He sighs, running a hand over his face, his beard, and I feel the tension rolling off him. “I don’t know,” he says, his voice a rough whisper. He walks past me and sits on the edge of the bed, lacing his hands together, looking at the floor. I already get the impression that he’s shutting down on me, like the way he used to when I asked questions he didn’t like.
“Well, I know,” I tell him, even though I’m bullshitting a bit. “Okay, so I don’t know. But I know what I want.”
Be brave, Shay. Time to be brave.
“And that’s you, Anders. I want you and I want us…I want us to give this a shot. I know I said I didn’t want things to get complicated, but things were complicated between us from the start. It’s too late for anything easy and simple, because we’re not easy or simple. We’re two lonely souls with a twisted history and so much excess baggage that it’s weighing us both down. We can’t even save each other if we’re both drowning.” I pause, my heart pounding in my throat, my honesty taking me by force. “But I want to at least try. I don’t want to say goodbye to you and move on. I can’t. I only want to move on with you.”
And there it all is.
My precious truth.
And yet Anders stares at the floor. It’s like he hasn’t even heard me at all.
My heart drops, a sickly feeling that spreads through my veins, making them run cold.
I walk over to him, stand right in front of him, wishing my heart wasn’t so loud.
“Hey,” I tell him. “Look at me. Please. Look at me when I’m baring my heart to you.”
Slowly, he raises his head and I hate what I see in his eyes. Hate how much it reminds me of his younger self, the one who grew cold and distant and pushed me away.
“Don’t be like him,” I say softly, my voice shaking softly with anger. “Don’t be like him. You’re not that boy anymore. You’re a man. You need to handle this, us, like a man. If you don’t have any feelings for me, real true feelings, if you don’t want to be with me, see a future that I’m a part of, then you have to flat-out tell me. Yeah it’ll hurt. It’ll destroy me. But I can handle it. The truth is what I deserve.”
He swallows thickly, licking his lips. “What you deserve, Shay, isn’t me.”
Oh no. Not this.
I shake my head. “Don’t start.”
“I’m serious,” he says gruffly, frowning at me. “You don’t deserve who I really am. You deserve someone who will be with you all the time, who will give you their time and attention and affection, because you’re worth all of that and more. That’s not me.”
“That is you!”
“No. This…” he gestures to himself, to the room. “This is a version of myself that even I don’t recognize. This is what my life could have been. But it’s not the life I’ve been given. I’ll be gone all the time, and when I’m not out at sea, I’ll be working the farm. What the hell are you going to do with yourself? Sit around and wait while I’m gone? Waste your years working on a farm, milking cows?”
“Don’t assume I don’t know what to do with myself,” I tell him, glaring now. I hate when people make assumptions for me. “I would be plenty busy trying to figure out what I want from life.”
He throws his arms out. “Yeah? And what if you come to the conclusion that what you don’t want is me? That the life you have with me isn’t the life you wanted? Shay, you’re so beautiful and vibrant and smart and passionate and you have your whole future ahead of you and I can say with certainty you deserve more than just scraps from a fisherman.”
“Scraps!” I yell. “You think that’s what this is? You think you’re giving me scraps? Well, fuck, Anders, why didn’t you tell me that this wouldn’t be enough?” I lean over and point my finger at him, my heart on fire, my eyes searching his feverishly. “I had no idea that I wasn’t getting the best of you.”
“I’m giving you all that I have!” he says, voice deep and rising. “All that I can give. I don’t know if it’s the best, but it’s all I got.”
“Are you?” I counter. “Because it’s fucking impossible with you sometimes. You’ll write out your poetry, but when it comes to the person who wants to hear it, wants to feel what you have to say, you hold it back.”
“I’m not holding back,” he says gruffly, jaw grinding. “I’m just…trying to figure this out, just as you are.”
“Well, it sounds like you’re done trying to figure it out now, right? Best we just part and be on our separate ways then?”
“Shay, you deserve someone better than me,” he cries out softly, and the worst part of it is that I can tell he’s not just saying it. He really believes it, deep down, that he isn’t good enough for me. That fucking cuts me to the core.
“Don’t even say that. Don’t you dare say that.”
“You don’t even know what’s best for you, you—”
Oh no.
Not this.
“Don’t pull that you know what’s best for me crap!” I snap at him, my anger surprising even myself. “That’s some shit you would have pulled in high school, treating me like dirt so that I’d push you away, so that it would be easier for you. Well, it wasn’t easier for me. You don’t even know what really happened, Anders. You have no fucking idea. You think it was so easy that you left? You left me in a state from which I’ve still barely recovered.”
He stares at me, shaking his head slightly, dark brows drawn together to form a
