“I’m saying it because it’s true.”
She closes the laptop. Sets it aside with a deliberateness that tells me she’s buying time to arrange her face. When she looks at me again, she’s smiling, but it’s the worst smile I’ve ever seen—technically perfect, emotionally bankrupt.
“It makes sense,” she replies. “You’ve been here all summer. You have a whole life there. An apartment, your parents, your career?—”
“I’m quitting, Beth. That’s why I’m going. To quit. I’m selling the condo. I’m coming back.”
“You say that now.”
It’s not accusatory. It’s not angry. It’s worse than both of those things—it’s resigned. The quiet, bone-deep certainty of a woman who has been left enough times to know how the story goes. People say they’ll come back. They say it’ll be different. And then the distance does what distance does. The calls get shorter, and the visits get less frequent, and eventually, you stop waiting because waiting hurts more than the loss.
“I say that now because it’s what I mean,” I tell her, and I can hear the edge in my own voice. It’s not frustration with her, but frustration with every person who came before me and taught her that promises are pretty words people use before they disappear.
She pulls her knees to her chest. Makes herself smaller. “How long?”
“A couple of weeks. Maybe less.”
“A couple of weeks.” She nods slowly, and I watch her run the math. Fourteen days, three hundred and thirty-six hours: a specific and measurable unit of time she can brace against. Bethdoesn’t do well with ambiguity. She needs edges, boundaries, concrete things she can hold on to. I understand that about her. Ilovethat about her.
“I’ll call you every night,” I say, and something crosses her face that I can’t read.
“Don’t.”
“What?”
“Don’t call me.” She says it quickly, like she needs to get it out before she changes her mind. “It makes it harder. Hearing your voice when you’re not here, it makes missing you worse. I can handle missing you if I’m not also hearing you miss me back.”
The words land somewhere in the center of my gut and sit there, heavy and aching.
“Beth—”
“I’m not being dramatic, Peter. I’m being practical.” She untucks her legs and stands, gathering some of the sticky notes and highlighters with the efficient, slightly frantic energy of someone who needs to be in motion. She doesn’t bother taking all of them, just whatever she deems important or close enough in the moment. “Go to Toronto. Do what you need to do. And when you’re done, if you come back?—”
“WhenI come back.”
She stops. Looks at me. And for a fraction of a second, the mask slips, and I see everything underneath—the fear, the wanting, the desperate hope she’s trying to suffocate because hope has hurt her before.
“If you come back,” she repeats, so quietly I barely hear it. “Then we can talk. Figure things out. But you need to make sure this is what you want, Peter. Really, really make sure.” She caps a highlighter and shoves it in her pocket. “I should go. I’ve got an early start in the morning.”
“You don’t have to leave.”
“I know. But I’m going to.” She crosses to me, puts her hands on my face, and kisses me. It’s slow and firm, and tastes like goodbye, even though I’m telling her it isn’t. When she pulls back, her eyes are bright but dry. Elizabeth Cameron does not feel comfortable crying in front of people. Not even me. Not yet.
“Don’t call,” she says against my mouth.
“Okay.”
“I mean it, Peter.”
“I know.”
She picks up her bag, walks to the door, and pauses with her hand on the frame. Doesn’t turn around.
“For the record,” she says clearly, confidently, “I hope you make whatever choice makes you happiest. You deserve it.”
When the door closes behind her, the house goes quiet. I stand in my living room, surrounded by her sticky notes and uncapped highlighters, and I have never been more certain of anything in my life.
Toronto is exactly as I left it.