Nerd Girl (43 page)

By Wednesday morning, after another restless night and more radio silence from Ryan, I was a mess. I also knew, with certainty, that Catherine had cancer.

Ryan and I hadn’t been together for very long, but I wasn’t stupid. I knew when someone was avoiding me. It was no longer just about giving him some space to deal with whatever emotions he might be working through. For some reason, he didn’t want to see me nor talk to me. He was shutting me out. I could speculate for hours on end why this might be the case, but I knew I would go insane thinking any further about why he was behaving the way he was. So I reminded myself that Ryan loved me. He was in shock. He still cared about Catherine and that was something he never denied. I just needed to tell him that I would be there for him while he was there for Catherine. It was time for me to confront Ryan and understand how I fit into it all. He couldn’t avoid me forever.

Without giving Ryan a heads up, I drove over to his place. He lived a mere eleven blocks west of me, so it took me only a few minutes. If he wasn’t home, then I would wait. For a short moment, I wondered if I was bordering on stalker-like behavior, but I shoved that thought away. I deserved to know what was going on. If it affected Ryan, then it affected me, too. I had every right to be here. If he was avoiding me intentionally, I deserved to know the reasons why.

It was 7:45 and I could tell he was home because his lights were on. I paused and took a deep breath as I walked up his driveway towards the front stairs. I was scared. I wasn’t sure what to expect behind the door, because I didn’t know exactly why he was avoiding me. I steeled myself to be prepared for anything. I needed to be strong and go in there with my head held high.

By the time I got to the top of the stairs, Ryan was already opening the door. He must’ve seen me drive up. He looked like hell. His eyes were bloodshot and tired and he looked like he hadn’t shaved today. His hair stuck up like it did when he ran his hands through it. He wore his favorite old pair of jeans, the one with the small hole at the knee, and a wrinkled white t-shirt. Despite his haggard appearance, I thought he was beautiful and in just two days I’d missed him so much.

“Hey,” he said quietly and gave me a shaky little smile. This wasn’t one of the sexy, casual, or seductive smiles I’d gotten used to. There was no hug or kiss like he normally greeted me with. He had both hands in the front pockets of his jeans and his shoulders were hunched, his eyes uncomfortably shifty. He looked like a little boy who knew he had done something wrong.

“You look so guilty,” I blurted out and tried smiling. I intended to sound like I was teasing him, but his face fell flat and I knew this conversation wasn’t going to go well. I started to feel my stomach churn.

He moved to the side of the doorway, which was his gesture to let me in. He closed the door behind me and I stood uncomfortably in the foyer, not knowing where to go or what to do.

When I turned around, he was standing inches from me. He was so close I could feel the warmth radiating off of his body. I wanted to lean into him so badly and have him just hold me and kiss me like it was the most natural thing on earth for us to do. I could see his restraint, though, which was strange in itself. I could sense he wanted to touch me, but something told me not to reach out for him right now.

We stood awkwardly, staring at each other. The silence was deafening. “What’s going on with you, Ryan?” I asked quietly. I paused for a moment to let the question hang in the air.

Ryan didn’t speak immediately. Instead, he walked over to his sofa and sat on its edge, resting his elbows on his knees and leaning forward. His hands were folded together in front of him. “Catherine is sick,” he said, looking at his hands.

“I figured that out on my own. You’ve been avoiding me,” I said accusingly.

I hadn’t moved yet from the entryway, but I was looking at him now. He looked up at me, too, and for the first time since I arrived, we were making eye contact. “She has stage two breast cancer. For the next I don’t know how long, the unforeseeable future, she’ll get poked and prodded, have one test after another, have surgery to remove the tumor, go through multiple rounds of chemo, probably get a mastectomy, radiation, and God knows what else.”

I gasped and covered my mouth in shock. “Oh my God,” I whispered. “Ryan, I’m so sorry.” My heart had started pounding. An overwhelming feeling of sadness and heartache consumed me as I slowly grasped what Catherine was about to endure. I rushed over to Ryan’s side and sat next to him. I refrained from touching him, though. There was still a sense of restraint emulating from his body, putting me on alert.

Ryan turned to face me. When I met his eyes, a shiver ran through me. There was a deep sadness in them. His face looked completely tortured and his eyes were shining with moisture. I felt the hair rise on the back of my neck and my heard pounded even faster in my chest.

“Ryan, she’ll get through this,” I said, trying to reassure him. But what did I really know about Catherine’s condition? Stage two was beatable, wasn’t it? I didn’t know much about cancer, but I knew that stage four was the worst. He looked so upset. I struggled to find the words to comfort him.

“No, Julia, you don’t understand.” His voice cracked as he spoke. He lifted his hand to caress my face and gently brushed his thumb along my cheek, my jawline, and then to my lips. The look in his eyes was so sad.

“Ryan, you’re scaring me,” I whispered. “What don’t I understand?”

“Catherine needs me, Julia. She has no one else to help her through this. Her only immediate family is her dad and he’s in an adult care facility. He barely even knows who she is anymore.”

“Okay. Then you’re there for her. We talked about this. I’ll support you, and Catherine, through this. If it’s still too hard for her to see or be around me, I understand and I’ll respect her wishes to remain away. Some things are much too important to let a little bit of relationship possessiveness get in the way. We’ll be fine. She’ll be fine,” I appealed to him in earnest.

But Ryan was shaking his head. “Julia, she needs me.”

Okay, I get that already.

“She’s asked for
… all of me.” He said it so quietly I had to strain to hear him.

“What exactly does that mean?”
I asked softly, my face contorting with obvious confusion.

And then he spelled it out. “She’s asked me to be by her side through all of this. She wants me to break up with you and be with her. She says she can’t do this alone, that the idea of me going home to you every night breaks her heart, body, and soul. She says she can’t fight this thing without my support.”

“What?!” I stood up, not believing what I had just heard him say.
The NERVE of her!
I looked at him with my head slightly cocked to the side. Did I really just hear him right?

He wasn’t looking at me anymore. His eyes were focused on the ferry riding off into the sunset in the distance—how apropos. Then it slowly dawned on me. His tortured face, his physical restraint from touching me or holding me, his avoidance these last couple of days; it was all because Catherine asked him to let me go.

“Wow,” I said, blowing out a big breath. I felt like I had just gotten all the air knocked out of me. I was beginning to feel sick to my stomach. “You’re actually entertaining her request, aren’t you?”

“Catherine is really ill, Julia. She could die from this,” he said with desperation in his voice.

“But you would break up with me?” I was struggling with the fact that Catherine would ask this of him.

He didn’t answer my question.

“She’s manipulating you!” I didn’t mean to, but it came out as an angry outburst.

“Maybe she is. But what am I supposed to say?” He raised his voice now, too. “If I accuse her of that, then I’m a bastard. Julia, she has no one else. Despite my feelings for you, I do love her.”

Ouch.
That stung and my face contorted in pain like I had just been slapped.

He then quickly added, “Though not in the same way I love you.”

I saw the remorse in his face as he realized how his words had hurt me.
Too late, pal.
I could tell he was trying to control his emotions, but he still had fire in his eyes.

“The thought of being without you destroys me.” He grabbed both of my arms, not so gently, to force me to face him. “I don’t want to lose you.”

“So what are you saying, Ryan? Do you want to break up with me? I can’t tell, because you’re confusing as hell right now.” I could feel the tears beginning to well up behind my eyes. “This scene feels vaguely like déjà vu. Didn’t we already go through this?”

“That was a very different situation, Julia, and you know it,” he said huffily.

“You always have a choice, Ryan,” I spat the words out bitterly from behind gritted teeth.

“I love you,” he said fiercely. “The idea of losing you makes me feel like I can’t breathe.” His eyes welled up again.

“Then don’t do this,” I begged him. “We’ll figure something out. She’s not thinking straight right now.” I shook my head in denial. “Maybe you can give her some time to figure out what she needs. Can you explain to her that she’s being unreasonable or that what she’s asking from you is selfish and unfair?” As I spoke, I couldn’t help feeling like I was the one being selfish and unfair. I wasn’t the one with poisonous cells in my body, trying to kill me. I immediately felt ashamed for even thinking it. “No, don’t answer that,” I said quickly. “I can’t believe this is happening again. I feel sick. If I tell you to choose me, I’m a selfish, cold, heartless bitch. If I tell you to be with Catherine, then I lose you. I can’t win. You get to be the saint, and I get the broken heart.”

Ryan dropped his hands and his shoulders slumped. “She needs the will to live,” he whispered. “I can’t take that from her.” He appealed to me with desperation, hoping I would understand.

How do I argue with that conclusion? Ryan was too good. His whole life, he’d been the responsible one. He’d always taken care of everyone else. That’s why he led a team of two hundred people and growing. That’s why he’d been engaged to a woman he wasn’t in love with. That’s why he moved back to Seattle, despite a promising career in the middle of the dot com boom, to help his mom and sister adjust after his dad died. Ryan wasn’t selfish. Everyone else came before him—everyone except for me. He self-proclaimed the only time he was selfish was when he wanted to be with me. And he couldn’t be selfish about that now. Not when Catherine was dying and I was back to being “the other woman.”

“Wow. She’s not fighting fair, is she? So, instead, you decide to break up with the one that does get to live,” I said quietly.

He looked like I had just slapped him. With his teeth gritted, he said icily, “This is
not
an easy decision for me.”

“But you’ve already decided, haven’t you?” I asked accusingly.

“No, I haven’t.” He spoke forcefully with his voice but unconvincingly with his eyes.

“Yes, you have,” I said calmly.
If he wasn’t going to say it, I was.
My heart felt like it was shattering into a thousand pieces. A few unwilling tears escaped my eyes and my lips began to quiver.
God, have some dignity, Julia, don’t cry in front of him.

“Julia,” he started.

“What do you want me to say, Ryan?” I asked coldly. “You’ve already decided. So why don’t you just have the balls to say it?”

There was prolonged silence; my question just floated through the air without an answer. And then it hit me. “Wait a minute! You want my
… You want my
blessing
?! You want me to be the one to let
you
go, don’t you? It kills you to feel like you have a sense of responsibility to me, too. It’s all hunky dory if I make this easy for you.”

Ryan’s shoulders slumped and he exhaled through his nose. The relief I just observed through his body language angered me.

“This is what you wanted me to say, because you don’t have the courage to do it yourself, right?” I accused him. “You’re always the responsible Ryan McGraw, but you also just proved you’re a coward, too,” I said bitterly.

He stood quiet and still for a moment, his lips pressed tightly together. He didn’t defend himself. It killed me that he looked so beautiful and broken standing there without any words to argue against my spiteful accusation.

“The last thing I want to do is hurt you, Julia.” He looked resigned now.

“Too late.”

I finally looked up into his painfully beautiful eyes. I recalled the first time I looked into them, right after the car accident. They were so calming then. Now, all they showed was sadness and regret.

“Jules,” he said gently and reached for my hand.

I reluctantly pulled away. “Then you have it. You’re relieved of your responsibility to me.” My voice sounded dead and emotionless. Tears streamed down my face as I opened his door and walked out.

I didn’t look back.