My forehead scrunched up but I refused to back away from him.
“I’m not doing anything deliberately. What are you talking about?”
He took in a steadying breath and let his eyes fall shut. “For the last couple of weeks, you’ve been doing everything you can to spear me, to make me hurt. And if you keep on thinking that nothing can hurt me, well then maybe you don’t really know me at all. You’re not just hurting me Perry, you’re killing me.”
I gulped, my throat closing up. I felt a pinch deep, deep inside, like my soul was getting cut. It started to ache.
“This is me trying, Perry,” he said softly, the anger being drained of his face. “This is me taking my heart out of my chest and putting the bloody mess in your hands. I can’t give you much more than that.”
The ache grew. So did the fear.
Dex was saying he loved me. Beneath our anger, our words, our mistakes, he was telling me he was in love with me.
Me.
I just didn’t know what to do with that. It didn’t fit anywhere inside of me, didn’t fit into the world I had created in his wake. Why couldn’t it have happened months before? Why now? Now was too late. It was far too late. He loved me but I didn’t love him. I couldn’t love him. The risk was far too great and there was no way I could go through all that pain again if things were to go wrong. Fool me once, shame on me. I didn’t want to get fooled again. The shame was enough. It was more than enough.
I swallowed hard and looked away. “Then stop trying.”
“You don’t mean that,” he said quickly. “I know you don’t. Oh baby, you can’t mean that.”
Now my heart was aching as well, bleeding out with my soul. I fought back the tears that were teasing behind my eyes. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that it had to be this way. It wasn’t fair that the pain I felt wasn’t going away. It wasn’t fair that I finally had everything I ever wanted and I was too afraid to reach out and grab it.
“I do.”
“Please,” he voice cracked, his eyes begging mine. “Don’t just dismiss this. Just…please baby. I need another chance. We both deserve it.”
I shook my head, the tears now coming loose.
“I can’t. I can’t get over it,” I sobbed. “I can’t. I’m sorry. I just can’t turn that part of me back on. It’s gone.”
“Let me bring it back.”
“And if it fails? I can’t take that chance. I have you back in my life, as my friend. Maybe that’s all we were supposed to be. How do you know?”
“I’m not supposed to be anything else than a man that’s stupidly in love with you. That’s what I know.”
And now, it’s what I knew too. But he had to step back and look at us. We couldn’t make it five minutes after sleeping together without everything blowing up in our faces. I didn’t know whose fault that was. Maybe it was just the way we were together. Dex and Perry always leads to trouble. Maybe this was a sign that we really were better off as friends.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, torn between wanting to touch his face for comfort or to wipe away my own tears. “I don’t mean to hurt you.”
His eyes fluttered with disappointment. He didn’t believe me anymore. And why should he?
Then came the most painful part, the right thing to do that felt oh so wrong. “I’ll be moving out when I get home. I don’t want to put either of us through this again.”
He nodded, seeming to accept it. I hated that he accepted it. I hated that I made him accept it. “Just know, if you do find you can get over it and until you move out, you know where I’ll be.”
“The room next door?”
His smile was sad. He nodded gently. “The room next door.”
He turned away from me, hugging the blanket close to him, and walked back along the green grass. I watched, numb from the inside out, as he began to lay out our clothes on the reflective silver, hoping they’d dry faster. I waited, summoning up a little courage, then joined him at his side.
~~~
Our clothes were pretty much dry just as the sun was beginning to set behind the mountains, the dying streams of orange light gleaming on the dark water. Though the space blankets did a good job of keeping us warm as we sat there together on the grassy banks, both of us tired, drained, and lost in our own heads, it felt good to be able to put on our clothes. We were wearing everything we had with us, not caring if we resembled Stay-Puft, and set about finding our way back.
The river had the most light to see by, so we walked along that as Dex examined the map, trying to figure out where on it we could be. He seemed to think that if we followed the flow of the river, it would eventually lead us back to the path we had been seeking. The only problem was there was no way of knowing how long it would take to get there and a night in the woods seemed looming. We would have to find shelter before it got completely dark. Twilight fell hard out here.
I was just about to pull the flashlights out of the backpacks when Dex came to a stop.
“What do you think?” he asked me. He hadn’t been saying very much to me and his voice came as a bit of a surprise.
I looked around his body. We had gone a few feet into the forest and stopped at the base of a giant, partially hollowed-out log that had fallen on its side. The interior was big enough for us if we squished and looked dry thanks to the overhang. There was some soft moss as well, that looked nice to sit on after the day we had, and would probably help provide some warmth too.
Still…
“Do you think we’re stealing an animal’s home?” I asked, peering at the log closer. “This looks like prime real estate.”