“That these fries are awesome. Did you know they’re my favorite food?”
“Ah. You say that as if you let me in on your darkest secret. But I suspect that’s not what you were thinking.”
“Chinese food is actually my favorite. Cold sesame noodles,” I say, then I look away and he pets my hair. “But, that’s not what I was thinking.”
“What were you thinking about?”
I can’t tell him my darkest secret. I can’t tell him all that I’m feeling. I’m not even sure what this is, or what it could be. But I manage one small step.
“You,” I whisper, and he leans his forehead against mine, sighing deeply as I trace the ends of his hair with my fingers. “I was thinking about you. I think about you all the time,” I say, and the admission terrifies me, but it also makes me feel lighter. Like I can start to have all the things I’ve denied myself. All the real things.
“You do?”
“Yes. So much it scares me,” I say, and my throat hitches, but I keep it together.
“It’s okay to be scared. It’s okay to feel,” he says in a soft, tender voice. It’s such a contrast to how he spoke to me back at the theater.
I pull back and look at him, seeing him in a newer light than I always have. He’s always been heart-stoppingly gorgeous with his dark hair, ink blue eyes, and strong jawline. But he’s beautiful in a different way now. Because I know who he is, beyond the man in the second row of the St. James Theater who called me in for the chance of a lifetime. That chance still exists though, and I need to protect it. “We still have to be careful at the event this weekend, okay? I don’t want people to talk about me. We can’t arrive together, and we can’t leave together.”
“Can I get you a dress though?” He looks so hopeful, like he’s been dying to do this for me.
“You don’t have to do that. I can find something to wear.”
“I know you can, Jill. I know you’re perfectly capable of doing everything on your own. And I know I don’t have to. But I want to do something special for you.”
“Then I would love to see what you choose for me. But there’s something I have to do first before I go with you.”
“What’s that?”
I tell him what I need to do, and I think I might have made him the happiest I’ve ever seen him. Then he smothers me in a kiss that makes me forget we are in a public place. But there’s a part of me that no longer cares.
Chapter 19
Jill
When I first saw Patrick perform in Guys and Dolls, it was exactly six months after Aaron’s final letter. Six months after his death. Six months of nothing but my own unflinching blackness, my relentless disgust over what I’d done. After he died, I made it through each day by going through the motions. By waking up and running. By going to school and running. By eating dinner and running. I’m sure my family thought they knew why I was wrecked. But they didn’t know the half of it. I mastered running when I was younger, and it was because I tried to run off all the things I could have done differently. To run away from the things I couldn’t stop.
But then I made a choice. To keep going. To keep living. To move forward. And I did it when I saw Guys and Dolls. Maybe it’s weird in some ways that a musical would jolt me out of the pain. But maybe it’s not weird, because theater was always my true heart, my unfettered joy that couldn’t be touched by anyone. That could never be tainted, never be harmed. There I was, at the Gershwin Theater in the balcony, and the overture began, and I was transported, out of my world, and into a better one. The kind that only illusion, only artifice can bring. It wasn’t so much the role that Patrick played, but it was how he’d done it. How he took over, saving the show on such short notice. From his golden boy looks, to his save-the-day talent, I imagined him to be everything I ever wanted, and when he stepped onto the stage after only forty-eight hours of rehearsal, seamlessly becoming someone else as I so longed to do, I suspended disbelief. Because I needed something desperately. I needed something that was pure joy, pure goodness in my life, something I couldn’t ruin. So I latched onto him. To the possibility of a love that wouldn’t wound me, consume me, and ruin me.
More importantly, the kind of love that wouldn’t ruin someone else.
Love without pain. Love without fear. The kind that only exists from afar.
I held onto him for the next six years. He became the brace that stabilized my foundation for all that time. Because I suspended disbelief not only for one night at the theater, but for the next six years of my life. Then when I met him, he seemed to be everything I always thought he would be—kind, nurturing, and most of all, so very happy.
Now I no longer need him. So I don’t even look at Aaron’s letter when I return from my run the next morning, get ready for rehearsal and head to the theater. I don’t look at his last note to me because I don’t need to put my finger in the flame any more. I simply march forward.
Even though my feet feel like cinder blocks when I reach the stage door. My stomach twists with nerves as I walk up the steps, because I’m ending six years of imaginary love. But it’s just the fear of letting go of my crutch. Of stepping out on my two feet again, and learning how to walk without help.
Somehow I make it down the carpeted hallway and stop in front of his dressing room. The door is ajar, and I hear music playing. The Black-Eyed Peas “I Gotta Feeling.” My lips curve into a closed-mouth grin, because this is Patrick. He’s the happy guy. He needs to be in a good mood all the time, and he’s listening to one of the poppiest numbers in recent years to get himself there.
Just do it.
I take a deep breath and knock. He leans back, taps out a few beats on the wooden arms of the chair, and waves me in. “Jill! Come in.”
I try to excise the feeling of walking the plank. But this is Patrick. Patrick won’t hurt. Patrick won’t be ruined. We only went out twice.
“Hi Patrick. I wanted to thank you for the book, and the bowling, and the mini golf invitation,” I say quickly, the words piling up. I remind myself to breathe, to slow down. “But I can’t go to mini golf or anything else.”
He tilts his head to the side, his golden-brown eyes casting me a curious look. As if my no doesn’t compute. “Bummer. I was looking forward to it. We could have had such fun.”
“I know,” I say, and my heart hurts to have to say goodbye to whatever this might have been. But this was only ever some sort of hero worship on my part. “I had a great time with you. And I know I’d still have a great time with you. But I started seeing someone, and so I probably shouldn’t hang out like we’ve been doing.”