On the third ring, I heard David pick up.
“Hey,” came his familiar voice on the other end of the phone. He sounded just as bad as I felt, I noted with some hope. Perhaps he didn’t want things to be over between us either. I kept my fingers crossed as I spoke in a shaky voice.
“Do you think we can talk?” I asked, my heart feeling like it might just stop altogether.
“Not over the phone,” he said after a sizeable pause. “Can you meet me at the park off Hendrix?” he asked.
“Yeah, I’ll be there in five minutes,” I said, probably a bit too anxiously.
“All right… bye.” I was glad that at least David still remembered how to end a conversation, though I hoped that was the only context in which I’d ever hear him utter the word “good-bye.” Maybe the fact that he felt bad meant that the article wasn’t real. Maybe I’d imagined the whole thing.
Or maybe I was just delusional and trying to make myself feel better.
I sped down the street to the park much faster than I should have, happy that I had just taken so much time to make myself look presentable. I pulled into the mostly empty parking lot and instantly spotted David’s old blue car. I pulled up beside it, but he wasn’t inside. My heart sank for a moment, before I realized that he was probably in the park somewhere. I left the laptop on the passenger side seat, hoping that even if he just wanted to take his computer and go, I could lock the door until we resolved this whole thing. I walked through the wet grass until I found him sitting on a swing in the abandoned playground.
He looked up when I approached but said nothing, just like he’d done on Friday. At least today he didn’t look like he wanted to kill anyone. Instead, he just looked sad and resigned-exactly how I felt.
“You look nice,” he said after I sat on the swing beside his.
“Thanks,” I answered. I looked over at him and noted that his eyes were red, though I couldn’t be sure if it was from lack of sleep or crying. I found myself hoping that either one of these causes was not due to the demise of our relationship.
“So you said you wanted to talk?” he asked carefully, and immediately we had gotten to the hard part. I nodded, not sure exactly where to start or how I could justify my actions to him. Now that I had read the article I almost felt like my little fall off the wagon would be the easy part of the conversation. I decided I’d wait until he brought that situation up. Although from the way he kept looking at me like I was a bomb about to go off, he wasn’t quite sure if I had read the article or not. I sighed heavily, figuring I’d kick off this little heart-to-heart with my lies. We could always move to his later.
“I know I promised you I was going to stop all of this but… this was something I just had to do.” I looked at him, hoping that I could read his reaction and go from there, but his face was completely blank. “I shouldn’t have lied to you. Trust is really important to me and it was a stupid mistake… I just… I didn’t know what else to do and at the time it seemed like the only option.” I was beginning to ramble desperately. I felt like if I stopped talking for a minute, he would drop the axe on our relationship. Now that I’d confessed to myself that I loved him, it seemed like being without him would be like being without air. The short period of time we’d spent apart had been complete torture. Although for all I knew, the whole time we’d been together had just been a lie to try to get a story out of me. Why couldn’t we have a normal relationship?
He looked up at me now, and I was angry with myself for crying in front of him. It was a low trick women used, but I couldn’t help myself. The tears wouldn’t stop coming now that they’d started. David looked slightly startled that I was crying and I saw a flash of pain flutter across his face. It was a look that made me unhappy but gave me hope at the same time.
“Please don’t leave me,” I said desperately, and I was fully aware that I’d turned into exactly what I’d wanted to avoid all along. I had become a slave to my emotions, but somehow it wasn’t as terrible as I had always expected it to be. “Even being without you for these past two days has been hell.” I was babbling again, but I couldn’t seem to keep my thoughts in my head. They all wanted to pour out of my mouth at the same time. I just wished he would actually say something. We sat in silence for a few minutes the only sounds audible were those of the crickets and my occasional sniffing as my tears wreaked havoc on the makeup I’d been so proud of moments earlier.
“Did you mean what you said on the phone?” he asked finally, keeping his tone even and looking me squarely in the eyes. I looked at him questioningly. “You love me?” he asked.
I exhaled deeply, the tears making my breath shaky, and nodded my head. I didn’t even care if he’d been lying to me. Even if he didn’t feel the same way about me, I still felt that way for him and I wouldn’t deny it any longer. We sat there in silence for a moment, just staring at each other.
David seemed to be experiencing some internal struggle, and I was worried about what the conclusion of that struggle would be. “Well, I love you too,” he said finally.
I held my breath for a moment. Hoping he would be the one to bring up the article. He said he loved me but would that change if he knew I’d read his secret? Was he only saying it to keep the game up or was he like me: in love but caught in a situation that looked worse than it actually was?
“I just don’t understand why you felt you had to keep it a secret from me,” he began, though I wasn’t quite sure if he was talking about the job I’d taken, or the fact that I knew what he was up to. “I obviously can’t stop you from doing whatever you want to do, but a little trust would have been nice, Amelia. I thought we had become an important part of each other’s lives. The more complete part. I don’t understand why you have this need to keep doing what you did before.”
“I wasn’t sure you’d get it,” I said weakly, now positive he’d been talking about my job… not his. “I didn’t want to run the risk of having you tell me I couldn’t do it.” I knew it was a poor explanation as to why I had behaved the way I had, but it was all I could give him.
“That’s what trust is all about. You have to trust that I’ll be reasonable, and I have to trust that you know what’s best for you. I am trying.” He stood now and for a moment I thought he was going to walk away again. Instead he just paced back and forth, a look of confusion clouding his face.
“I had no intention of leaving you. I just had to take some time to think things over. Like it or not, you’re stuck with me now,” he said with a small smile. The sadness I had seen in his eyes when I walked up was now gone, and I actually dared to let myself hope that none of this was an act. Maybe the whole thing really did just seem worse than it actually was and there was a simple explanation for it.
“Why, if you don’t mind my asking, do you feel that you absolutely need to do this job?” It was quite a reasonable question, I thought, and it struck me as odd that I hadn’t mentioned the payment I’d be receiving yet.
“The girl offered me a thousand dollars,” I said simply. The look on David’s face was so stunned that I wished I had a camera with me to capture the moment forever.
“Are you serious?” he asked incredulously.
“It’s Rachel McKlintock,” I explained, knowing that name would clear everything up. David was silent for a moment, considering the information I’d just given him. A small, wicked grin crept onto his face and I couldn’t even begin to imagine what he was thinking.
“I’m going to sell out… just a little,” he began.
“You mean you might actually approve of my heathen business now?” I said in mock shock.
“Here’s the thing,” he said as he sat down on the swing next to me again. “I figure that people like Rachel McKlintock have everything handed to them in life. No matter what difference we try to make, she’ll always be able to buy her way out of things, so we’re really not doing her a disservice by doing this job.”