Spellman Ch. 22

"If you don't mind, I'm going to raid your fridge and make some breakfast for everyone," Beth said once she was fully clothed, though given her outfit from the night before some might find that description debatable.

"Sure, that'd be great. Thanks, Beth," I said. She gave me a wink before leaving the room.

I walked over to Tori, who was still sitting on my bed in nothing but a towel, staring off into space. Gently taking her chin and turning her face to me, I kissed her. "Let's get you dressed, Tor," I said.

She nodded. I took her hands and helped her to stand up. Tori dropped her towel while I collected her discarded clothes from the foot of my bed. She dressed quickly and silently. When she was finished, I sat back down on my bed and motioned for her to join me. Tori crawled back into my lap without a word.

It was sometimes too easy forget how difficult things had been for Tori after we broke up. She had mostly gotten her life back on track, but I knew that she still had her struggles. Her confident and playful demeanor was a good façade, but sometimes the cracks still came through. Like they were now.

I held Tori in my arms and slowly ran my fingers through her hair for several minutes before she finally spoke up.

"I love Anthony. He's such a perfect little boy, and I wouldn't trade him for anything, but sometimes I look at him and wish I had him with you," Tori said.

"He wouldn't be who he is if he was mine," I told her. "He'd be a different, still perfect little boy, I'm sure, but he wouldn't be your Anthony."

"I know," she said, sighing. "But I can't help but think that way. If it were the three of us, everything would be perfect, the life I always dreamed of. I'd get to see my son every day. I'd get to wake up with you every morning. We'd wake up on a Sunday morning and stay snuggled in bed together until he ran into the room and jumped on our bed, asking us to come make him breakfast."

"That sounds wonderful."

"But it can never be the three of us. Anthony isn't yours. He's hardly even mine, not like I wish he was." She swallowed and wiped her eyes before continuing. "I know that I broke up with you, but I never meant to give up on us. I know it was stupid, but I wanted to enjoy my senior year. I always planned on us getting back together. I never told you, but when we broke up I had already committed to play soccer at Stanford. My plan was to show up there and surprise you, reclaim you from whatever silly girl thought she could take my man, and pick things up right where we left off."

I let myself wonder if that would have worked the way she imagined. Amanda and I were already dating at that point, but I don't know if we were solid enough to weather a serious attempt by Tori to get me back. Knowing Amanda's insecurities, it would have caused all sorts of problems even if I decided I wasn't interested in getting back together with Tori, and I wasn't sure whether or not I would have been. She would have been quite the temptation, to say the very least.

"After I got pregnant and things started to slip for me academically, it set off some red flags for Stanford," she continued. "I probably could have still salvaged my situation enough to get into another school and eventually play soccer again, plenty of colleges have programs to help young mothers who need the assistance, and there were scholarships available. But losing out on my chance to go to Stanford, and my plan to get you back, that was what really knocked me over, and things spiraled from there."

"I'm sorry Tor," I said, kissing her head. "I never knew."

"How could you have? I was just a dumb kid and I made a huge mistake. In retrospect it was an incredibly stupid idea. If my plan all along was just to get back together with you, why even break up in the first place?"

"I don't think it was dumb of you, Tor. It made sense to me, even if I wasn't happy about it. Long-distance relationships are hard. It's possible we would have broken up because of it anyways, and you did deserve to enjoy your senior year. It's hard to be a good boyfriend from five hundred miles away. You'd miss out on all sorts of stuff without me being there."

"Well, I missed out on all of those things anyways," she said. "All that 'fun' I thought I was going to have? I went to three parties, kissed two boys, and had one night of unfulfilling sex that I barely remember before I ended up pregnant. Then it was just a spiral of shit before my parents kicked me out. No parties, no dates, no dances, no soccer, no grad activities. Nothing."

Tori sat up straight. "Sure, if we had been long-distance I wouldn't have my boyfriend with me to go out every week, but I'm sure you could have still made it down for big stuff like prom," she said. "I wouldn't have gotten pregnant, and I still would have been able to graduate and follow my dreams of playing soccer in college."

"Tor, we can't know for sure how things would have gone in that hypothetical."

"Yeah, I know. My therapist tells me that all the time, but I just can't shake it. I know deep in my bones that if I would have just stayed with you instead of being so selfish, my life would have been exactly what I wanted it to be. I see it, clear as day."

I reached out and laced my fingers through hers. "Tor, if this is what you want so badly, then why not tell me earlier? Why put me off and say you don't want a relationship? You can't tell me you don't want to get serious with me when you're sitting here telling me how you can't stop thinking about how perfect our life could have been together."

She scooted off my lap and stood up. "You're right, Ryan. I want that life with you. I want it so badly that it hurts sometimes, but I can never have it. I can never be who I want to be for you. We'll never be able to have the perfect life I dreamed of for us. If we tried it would just tear me up inside to settle for less than perfect, knowing it was my mistakes that caused it to be that way."

"Tor, no one has a perfect life. No one lives exactly the life they dreamed of," I said. "We all settle for a less than perfect reality, but that's not a bad thing. Here, hold on a second."

I hurried into the living room and over to my bookshelf. I scanned the shelves for a moment before I found the book I was looking for. I thumbed through the pages that were marked with sticky notes, eventually finding what I needed.

Tori had sat back down on my bed to wait while I was gone. I sat down beside her, opened the book, and started to read a poem by Elizabeth Carson.

"I am falling in love

with my imperfections

The way I never get the sink really clean,

forget to check my oil,

lose my car in parking lots,

miss appointments I have written down,

am just a little late.

I am learning to love

the small bumps on my face

the big bump of my nose,

my hairless scalp,

chipped nail polish,

toes that overlap.

Learning to love

the open-ended mystery

of not knowing why

I am learning to fail

to make lists,

use my time wisely,

read the books I should.

Instead I practice inconsistency,

irrationality, forgetfulness.

Probably I should

hang my clothes neatly in the closet

all the shirts together, then the pants,

send Christmas cards, or better yet

a letter telling of

my perfect family.

But I'd rather waste time

listening to the rain,

or lying underneath my cat

learning to purr.

I used to fill every moment

with something I could

cross off later.

Perfect was

the laundry done and folded

all my papers graded

the whole truth and nothing but

Now the empty mind is what I seek

the formless shape

the strange off center

sometimes fictional

me."

When I finished reading, I looked up at Tori, hoping to find something changed in her. I knew it was a silly thing, to think that I could fix her problems with just one poem, but I still hoped. I searched her eyes for any new light, any new revelation that would signal her acceptance of my words, but I couldn't find anything there.

Finally, she shook her head. "I'm sorry, Ryan. I know how ridiculous it seems, but I just can't do it. I could never live a life with you, even a good life, when every day I would have to face the truth that if it wasn't for me things could have been even better."

"So then what are we doing, Tor?"

"It's just me being selfish again. I know I can't have the life I want with you, but I'm still trying to steal whatever moments that I can before it all has to end again."

"Tor, it doesn't have to end. Just like it didn't have to end before, it doesn't have to end now. You made a choice back then, but you can make a different one now. Sure, our past shapes us and helps to define us, but it doesn't control us. Every day is a new opportunity. If a life with me is really what you want, then we can choose to try and build that."

She stared into my eyes. I could see that hunger in them again, her desperate love welling up as tears began to form. But then she shook her head and looked away. "I'm sorry, Ryan. I wish I could do it. But I just can't."

Without another word, she stood up and walked out of the room. I sat there stunned for a moment before I stood to try and follow her, but before I even made it out of my room I heard the sound of the front door closing. I stood there in the living room, staring at the closed door. Part of me screamed to continue the chase, to refuse to just let her walk away like that without fighting even more for her, but deep down I knew it wouldn't work. She wasn't ready for that, and she might not ever be.

Just like her, I had long harbored fantasies of what our life together could have been like, even for a while after Amanda and I had started dating. But over time those dreams had faded into the background. Reconnecting with her again had breathed new life into them, but I knew that they were just that--dreams and fantasies. Anything solid, anything real, would require real work. We couldn't just rely on the feelings from our time as high school sweethearts. Such things were not a solid foundation for a lasting relationship, at least not on their own. But it was clear Tori wasn't going to be capable of doing that work.

I didn't know what this meant for us going forward. Was this her goodbye, at least as a lover? I wasn't sure, but it felt like it. It was probably for the best that the physical part of our relationship came to a close, but I hoped that at the very least we could still keep our friendship. I hadn't realized how guilty she felt about her time with me, that she felt like she was somehow stealing something. I'd give Tori her space for a bit, but I definitely needed to talk to Melissa about this.

The sound of a pan clattering into the sink drew my attention away from the door. Beth had laid out three plates full of eggs and toast.

"So, I guess she's not staying for breakfast?" she said. I couldn't help but laugh.

Beth and I ate breakfast together. We avoided talking about what had happened earlier, both her voyeuristic enjoyment of my time with Tori and Tori's sudden departure after our talk. Instead I asked her about when her band's next show was.

"We've got a gig on Thursday night. Nothing big, just a short set. Then a longer one, more like the one last night, on Friday. You thinking of coming again?"

"Yeah, you were great. I was thinking of bringing Cece next time, but I'm a bit worried about repeating dates. We went to see a band play on Friday," I told her.

Beth nodded. "Yeah, you should probably do something else first. I do want to meet this girl, though."

"That can be arranged at some point. I don't want to overwhelm her too much, though."

"So that probably means I can't watch you two have sex, right?"

I almost choked on my toast. "No, I don't think that's happening. At the very least not until we've actually had sex without an audience first."

"How many dates are you going to give her to put out? Three?"

"I'm not going to put a number on it like that," I said. "I just want to see where things go. I like her. I want to get to know her better, spend more time with her. As long as things are going well, I'm not worried about when it happens."

"Sure, since you've apparently got a few other girls you can stick it in if you are feeling too worked up."

"It's not like that."

"I'm not judging. Seems like a good system. You've got one girl to try to meet your emotional needs, and then others to meet your physical ones. It works out."

"I'd rather have one girl that does both of those things. If things are going well with Cece, then we'll talk about being exclusive. I like being in a couple. I don't need a bunch of different women to have sex with."

"That's easy to say when you already do have a bunch of different women to have sex with. Tell me how that's going when you're exclusive with a girl who won't put out."

"Come on, Beth. We've been on one date. I'm not worried about that right now."

"Sure, right now. But after three dates? Five? Ten?"

"I'm going to take it slow. Hopefully not that slow, but we'll see. Sex is important, but it's not the most important thing to me."

Beth rolled her eyes. "Like I said, it's easy to say that sex isn't important when you're already having lots of it. But once you hit that dry spell..."

"I'm not worried about it. Things will progress how they progress. Maybe things will end before we even get to that point for some completely unrelated reason. Who knows? I just want to give it a shot."

"If you say so," she said.

We finished our breakfast, then I drove Beth to her apartment. I thanked her again for inviting me to her show, and she thanked me for letting her crash at my place. We made vague plans to hang out again sometime soon.

It felt great to have my childhood best friend back in my life again. Hanging out last night, just drinking beer, playing video games, and talking shit had been a ton of fun. I was still a bit confused about how things had developed this morning, but didn't dwell too much on it. Maybe it was just a weird, one-time confluence of events. We hadn't done anything together. That still seemed like a line that shouldn't be crossed.

I stopped by a used bookstore on the way back home, picking up a three new (to me) paperbacks for ten bucks. Once I was home I spent a bit of time cleaning up the apartment before making sure I had everything I needed for work tomorrow. With that done, I settled in on the couch to read one of my new books, Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro.

I was quickly drawn into the story and read for several hours, until I needed to make something for dinner. While I ate I sent Cece a request for another game of Words With Friends. She accepted the game about fifteen minutes later. We split two games. After the second, she sent me a message.

Thanks for the games. Gotta run for now, but I'm excited to see you in the morning. Have something I want to talk about.

I read for another hour or so before I decided it was time to get ready for bed. Another early morning and a new week of teaching awaited me.