Chapter 29 – Still Yours.

We were not together. That was the official position. The thing we had agreed on, the thing we had named, the thing we returned to every time someone asked which wasn't often, because we had always been private, but still. Not together. Done. Over. We had said the words and meant them. What we had not done was act like it. We still talked. Every few days, sometimes every day, slipping back into the rhythm of it the way you slip back into a language you grew up speaking without thinking, without deciding, just opening your mouth and finding it still there. We still went out sometimes. Sundays mostly, when the week had no more demands on either of us. Just out food somewhere, a drive, the city at evening when it got quieter. Not dates. We weren't calling them dates. They were just time. Ours. And sometimes the time ended at his place. And sometimes I stayed. We didn't talk about what that meant. We had an unspoken agreement not to talk about what it meant, because talking about it meant deciding, and deciding meant one of two things, and neither of us was ready for either of them. So we existed in the in-between. This strange, warm, painful in-between where we were everything to each other and officially nothing, and somehow that contradiction had become its own kind of normal. The jealousy started small. I mentioned someone casually, the way you mention anyone, a person I'd encountered, a name that meant nothing and something shifted in his face so fast I almost missed it. A tightening. A stillness. Gone in a second, smoothed back into neutral, but I'd seen it. I filed it away. A few weeks later I brought it up again. Not the same person just the concept. That I'd been talking to someone. That someone had asked for my number. I said it the way you say something when you want to see what happens, and what happened was his jaw tightened and he looked at me with an expression that had no business being on the face of someone who was officially not my boyfriend anymore. "And?" he said. Very level. Very controlled. "And nothing," I said. Watching him. "I'm just telling you." "You don't have to tell me things like that." "I know I don't have to." A pause. Something moved behind his eyes. "Did you give him your number?" he asked. "Why?" "I'm just asking." "We're not together," I reminded him pleasantly. The look he gave me then was complicated. Several things at once. Awareness that I was right, refusal to fully accept that I was right, and underneath both of those something rawer that he wasn't going to say out loud. "I know we're not together," he said. "So it shouldn't matter." "It doesn't matter." "Okay." "It doesn't." "You said that already." He looked away. Looked back. "Did you give him your number." I smiled. Said nothing. Let him sit with it. He did not enjoy sitting with it. Which was, honestly, the most satisfying thing that had happened in weeks. He tried it from the other side eventually. The way people do when they've decided that if they're going to be in pain about something they're going to distribute it fairly. He mentioned a girl someone from work, someone who had apparently been very friendly, someone whose name he dropped with just slightly too much casualness to actually be casual.I looked at him. He looked at me. We both knew exactly what was happening. "Good for you," I said pleasantly. Something flickered. "She's nice." "I'm sure she is." "We've been talking." "Mm." He waited. I gave him nothing. Kept my face smooth and my voice easy and watched him realize that this was not going to work the way he'd planned. Then he reached over mid conversation and put his hand on my thigh. Just rested it there. Heavy and warm and entirely deliberate. "What are you doing," I said. "Nothing," he said. "That's not nothing." "I'm just sitting here." I looked at his hand. Looked at him. He met my eyes with an expression that said several things simultaneously, the clearest of which was: you're mine. Not as a question. Not as a request. Just a fact he was reminding me of. One that had apparently not been renegotiated by our official not-together status. The girl from work did not come up again. Neither did the person who'd asked for my number. We orbited each other through that whole season like two things caught in each other's gravity close enough to feel the pull, far enough to pretend we'd broken free of it. He'd touch me like he owned the territory. I'd let him like I agreed. And then we'd both pretend, afterward, that it was just casual. Just proximity. Just old habit. We were lying to ourselves so thoroughly and so consistently that it had started to feel like truth. Until the night he held my face in his hands and looked at me for a long time without saying anything, and what was in his eyes was so unambiguous that even I couldn't find a way to misread it. "I hate this," he said quietly. I knew what this was. "I know," I said. "I don't know how to" He stopped. "I don't know how to be around you and not" Another stop. "I know," I said again. Softer. He pressed his forehead to mine. Closed his eyes. I felt the weight of everything we hadn't resolved pressing down on the moment, on us, on the small space between our faces. "What do we do," he said. Not really asking. More like saying it to the universe and hoping the universe had a better answer than either of us did. I didn't have an answer. I just stayed where I was, forehead against his, in the particular intimacy of two people who loved each other and couldn't make it work and couldn't make themselves stop. That was the inbetween. That was what the inbetween cost.

Forbidden Love Story

Contributor Points

Points-to-Coupons

Referral Earning