I know it sounds like a lie, but it’s not.
“I barely know her. She helped my mom with baking and now she’s Tessa’s friend—”
“Your mom? She met your mom?” Dakota shrieks.
Everything I say seems to add another shovelful of dirt to the hole I’m digging myself in.
“No . . . well, yes.” I sigh. “Like I said, her parents live near mine. I didn’t have her over for family dinner or anything like that.”
I hope something clicks within her and she sees that this isn’t what she thinks it is.
Dakota turns away and her eyes scan the living room. I watch her as she walks over to the couch and sits down on the side closer to the door. I pull my jacket off and drape it over the chair. I hold a hand out for Dakota’s jacket, but she isn’t wearing one. How did I not notice? I remember looking at the line of her tights, the outline of her bra through the thin cotton of her dress. I’m not used to seeing her dressed like this, in such tight clothing.
That’s my excuse for being a pervert who didn’t even notice that she wasn’t wearing a jacket? It didn’t even cross my mind to offer her mine—what’s happening to me?
While I wait for her response, I walk over to the thermostat and turn up the heat. If we’re lucky, it’ll make her drowsy. I pop into the kitchen and pour each of us a glass of water.
When I return, she shakes her head and looks past me; I can see that she’s struggling within herself. “For some reason, I believe you, but should I? I mean, this fast? Just like that?”
She rests her chin on her elbow and stares across the room. “I didn’t think I would care this much if you dated someone,” she admits.
Her words take me by surprise, and as I mull them over, something shifts in my reasoning. I guess I saw that from the beginning of the small almost-catfight that she was annoyed I was with Nora, but for some reason I thought she was more upset because I’d lied to her about what I was doing tonight. That she would feel weird at seeing me with someone—even though I’m really not with anyone—wasn’t the first thing on my mind, given everything. She broke up with me over six months ago and has barely given me the time of day since.
Part of me wants to shout at her, Where’s the logic in that!? but another part reminds me that she must feel that she’s justified in some way. I do my best to try to see it from her side before I say anything or react because I know that if I do speak right now, my words will do more damage than good. Especially if I’m only thinking of my point of view. Of myself. Still, I’m mad, too. She thinks after six months that she can yell at me for dating someone who I’m not even dating? I want to tell her that, tell her that she’s wrong—and I’m right—and I’m pissed, too! But that’s the problem with this type of quick anger: discharging it would make me feel better for a few moments, but then I’ll feel like crap after. Anger doesn’t often offer a solution, it only creates more problems.
Still, part of me wants to say something. I take a big drink of water instead.
I know anger.
The type of anger that I know isn’t some small thing that pops up when you see your ex of six months hanging out with someone else. My experience with anger isn’t getting pissed off because your neighbor drove his car into yours. The anger that I know cuts at you when you’re watching your best friend get his eye split open because his dad heard someone down at the bar whispering about him looking at another boy just a beat too long.
The anger that I know seeps inside of you and turns you into lava, burning slowly as it rolls down the hills and covers the town. It’s when your friend’s bruises are in the shape of knuckles and you can’t do shit about it without causing more destruction.
When you’ve been host to that type of anger, it’s very, very hard to fly off the handle over small things. I’ve never been one to add fuel to a fire. I’ve been the water, extinguishing the flames, the salve to heal the burns.
Little problems come and go, and I have always avoided confrontation at all costs, but sometimes things become too much to bear or too big to ignore. I’m terrible at fighting, I can’t keep an argument going to save my life. My mom always said I was born with a gift: an enormous amount of empathy. And that it could quickly become a fault instead of a virtue.
I can’t help it . . . I can’t stand to see other people suffer, even if holding back causes suffering to me.
I’m struggling to understand Dakota’s anger when she finally breaks the silence.
“I’m not saying you can’t date,” she says.
I sit down on the arm of the couch farther away from her.
“Just not so soon. I’m not ready for you to date,” she adds, and takes a long drink of water.
Soon? It’s been six months.
I can tell by her expression that Dakota’s completely serious, and I don’t know if I should call her out on it, or just let it blow over. She’s pretty drunk, and I know how stressed she’s been lately with her academy and all. I’m smart enough to pick and choose my battles, and I don’t feel strongly enough about this one to let it snowball into a full-fledged war.
What she’s asking of me isn’t remotely fair, and I’m frustrated by how easily I’ve let myself slide into this passive role again. I’m enabling her . . . but is it really that bad? We are communicating. No one is yelling. No one is losing their cool. I want to keep this going. If she’s handing out secrets, I’ll take a few.
“And when will you be ready for me to date?” I ask softly.
She sits up straight, immediately defensive. I knew she would be. I stare at her, my eyes telling her that there’s nothing to be upset about, we’re only talking. No judging here.
Her shoulders relax.
“I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it.” She shrugs. “I assumed it would take you longer to get over me.”
“Get over you?” I ask, worried for this woman’s sanity. What would have given her the assumption that I could get over her? My kiss with Nora? It’s not like this girl before me even gave me a choice about getting over her.
But, man, do I wish she didn’t know about that kiss. Not because I want to hide it, but because some things really are better left unknown. I keep my distance still, leaving two cushions of space between us.
“I’m not over you,” I calmly say, “but you didn’t give me much of a choice here, Dakota. You’ve barely spoken to me since you moved. You broke up with me, remember?”
I look at her. She’s staring at the floor.
“You wanted to focus on yourself when you moved, and I got that. I let you have your space and you didn’t do anything to stop me. You didn’t reach out to me at all. Not once did you call me first, not once did you answer the first time I called. Now here we are and you’re acting like I’m a villain because I went out on a casual date with someone.”
So much for biting my tongue and letting it blow over.
I truly don’t want to fight with her. I just want to communicate openly and honestly.
She looks at me with a pointed glare. “So you did go out with her.”
It’s frustrating as hell that after everything I said, that’s all she picked up on.
I’m trying to find some logic behind her accusations, but I’m coming up short without knowing what Nora has been telling her. All night I’ve repeated over and over that Nora and I aren’t dating, but she’s not listening. And then she’s holding me up to this no-dating standard she’d never voiced before.
If the roles were reversed, I would believe her. I know her well enough to know that she wouldn’t lie to me. She’s complicating things. Why is she complicating things?
“Stop lying to me.” She waves her hands through the air and the metal bracelets on her wrists clang against each other. “I get it, Landon, she’s beautiful and older, and aggressive, and men like that kind of shit. You like that, and I’ve been replaced again.”
I can either sit here and get mad that she’s cooking up her own explanations for everything, or
I can bite my tongue and remember that she’s drunk, upset, and has been under a lot of pressure lately.
With a sigh, I move from the arm of the couch and kneel on the rug in front of where she’s sitting. I look up at her stoic expression. “I would never lie to you about something like this. I’m telling the truth.”
My hands grab at hers in her lap. Her skin feels cold and the chill forces a memory into my mind. I’m thrown back into a backyard make-out session that happened when we were fifteen. Her hands were so cold and she put them up my shirt to rest on my warm stomach. We kissed and kissed and couldn’t stop. We were frozen by the time we went inside, but we didn’t care. Not one bit.
“Can I ask you something?” Her voice is soft and melts something inside of me.
I’m a sucker for her.
A goner.
I always have been.
“Always.”
Dakota draws a long breath and pulls one of her hands away from mine to tuck her hair behind her ear. I turn her other hand over and trace the lines in her skin, the scar there. She flinches out of instinct and I feel the throbbing ache of the memory behind her reaction.
“Do you miss me, Landon?”
Her hands are soft and light in mine.
This moment feels familiar, yet foreign. How is that?
Do I miss her?
Of course I miss her.
I’ve missed her since I moved to Washington. I’ve told her how much I’ve missed her. I’ve expressed how much I miss her more times than I’ve heard anything remotely close to that come from her.
I lean into her farther and squeeze her hands between mine while repeating her question back to her. “Do you miss me?”
Without giving her time to answer, I continue: “I need to know this, Dakota. I think it’s more than obvious that I miss you, that I’ve missed you since I left Michigan. I missed you before and after you visited me in Washington. I would say that me moving across the country to be with you shows that I missed you.”
She seems to think on my words for a beat. She looks at me for a second and then stares past me. The clock on the wall is ticking, humming in the silence.
Finally, she opens her mouth to speak. “But did you miss me? Or was it just the idea of me, the familiarity of me? Because there were times when I literally felt like I couldn’t do anything without you, and I hated it. I wanted to prove to myself that I could take care of myself. After Carter died, I clung to you, and so when you left me, I had nothing. You were my safe place, and when you moved away, you took that safety with you. But then, when you said you would move to New York with me, I felt like I was going to be stuck in that safe place with you. That I would be a child forever. There would be no chance for adventure, nothing unexpected could possibly happen with you around to save me.”
Her words burn as I digest them. They pull at the most insecure part of me, the little voice in my head that’s worried about what people think of me. I don’t want to be the nice guy. I’ve been the nice guy for twenty years now, even when it’s extremely difficult, and I still can’t grasp why women want drama over normalcy.
Just because a man doesn’t bash the face in of someone for hitting on his girlfriend doesn’t mean he doesn’t care about her. Just because he doesn’t guard her jealously or wince every time she talks to another male of the species doesn’t mean he’s uninterested or weak. It only means that he has his temper under control, that he’s respectful and mature enough to be a functioning member of society. That he understands that everyone needs their own space and every woman needs a chance to develop her own independence.
I will never understand why the nice guys have it so damn bad.
However, if you think about it, the nice guys usually end up being the husbands. The women go through a period of trial and error with the hot bad boys, but eventually most of them want to trade in the motorcycle for a Prius.
That’s me.
The human version of a Prius.
Dakota would be a Range Rover, sturdy and luxurious, yet still beautiful.
Nora would be a Tesla, sleek and new and fast. Her curves are smooth and assured . . .
“Until I broke up with you . . . then there was adventure. I was alone to navigate this big city and all the trouble that comes along with it,” Dakota continues.
And what the hell is wrong with me?
I’m here, inches away from Dakota, her hands in mine. Nora shouldn’t be on my mind. This is the worst possible time to think about Nora and the way her eyes are impossible not to get lost in, the way her bottom lip pouts out farther than the top.
And then I realize it: thinking about Nora is much less complicated than trying to understand the logic of Dakota’s emotions. I don’t have a clue what to say to my ex right now. She’s telling me that I did too much for her, that in some way I prevented her from doing things for herself, and I’m too afraid of pissing her off to come up with anything decent to say in response. I certainly can’t point out that I didn’t put her in a box. That I was a safe space, but never a jail. That I never curbed her freedom on purpose. That all I ever wanted was to help her in any way possible . . . her and her brother, Carter.
Dakota shifts on the couch and tucks her feet under her, still holding my hands, waiting for my response.
All I can do is speak the truth, with as little anger as possible. “You can’t expect me to apologize for being good to you.”
Her hands are still in mine. She pulls one away and again tucks her hair behind her ear before she looks at me.
“I don’t expect that.” She sighs and licks her lips, wetting them. “I’m just saying, at the time I needed a break from you, from us.” She moves our joined hands back and forth between us.
At the time? She’s speaking in the past tense, like our breakup is something that we are . . . moving past? Forgetting about?
I look up to catch her eyes. “What are you trying to say? That you don’t need a break anymore?”
She pushes her upper teeth over her lower lip as she takes my question in.
The weirdest part of this is that I don’t know how I feel. One week ago, if this conversation played out the exact same way as it’s playing out now, I would’ve felt differently. I wouldn’t feel so reluctant to go over past history. I would’ve been excited, grateful, happy. Now it just feels weird. It doesn’t quite settle the way that it should.
Dakota hasn’t answered me yet, and her words already feel somehow stilted as her eyes scan the room and her chest fills with a breath too deep to hold good news.
“Can I have some more water?” she asks, keeping her response to my question to herself.
I nod and get up, meeting her eyes one more time in hopes for an answer. Half of my brain tells me that I should ask again, that I should make sure she doesn’t want to change the status of our relationship. Would we fall back into old routines so easily? How many days would it take before she’d be effortlessly falling back into my arms, forgetting about her need for independence and adventure?
I grab her glass and once in the kitchen open the small drawer next to the fridge where the Tylenol is. If her hiccups and stumbling steps are any indication of how much she’s drunk, she won’t be feeling so hot in the morning. I open the bottle and dump three into my hand, then fill her glass with more water. In the sink is a cake pan. On the counter next to it, the elaborate tiered cake with purple icing and flowers Nora and Tessa made earlier.
Nora has left traces of herself all over my apartment.
I debate whether it would be worth it to eat a piece before I go back into the living room to deal with Dakota. Or I could cut one for each of us. I doubt that she’d eat it, though, with her strict diet and all. I lift up the corner of the plastic wrap and dip my finger into the icing.
Dakota walks into the kitchen just as I shove my finger between my lips.
Shit.
“Really, Landon?” Her lips lift into a smile and I lean against the counter and face her. She looks at
the cake, then back at me. All I can do is shrug and smile.
I grab the glass of water and hold it out to her. She inspects it for a moment, thinking of something to say, I’m sure. Dakota’s lips press to the side of the glass and I move back toward the delicious cake.
“You always had a serious sweet tooth.” Her voice is warm and delicious like the icing on my tongue. “It was irresistible.”
“There are a lot of things I never could resist.” I look at Dakota and she looks down at her bare feet.
With my fingers I tear off a small corner of the cake. Little pieces of it break off and a chunk of icing drops onto the countertop. I look at Dakota and try to lighten up the conversation.
“At least now I work out,” I joke.
I was a pudgy kid, always a little thicker in the middle than the other kids. I blame my mom’s baking and my own laziness about going outside to play. I remember wanting to stay home, like actually wanting to be inside my house on the weekends, with my mom. I ate a lot of sweets and I wasn’t as active as I should have been for my age, and when my doctor talked to my mom about my weight, I was embarrassed, and in that instant I knew that I never wanted to overhear a conversation like that again. I still ate what I wanted to, but I became more active than before. I was a little shy about asking my aunt Reese for help, but once I did, she came over the next day with an exercise bike in her trunk and little weights in her hands. I remember laughing at her eighties-style pink-and-yellow workout outfit complete with matching arm warmers.
Despite how absurd we looked exercising together, she and I got healthy. My mom joined in, too, just for the fun of it, though she had always been in good shape. Reese was always more plump than my mom, but she became a machine and we both lost weight together. My aunt was happy that she could finally fit into some dress that she had been eyeing for a year at some expensive store, and I was just happy not to have the extra weight on my body, making me self-conscious.
I felt great for a while and Dakota began to notice that the chubby boy next door wasn’t so chubby anymore. The problem was that my weight loss wasn’t good enough for my peers. I lost too much weight and didn’t put on any muscle, so that’s when the “Lardy Landon” name-calling switched to “Lanky Landon.”