I pointed toward the door beside the box office and stood, giving him a give me a second gesture before I stepped out of his sight. As I shut the box office behind me, I leaned against it for a moment, eyeing the door I’d indicated to Nathan, trying to decide just why my heart pounded so fucking hard.
Part of me wanted to be relieved and thrilled to see him.
Part of me wanted to hate him for showing up after I’d left.
I don’t want to see you again. Thank God you’re here.
And why? Why was he here?
“Only one way to find out,” I said aloud. Taking a deep breath, I went to the door and turned the lock.
He dropped his cigarette on the sidewalk and crushed it with the toe of his shoe, kicking it into the street before following me into the theatre. I locked the door and faced him. Standing just a few feet apart, we looked at each other in silence.
Aside from the faint glow from the box office and the cool fluorescent lights behind the concession stand, the lobby was dark. The only sound was the buzz of the refrigerators behind the counter.
The tiny lobby suddenly seemed huge, the empty space around us practically begging me to step away, to widen the narrow void between us. But I didn’t move.
“Nathan,” I said, saying his name as if it somehow made this situation more unnervingly real than it already was. A faint echo carried my voice into the shadows and the room was again silent except for the buzzing refrigerators.
He shifted his weight. “Got a few minutes?”
Get the fuck out of here. I wet my lips. For you, I have all the time in the world. “Yeah. Yeah, I have a few.”
“Listen, I-” He paused, shifting once more and taking a deep breath, furrowing his brow as if rethinking his approach at the last possible second. Then he released his breath and looked me in the eye. “I came to apologize.”
Time seemed to stand still. Confusion made it almost impossible to breathe as I tried to gauge how I should react.
I wanted to lash out. Oh, Nathan, we are long past anything an apology can repair. I wanted to reach out. You don’t have the faintest clue how much I love you, do you? I wanted him to get out. I’m better off without you, no matter how much it hurts.
I kept my expression neutral, which didn’t take a lot of effort. My emotions contradicted each other so dramatically they cancelled each other out, leaving me feeling something close to nothing.
Time rolled forward again as I finally managed to draw a breath. I cleared my throat. “Okay…”
“You were right about why I was here last night,” he said.
I tightened my jaw. “So you-”
“Let me finish,” he said quietly. “You were right. You were absolutely right. I should have trusted you, and I didn’t. Not as much as I should have.” He swallowed hard. “Zach, I’m sorry. I never should have doubted you as much as I have. You’ve never given me any reason not to trust you.” Closing his eyes for a moment, he took a long breath in through his nose. “The truth is…” He paused, chewing his lip and staring at the floor between us.
“What?”
Squaring his shoulders, he looked me in the eye. “The truth is that I do trust you,” he said. “I trust you more than I have anyone else. Ever. I have from the beginning, and that scared me. I guess I was…” He paused, then sighed. “It scared me. It fucking scared me. So all this time, I guess I was trying to find a reason not to trust you like this.”
“That doesn’t make sense.” The words came out sharper than I intended. Gentler this time, I said, “Nathan, why would you want to distrust me?”
He held my gaze, though it seemed to take a great deal of effort. “Because it was safer that way.”
“Safer? How-” I stopped when the penny dropped in my mind. I understood. If he didn’t trust me, then he’d be vindicated when I eventually betrayed him.
What he didn’t give me, I couldn’t break.
I took a breath. “You know I wouldn’t hurt you.”
He nodded, exhaling slowly and looking anywhere but directly at me. I was surprised he hadn’t needed another cigarette. At this rate, I was tempted to have one. Or maybe he did need one, but wanted to settle this before either of us left this room.
Running a shaking hand through his hair, he said, “I know that, and I’ve known it all along.” When he looked at me this time, it was hard to tell in the low light of the lobby, but I was almost certain there were tears in his eyes. “I can’t even begin to apologize enough, and I don’t know how I can convince you that this is the God’s honest truth.”
For a moment, he was silent, probably waiting to see if I’d respond. I wanted to, but I didn’t know how. At this point, I was lucky I still remembered how to breathe.
After a long silence, he must have assumed I couldn’t-or wouldn’t-reply, and continued.
“I’ve been holding back from the beginning,” he said. “You put more into this than I ever had any business asking for, even when you weren’t getting a damned thing in return. It shouldn’t have been like that.” He stepped toward me. “It shouldn’t be like that.”
My heart pounded, blood thundering in my ears. He’d moved us into the present tense, brought us back out of the past and into the now. Of course I’d expected him to suggest getting back together, but now it was out there. Subtle or not, it was there. Spoken. Brought to life.
He came a little closer. The distance between us shrank, pulling the air out of my lungs.
“Zach, say something,” he whispered. “Give me-” He caught himself, cursing under his breath and looking away for a moment. When he met my eyes again, he said, “I don’t know what else to say.”
And I didn’t know either. “Maybe,” I said quietly, “there’s nothing left to say.”
His eyes widened and his lips parted. “Wait, please-” But he stopped when I took a step toward him.
“Maybe,” I said. “We’ve said everything we need to say.” Slowly, cautiously, watching him as I did, I reached across the chasm between us and touched his hand.
He held his breath and I held mine, the universe coming to a complete halt as our hands made contact. He watched his fingers wrap around mine. A silent, breathless eternity passed before I convinced my own fingers to respond. They laced between his and closed, completing this subtle reconnection.
Then he looked at me, and we both smiled. He touched my face gently, drawing me closer with only his fingertips. The warmth of his breath on my skin made me shiver, and it was only then that I caught the vague hint of mint. Probably gum he’d chewed on the way down the sidewalk. The cigarette he’d had outside must have been an afterthought, a last-ditch effort to settle his nerves, even if it diminished the effect of the mint.
But still, the mint was there. He may not have known he was going to kiss me, but he’d hoped to.
And now that he was so close I could almost taste him, I realized I’d hoped, from the second his Zippo lighter had broken the silence earlier, that he’d kiss me.
“Zach, I need to give you something,” he said, drawing me still closer. “Something I should have given you a long time ago.”
Our lips were nearly touching, but I managed to say, “And that is?”
Just before he kissed me, he whispered:
“Everything.”
About the Author
To learn more about L.A. Witt, please visit www.loriawitt.com. Send an email to thethinker42@gmail.com.
