about. I just feel like there is nowhere to hide here and I’ve never been so alone.
I don’t do the math until the phone is ringing, but I figure it’s past 8am in LA, so I may get away with it. Scott won’t like it if I mess with his lazy Sunday morning, but hey. I breathe deeply, trying not to let the emotion get the better of me. Liv is entitled to her opinion, it’s just crushing, that’s all.
“Hello?” Jen answers, sleepily.
“Oh thank God. I’ve never needed you more.” I say.
“Oh no, what’s happened? I thought it was going well.” She jumps into her role straight away.
“So did I, I thought she still loved me.” I choke back tears as I cross the main road towards the park.
“Jesus Danny, what’s going on, are you okay?”
“No, I’m not. I don’t know what to do.”
“Okay, you’re scaring me. What happened, I can’t help you if you’re being cryptic.”
This snaps me out of it, I realise I wasn’t being clear and I would be so worried about her if the tables were turned. “Sorry. I’m okay, I just need to talk. I didn’t mean to worry you.” I make my way across the park and turn down the familiar path. As the tree comes into view I’m momentarily distracted by Toby from the bar walking past me to work. He smiles but quickly realises I’m deep in conversation, we pass with a nod.
“Danny, tell me what’s going on,” Jen insists.
I sigh. “I just overheard Liv tell Max that she doesn’t want to be with me, I just needed to hear your voice.”
“She said that?”
“Well, in a word.”
“Exactly what did she say?”
“Just that the thought of me touching her ever again makes her skin crawl and she can’t get past it or something.”
“She actually said those words?”
“Oh I don’t know, but that was the meaning. Max got mad at her and she stormed off. She doesn’t know I heard. But Max saw me. I just walked out and before I knew it I was talking to you. I’m supposed to be working tonight, it’s such a mess!” I drop myself down onto the trunk of the tree, trying not to think too much about the last time I was here.
“Okay, listen, Are you okay? Do I need to worry about what you are going to do next?”
“No, I’ll be fine.” I sigh. I guess I would feel the same, so far away. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“So what are you going to do now?”
“Talk to you until you're sick of me, then probably get drunk.”
“Does Max know where you are?”
“No.”
“Do you know where you are?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m at the park. Don’t worry about my safety, just tell me what I should do. What am I even doing here, Jen? She was never going to forgive me was she?”
“Come on Danny, you know that’s not true.”
“But she can’t stand the idea of me touching her ever again, what does that tell you?”
“She said it makes her skin crawl, really?”
“Yeah…I don’t know…I guess…I got out of there as fast as I could.”
“DANNY! Are you sure you heard it right?”
“I know what she meant from her tone and the way Max got mad. It’s okay, Jen, I know I’m just going to have to get over it.”
“You need to talk to her, or Max at least, and find out what was said. It could be a huge misunderstanding.”
“No, there is nothing else she could have meant.” I sigh. “Maybe I should just come home.”
“No way. You haven’t given it enough time.”
“But when am I going to get the hint, that this wasn’t meant to be? I’ve tried so hard, I’m giving her so much space. I don’t know how much more I can take. I just wish I was there.”
“There is nothing here to make you happy, your home is there now. You just have to keep trying.”
I laugh a little to myself. This is ridiculous. I have nowhere to go. “I bought a car today, just trying to settle in a little. Ironic huh?”
“Come on now, don’t be defeated so easily. You’ve held onto this for half your life. You’re not giving up on it now.”
I sit staring out across the view down the hill and sigh heavily. It all seems so hopeless. I don’t know why I came to this spot exactly, nothing good ever happens to me here. It just has this kind of gravitational pull. My roots really are here.
“You still there?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I reply.
“Go and talk to Max. Find out what she said for sure and if you still feel like this, call me back.”
“Okay…thanks Jen.”
“It’s what I’m here for,” she says and I try to imagine her comforting smile.
When I slide my cell back into my pocket and glance back down the path, Max is there. He’s just standing waiting, with both hands shoved in his pockets, waiting for me to finish talking to Jen. My shoulders slump in response to his sympathetic gaze as he comes over.
“You had me worried for a minute. I didn’t know where you’d go,” he says.
“What gave me away?”
“Toby said he saw you. He said you looked angry.”
A small laugh almost erupts at the thought of me ‘looking angry’. “I’m ok.”
Max shuffles his feet around in the dusty earth beneath the trunk. “Look, I’m really sorry you had to hear all of that, she can be so stubborn sometimes, she’s her own worst enemy, but she is coming around.”
“It didn’t sound that way to me.” I scoff. “She can’t trust me…she doesn’t know if it’s enough…or even what she wants anymore, and the thought of me touching her again…” I trail off, not capable of finishing that sentence without crumbling.
“I think you got that a bit twisted.” He laughs.
“It’s okay. I know I’m wasting my time, she’s never going to forgive me.”
Max frowns. “Mate, she already has. Wasn’t that clear?”
“Um, no, not exactly.” I murmur, it’s not exactly clear now either. “If she can’t stand the thought of me ever touching her again, how can we be together?”
“Who said she couldn’t stand it?” He looks bemused, but not as bemused as me. “She wants it…err, no, that sounded wrong! She wasn’t saying she couldn’t stand the thought, she was saying it was a lovely thought.”
Okay, I’m so confused.
Max continues. “She doesn’t know how to turn it around and say she can trust you and that she forgives you, but she does. I was telling her that I think she’s being unfair keeping you at arm’s length, she didn’t like it that’s all.”
I rub my face, unsure how to deal with this about-turn. Did I really hear it so wrong? “But it sounded like she was writing me off.”
He sighs. “She’s trying to play it like she’ll never be able to trust you again, but I can tell it’s just an act. She wants to get back to how things were between you, she’s tempted, but she needs a push to drop all the nonsense.”
“This is your opinion.” I point out. “Not fact.”
“Oh it’s fact,” he says. “I know it, she knows it and if it wasn’t concerning you, you’d know it too. Trust me.”
“This is a real headfuck.” I moan. “What do I do?”
Max laughs a little ruefully. Then pauses, trying to be diplomatic I think. “I should say you’re on your own… that I can’t get involved,” he says. “But she holds all the cards and she isn’t playing fair. So here’s the thing…” He turns to face me. “You have to just make it happen.”
I stare blankly at him, waiting for more than that vague directive. But he seems to have finished.
