m borderline manic, but underneath I’m feeling edgy and out of sorts—restless and almost panicky, like I’m pressing at the inside of my skin trying to get out. It’s just garden-variety anxiety, probably, but I hardly hear a word he says all night.

The truth: I can’t stop thinking about Sawyer.

“Okay,” Aaron protests finally, pulling back a bit. We’re on the couch in his living room, one of his big hands cupped at the base of my neck. I feel tense from the tips of my ears all the way down to my ankles. “Now you’re the one who’s being weird.”

I’m surprised he’s noticed, actually, that he’s tuned-in enough to be able to tell. I’m not used to that kind of attention. I don’t know if I like it or not. “Who, me?” I ask, bluffing, eyes wide and innocent. “I’m fine.”

He doesn’t believe me—I can tell that he doesn’t believe me—but he lets me kiss him for another minute before he tries again. “Reena,” he says, rubbing his palm up and down my arm. “Come on. You can talk to me.”

I could tell him, I think, and I almost tell him, but instead I just sort of charge ahead. “What if I stayed tonight?” I ask. “I could go pick up the baby and then come back here, and—” I break off. “You know. Stay.”

Aaron looks surprised, like he wasn’t expecting that from me. “Sure,” he says slowly, a pleased smile spreading over his face. “I’d love that, if that’s what you want to do.”

“I … yeah,” I say, voice pitched a little high and desperate even to my own ears. “Yes.”

His grin falters a bit, just around the edges. “Are you sure?”

“Aaron—” I open my mouth to reassure him, to say, Of course, I want to, but when my answer comes, it’s from somewhere inside me that I didn’t even know existed, some small, hidden place that wouldn’t show up on a map. “I think we should take a break.”

Um.

“What?” For a second he looks totally and completely baffled, like I’m speaking a language he’s never heard before, and I guess I can’t really blame him—fifteen seconds ago I was asking to stay the night. “I don’t—” He blinks at me, like he thinks I’m being crazy. “Why?”

“I just—” As soon as it’s out of my mouth I know it’s true, that whatever I’m trying to do here isn’t working. That I’ve been trying to force a key inside a lock that doesn’t fit. “I think I need a break, you know? With everything that’s been going on with my family, and school—”

“What? What’s going on with school?” That’s a bullshit explanation, and Aaron knows it. He’s still staring at me like he’s been blindsided, anger just starting to creep in. “Is this about Sawyer?”

“It’s not,” I say immediately, still pacing. “I promise it’s not.”

“Really?” His voice rises, just a shred. “I guess I just don’t really get where it’s coming from if it’s not coming from Sawyer.”

“It’s coming from me!” I burst out. It’s the nearest I’ve ever come to boiling over with him: I keep my feelings clutched close. “I’m restless, or something, I don’t know.”

“So let’s go somewhere!” he suggests. “Let’s go to the Keys or something. We can take Hannah, sit on the beach for a couple of days.”

You’re not understanding me, I want to tell him. It’s so much bigger than that. But how could he understand, really? I’ve never bothered to explain.

The worst part is that I can see myself being happy with Aaron. I can see myself settling down here in a little house with the baby, safe near his family and mine. I’d finish my degree at a state school. I’d wait tables at the restaurant while Hannah grows up. I can see it all laid out for me, as neat and small and pleasant as a weekend in the Keys, and it makes me want to scream like nothing else I have ever experienced. I can’t live like this forever. I can’t.

“That’s not the solution,” I manage, voice shaking a little—God, already I’m thinking there’s an outside chance I’m the stupidest woman ever born. “Look, Aaron, you deserve somebody who’s going to be a hundred percent—”

“Don’t do that,” he interrupts quietly, and that’s how I know I’ve made him angry. “Don’t make it about what I deserve. If you don’t want to be with me, then fine, but at the very least just tell me the truth.”

And because he deserves that much at the very least, I just … nod. “I’m sorry,” I tell him, shrugging helplessly. I feel like the eye of a hurricane, panicky and calm. “But I think I need to go.”

Aaron looks at me for a minute like I’ve wrecked him, like I’m not the person he thought I was at all. “Yeah,” he says finally, shrugging back—the slightest lift of his shoulders, hurt and unconvinced. “I guess you do.”