On the fourth night of another long string of five nights, you say you don’t want us to be torn apart by history.  I shift in the bed (you always insist on talking in your bed with the covers pulled up over and just the soft orange glow of your bedside lamp lighting the room, I made a joke, “What are we pre-teen girls?” and you just glared) and sink my head deeper in the pillow. I tell you in that soft sort of whispering tone that you’re supposed to use when talking close about serious things that I don’t like the word history. It makes me think of textbooks and boring 5th grade classrooms and wars that have already been won.

So you tuck your hair behind your hear, the rustle of your down comforter loud in the midst of our quiet, intimate discussion. “Fine,” you say, “What word would you like me to use?”

I consider the question for a moment and wonder if you buy this wattage light bulb just because it looks like candlelight almost when it’s two in the morning and you’re barely alive awake even though I vaguely remember you saying something about how it saves energy. I imagine that it’s flickering against your skin, because maybe then this would seem more romantic and not quite so forced and contrived. I finally say, “The past is good. Or maybe you could even just say you don’t want this whole thing with Pam to pull us apart.”

The mattress moves and I feel your toes against my shins. “But it’s not just the thing with Pam.”

“Isn’t it?” And your toes are gone.

“No. I’m trying to say-” You stop and prop yourself up on your elbow, curling the pillow that was under your head around to your chest. You toy with the corner and look at me with this exasperated face. “I’m saying that life isn’t about what happened before, you know? It’s about what’s happening now. And I don’t want this to turn to shit because we can’t get around what happened before we even knew each other.”

We’ve had this conversation before. In fact, this is the ninth time we’ve had this conversation. You keep saying the same things and I keep half heartedly apologizing for the same things. It isn’t making a difference. It isn’t making me any less hesitant to love you the way you wish I would and it isn’t making you any less jealous and frustrated with our situation.

A car drives by outside, music playing loud. The bass rattles your windows and you drop your head a little. I can’t tell if you’re upset because we’re talking in circles or because someone just drove by blaring awful hip hop music during one of our long, deep talks. I’m pretty sure it’s probably both.

“I get that, but it’s not that easy. Life isn’t black and white the way you think it is. The past doesn’t just disappear, you know? It may seem like it’s gone, but it’s really just woven itself into the fabric of what’s happening now. It’s there in the background, ready to destroy whatever it wants.” I’ve been practicing this. I’ve never been much of a writer, but I started jotting down sentences like this and practicing them in my head during those 40 hours a week when we’re basically sitting in the midst of my past, my history, what happened before you.

The hand that’s holding your head up slips out from under you as you dramatically drop your head back to the pillow in front of you. Your hand just barely misses my forehead and I flinch a little, scooting back until I feel the edge of the mattress beneath me. “So, what? You’re saying that inevitably this whole thing is doomed because of the past?”

I close my eyes and shake my head, “No, I’m not saying- What I’m saying is that you can’t ignore the past. I’m not saying I can’t get past it or that it’s going to tear us apart. I’m saying that it’s there and we can’t pretend it didn’t happen and life isn’t just what’s happening now. Life wouldn’t be life without what came before everything that’s going on now, you know?”

You’ve got your face buried in the white cotton of the pillow. Your hair spills around you so I can’t even see your cheeks. I wonder how long you can stay like that before you’ll need to breathe. Apparently long enough to mumble against the fabric, “Are you ever going to love me without still half loving her at the same time?”

If you hadn’t asked me something similar to this on all those other late nights, I might not have been able to understand you. But all I really needed to hear was what sort of sounded like “love” and the raised inflection at the end indicating a question. On other nights, I’ve stayed silent. The silence meant to indicate that I didn’t know. That I wasn’t sure. That I wanted to, but just wasn’t ready to make that promise yet.

Tonight, though, I’m thinking about her apology on Monday afternoon and how it wasn’t just for what happened with Roy. How I got the feeling it was for the last four or so years that I’ve known her. When you ask me that question this time, I’m only thinking about how she’s sorry for everything and how I’d walked away, telling her not to worry about it.

You turn your head slowly, emerging from the pillow with a curtain of hair over your face. You pull it back and your eyes are wet. And this time I actually say, “I don’t know,” and it means something completely different than all of those times “I don’t know” was just implied in my silences.

Still, my hands move under the covers and find your hips, pulling you closer to me like I’m supposed to be doing now. And you give in, sliding across the bed until our hipbones meet and your arms curl up under my arms so your hands can grip my shoulders. You don’t make a sound, but I feel tears on my shoulder, soaking through the cotton of my t-shirt, hot and big.

After ten minutes that feel like an hour, you loosen your grip on me and I let you fall back onto the bed. Your head turns in my direction and it’s not comfort that makes me immediately wipe away the wetness on your face with my fingertips. It’s just that when you look at me like that, broken and tired, I love her a little less and you a little more and it’s not something I’m ready for.

You laugh a little, sniffling, and your fingers reach up to touch the circles under my eyes gently and then they make a path down to my lips, the tip of your index finger resting there in that valley. And then you’re combing your fingers through the hair that falls across my forehead, pushing it over to the side and then smoothing your fingertips across my forehead. And you say with a soft smile on your face, “You look like you’re dying.”