0215543001348293036 vaughn piper oshea m.j. (27 page)

Just wanna sleep. No more thinking.

Dusty helped me to my bed and pushed on my chest until I lay back against the pillows.

“You try to sleep for a while, okay? I’m gonna go check on Rue.” I nodded once, already feeling hazy. “Dust?” He turned to look at me from the doorway. “Yeah?”

“Th-thank you. For helping me. How d-did you know? My m-mom used to do the counting thing.”

Dusty gave me a small, cheerless smile that looked out of place on his normally happy face. “My little sister used to have panic attacks.

Her doctor taught me what do to help her get through them.”

“Oh. I’m s-sorry.” I wasn’t really sure what I was apologizing for.

Maybe it was empathy, since I obviously knew all about anxiety and the side effects that came along with it. But I think it had more to do with the expression on his face, a sort of sad resignation I recognized even despite the cloudiness that fogged my brain.

“Thanks. Get some rest, hon.”

He turned and left the room. I don’t remember falling asleep, but I must have. I never even heard the front door close behind him.

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Chapter 14

Rue

I WAITED hours, it seemed, while Dusty was in the other apartment talking to Erik. After he’d left and I calmed myself down, I’d woken Alice for her feeding. We’d played on her blanket for a while, but not even that could distract me from my worry. I wanted to know what Dusty and Erik were saying, desperately needed to hear that Dusty was talking Erik into going with me, staying with me so I could have my job and my family and be happy. Because without him, I’d be miserable, and if I didn’t take the job, I might just spend the rest of my life wondering what if… what if I’d taken that amazing job in California instead of staying where I was? My stomach twisted in agony. What the hell was taking Dusty so damn long?

Later, when Alice had fallen asleep again, I settled her in her crib and went back into the living room to lie on the couch. I stared at the ceiling in the hopes one of the cracks might give me the answer I needed, but all I could think about was Erik. After a few minutes, I heard the door squeak open. My heart thundered for a brief moment, but it slowed when I realized it was Dusty, not Erik. He was still on the other side of that wall instead of in my bed with his arms around me, where I needed him to be.

“What did he say, Dust?”

Dusty sat on the couch and lifted my legs so they were perched on his lap. “He thought you were leaving him for Chad.”

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I sat up. “What?” Out of all the possibilities, that was the last thing I’d even considered.

“He said all he heard was that if you said yes to Chad, you’d have to leave him. I guess that sounded pretty bad.” I shook my head. “Please tell me he doesn’t think that anymore.”

“No. I told him what was going on—about the job, and how you want us to go with you. He knows you still love him, Rues.” I went to get up. “I need to see him, Dust. If he knows, then everything’s okay, right?”

Dusty held my legs down. “He needs some space for a little while. He kind of freaked out there when he thought you were leaving him for someone else. It hasn’t been a good night for him.”

“Is that why you were over there for so long?” Dusty nodded.

“What can I do?”

“Just leave him alone for tonight, then make sure he knows how you feel. I mean, he’s only heard it from me. He needs the truth from you too.”

“Do you think he might come with me?”

Dusty shook his head. “He’s nowhere near in the condition to make that choice. Right now he’s sleeping, but it took me a long time to get him calmed down. He had a panic attack, Rues. The thought of losing you—let’s just say it was bad.”

Oh, Erik.
I wanted to see him so badly. I wanted to go to him and hold him and tell him that I’d take him anywhere I went, that if he needed to go I’d follow him just the same. He was my family. I loved him.

THREE days later I still hadn’t had my chance. He’d come every morning and pick up Alice while I was in the shower, then he’d come to drop her off in the afternoon right when I got home, but before I could even get out a word, he’d turn and retreat to his apartment. I’d

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follow him and knock for ages, sometimes sitting in the hallway and spilling everything about myself—my past, my fears, my desires—to his front door and anyone else who might be listening. I didn’t care. I just needed him to know how much I missed him, how much I needed him back. I had a key to his apartment still; he hadn’t asked for it back at any point. I just felt like it wasn’t my place to use it. Not if he didn’t want me there.

I couldn’t do it anymore. It was time to make a choice, and like Dusty had predicted, I’d have to do it by myself. No Erik to ask for an opinion, not even the silent support I’d gotten used to—the way he’d let me wrap my arms around him and lay my head on his stomach to think.

I didn’t want to stay, not by myself. It hurt way too damn much to look at my living room wall and know he was on the other side, and I couldn’t have him anymore. I was lost without him to talk to, my body hurt like it was going through touch withdrawals, and I didn’t want to feel so awful anymore. I needed to make it go away. Maybe California would do that. Maybe nothing would.

I grabbed my keys, ready to go over to Erik’s place and barge in. I needed to see him, to know if it was really over for good.

I couldn’t do it. When I got to his door, I stalled, key in hand. It felt so wrong to break into whatever he had going on in there. If he’d wanted me at any point in the last few days, he would’ve come out to get me while I was pouring my soul out all over the hallway.

“I love you, Erik. Please don’t end this over nothing,” I whispered. I spread my hand out on the warm wood of the door, imagining that I could feel his hand on the other side, feel the warmth from his body. “I love you. Please.”

I didn’t get an answer. As usual.

It was time to make a decision. I knew no matter which one I made, it would seem like the wrong one if something I loved was missing. Or someone.

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Erik

IT HAD been five days since my panic attack. Five days since I’d walked into Rue’s apartment and heard him say he would have to leave me. Even after Dusty explained what I’d actually overheard, I couldn’t rid myself of the fear, that edgy anxious feeling that sent me back to my chair for comfort or to my pills for numbness. I hadn’t really needed them in months. Now the only time I could function without them was when I had Alice. I was still picking her up every morning and watching her like I’d said I would. But the moment I dropped her off at Rue’s and came back to my empty apartment, the tremors would start again.

I heard him come after me, listened to him knock on the door and beg for me to let him in. Sometimes he’d sit out there and talk for an hour or more. He told me about being abandoned by his parents, about how his Aunt Elma had taken him in and let him share her tiny one-bedroom house until she moved to Florida when he was eighteen, about the day he met Dusty and the moment he realized he was gay.

I would sit on the other side of the door with my forehead against the wood and just listen to his voice. There were times I wanted to open that door and take him into my arms, beg him to forget about California and just stay with me. Stay, please stay, and let us go on as we had been. Other times I wanted to tell him I would go with him, I’d leave everything behind and move to California, or to the other side of the world, it didn’t matter. But when I went to reach for the doorknob my stomach would cramp up, my hand would shake uncontrollably, and I’d always pull back at the last second.

I can’t say what exactly it was that stopped me. Just that same overwhelming, inexplicable fear, I guess. I’d never left the state of Delaware, not once in my life. It was the only place I’d ever known, as familiar as my own face in the mirror, and for me, change had never come easy. My relationship with Rue had developed so gradually, in tiny little increments that passed by with scarcely any notice, until one day I opened my eyes and realized knowing him had changed my

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perception of the world from sepia to Technicolor. He’d opened my eyes and made me see things in a whole new way, and by the time I understood how much I’d grown to care about him and Alice and Dusty, they were so deeply entrenched in my heart, I knew there’d never be any hope of getting them out again.

There was another part of it too. A part I tried to ignore, but it lurked in the back of my mind, grating on me like nails on a chalkboard—
scratch, scratch, scratch
. I didn’t hold Rue’s past against him. Not really. But he was so beautiful and so much more experienced than I was. What if one day he got tired of me? What if he realized that I wasn’t enough to satisfy him anymore, and he needed something else,
someone
else? Someone like Chad, or that guy Nolan. Someone who didn’t have panic attacks and issues with crowds and a stutter that would never completely go away. What would happen if I went with him and left everything I knew and then he decided he didn’t want me anymore?

That thought alone had nearly sent me into countless panic attacks over the last several days. I couldn’t think about it very long before my breathing grew ragged, and my heartbeat sped up into a furious trip-hammer rhythm that made my head spin and blood roar in my ears.

When Alice was with me during the day I recognized how irrational I was being. But an entire lifetime of anxiety wasn’t exactly easy to overcome. I knew I wanted Rue. I knew it killed me to think about not being with him. But I couldn’t straighten it out my head. I couldn’t bring myself to go talk to him. Not until the morning I went to his apartment to pick up Alice and found her already gone.

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Chapter 15

Rue

I COULDN’T take it anymore—the knowledge that Erik was in my place, talking to Alice, touching things, just
being
there, and I didn’t get to have him. He was still sneaking in and out, taking my baby to watch her during the day. Participating in our family without the one thing I needed most: him in my arms, telling me that he loved me.

After the fifth day, I asked Dusty to please come watch her. I didn’t even mind if he took Alice to the coffee shop where she’d be surrounded by dreadlocks and unwashed shirts from Urban Outfitters.

All I wanted was some peace, the knowledge that Erik might be close by, but he wasn’t in the apartment and still not with me.

Because I knew, if I were him, and I knew he was waiting for me to come back and love him, I wouldn’t even be able to last five seconds without launching myself into his arms. I loved him
that
much.

The first day Dusty came to get Alice, he shook his head at me disapprovingly, as if to say “you’re going about this all wrong.”

“I can’t do it anymore, Dust,” was my only answer.

At least I got a reaction out of Erik for the first time in almost a week.

“Where is she?” he thundered, coming into the bathroom where I was showering (hiding from him is more like it).

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“Dusty has her at The Bean.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

I could see him through my shower curtain. He looked distraught, tired, like he hadn’t slept in days. I hadn’t either. Every time I tried to close my eyes, my heart would start slamming against my ribs, full on panic over living the rest of my life without Erik. It didn’t look like he was coming back.