She’s waiting for his eyes to move, but they seem stuck on her own. She wants to tell him that this isn’t helping her breathe or make sense of things. Wants to, but can‘t because her throat is dry and constricted and her voice is nowhere to be found. She grips the edge of his desk tightly with both hands to keep herself standing. But with the way this dimly lit office is casting light and shadows across his face, her palms start to hurt and she isn’t sure if she can hold on for much longer.

And she wants to laugh and cry all at once because she imagines leaning her forehead against his chest and it calms her. She imagines his arms going around her again and she can breathe. She imagines hearing his voice and suddenly she can let go of the desk and stand on her own. She imagines feeling his warmth and she can say, “Can we, uh, go somewhere and talk…about this?”

He nods because maybe he can’t find his voice either. And she doesn’t mind when he grabs her hand gently and leads her out of the office.

----------------

There’s a playground somewhere behind the building and that’s where he takes her. The sort of playground that hasn’t seen a child in years, all rusted and overgrown. The sort of playground that makes her feel sad and reminds her of wasted youth, wasted time. But tonight, it’s not like that at all. The air feels thick like summer and carries the faint smell of honeysuckle. And she lets herself smile for a moment as she breathes it in and spots the swing set in the back corner of the playground.

She wants to ask him why he brought her here to talk. She wants to ask him how he knows about this place. But he’s just a shadow, standing next to her in the dark and for a second she’s afraid again. Terrified like she had been when he was telling her all of those things earlier. Then there’s brightness and she realizes that he’s smiling too. And he says, shrugging, “I’ve never actually been out here. I just saw it from the window a couple times and thought you’d like it here.”

She smiles at him like everything could be okay again and then she’s kicking off her heels and making her way over to the swing set.

The swing squeaks a little as she sways gently in it and her bare feet just barely touch the mulch beneath them. He makes his way over to her and sits in the swing next to her. She watches his long legs fit awkwardly in the seat of the swing and his feet drag along the ground, his toes making a path for themselves.

She turns to look at him with his hands holding onto the chains of the swing and his eyes looking at some nonexistent point off in the distance. Her stomach twists at the acknowledgement that it was her fault he felt this way. Her fault that he looked so hollowed out.

(He would tell her, if the words would come, that he liked feeling her body against his in that moment. Because the inward curve of her hips matched his own contours perfectly. And he had always liked the idea of people being jigsaw puzzle pieces. He liked being put together. He liked the idea of filling in someone’s missing parts and them filling in yours. He liked feeling filled in for once.)

She opens her mouth to say something about needing time or being confused, but his voice interrupts her. He’s saying, “So, uh, I was talking to Jan about transferring to Stamford.”

“Oh.” And she’s already thinking about miles and highways and someone new at his desk. “Are you going to do it?” She thinks she knows the answer to this, but there’s hope blooming in her chest that maybe his mind’s been changed. That maybe she can change it for him.

That’s selfish and she knows that. Her feet place themselves firmly on the ground beneath her as she realizes that she’s never given him anything. Let alone a reason to stay here. Let alone a reason to- She doesn’t deserve this, him, any of it. Because she hadn’t even realized that she was killing him all these years. Or maybe she had and was too afraid to do anything about it. And all she’s done is take what he would give her. The support, the friendship, the sort of unconditional love only he offered. She took it and gave him nothing at all.

He’s nodding though. “Yeah, I think so.”

“Oh. Uh, good. You really-”

“Tell me not to go.”

The desperate edge is back on his voice and it makes her shake. “What?”

“Just- Tell me to stay and I will.”

But she can’t. There’s no reason for him to stay and she won’t be selfish anymore. So she doesn’t. “Go to Stamford.”

He nods. “Okay.”

There isn’t any sadness in the word though. It comes out flat and he’s still focusing on something in front of him. She tries to ignore the way his eyes look when the moon hits them. The way they turn to glass.

She doesn’t think when she reaches out for him, just wants his hand down away from his face. Just wants the warmth of his palm for a second. She’s holding it in both hands, tracing its creases and folds with her own fingers. She has important things to say. Things like, “You have to understand that I’d pushed all of this down so far that it feels new to me. It feels like I’m just now feeling- Like this hasn’t been going on for the past couple of years. Can you understand that?”

He turns his swing towards her and their knees knock into each other. “Pam-”

She stops him because she wants to say, “I just need…time.”

“I know. I didn’t mean to- It just sort of happened. I was going to tell you about Stamford, but the way you looked- I couldn’t…” He breathes in deeply and lets it out slowly.

She wants to tell him everything. About her relationship with Roy. About the last three years and convincing herself that he was just a friend. About falling out of love and drifting apart and how she sometimes feels like she’s waking up underwater in the morning. About the last ten years and why she doesn’t know if she can let them go. About the first time she let the thought that maybe she could love him pass through her mind. About changing and staying the same all at the same time. About settling and compromising and sacrificing and all of these things that she’s been doing for years. About how his smile is why she comes to work most days. About how she watches him type sometimes because she likes the way his fingers stretch and reach and bend. About how he’s her best friend and she needs him to know that now because she isn’t sure she’s ever told him. About the phone call to her mother and the realization it brought about.

And she does. She tells him all of this even though the trembling in her voice conquers her words in some places and they come out as tears or fragments. She tells him and he just listens. He just listens and she’s so thankful for that.

Her eyes move along the side of his face when she finishes speaking. There’s a cool breeze blowing now and the hair on his forehead dances a bit and she shivers, wrapping her arms around herself. He turns to her at the motion and looks concerned and she can’t handle that so she looks away.

“You’re cold.”

“I’m fine.”

But he’s taking his sweater off and she tries not to watch the way his shoulders move beneath his white button down shirt as he hands it over to her. She tries not to fall off of her swing when she is suddenly surrounded his scent. The sleeves are too long and hang awkwardly over her hands, but it helps and she’s so warm suddenly. So warm that she starts to cry.

And then there’s his hand on the back of her neck, in her hair and his voice, saying, “I’m so sorry.”

They’re both so sorry.

----------------

It’s late when they finally find themselves standing by his car. She’s leaning against the back passenger side door and he’s standing in front of her. She thinks that if he kissed her again right now, she’d let him. Maybe she’d let him take her back to his place. Maybe she’d sleep in his bed. It’s been a few hours since she let Roy cross her mind.

And she isn’t sure how they passed all of those hours on that playground. Most of the time was spent in silence as they swung gently back and forth next to each other. Sometimes his legs would brush against hers and she’d stop suddenly. She’d cover herself up by making a comment about the sky and the moon or the way the air felt. And he’d smile at her and she’d die a little, just for a second before refocusing and remembering that it wasn’t okay for that to happen. Not yet.

Now he’s standing in front of her, peering down at her with those- And he’s saying, “We should get you home.”

He unlocks the door and holds it open for her. But he’s already falling asleep and she’s too wired so she offers to drive and he laughs with relief and agrees.

On the drive home, he’s leaning his head against the glass of the window and watching the sky as it blurs past them. The clock says that it’s 3:36 and she wonders if Roy’s waiting up for her, worried and anxious. But she’s sure he’s passed out in bed already.

There’s a song on the stereo that she doesn’t recognize, but it keeps saying, “I found the one to keep, I found the one to keep, I found the one to keep…” And she glances over at him and he’s asleep with his mouth halfway open. She misses a stop sign.

When she pulls the car up in front of her house, she hates that she has to wake him up. She nudges him gently on the shoulder and he jumps a little. When he sees her next to him, he smiles sleepily and says, “Hey- Oh. We’re at your house already.”

“Yeah.”

They don’t move.

“Okay. Well, I’ll see you in five hours,” he says as he unbuckles his seatbelt and starts to open the car door.

She smiles, but it doesn’t feel sincere. “Yeah.” And before he can get out of the car, she grabs him by the arm. “Hey. Uh, when do you leave?” She chokes on that last word.

“Oh, uh. Three weeks from Monday.”

----------------

It’s easier than she thought it would be. She postpones the wedding, citing reasons like money and time constraints and other things that aren’t real problems. Roy, of course, doesn’t mind at all. Just nods and says, “Yeah, sure. Whatever you want, babe.”

And then it just stops. She stops planning things. She shoves her dress in her closet, somewhere towards the back where she won’t see it. She stops asking him about fittings and music and food. He doesn’t ask her when she think the new date will be. He doesn’t bring it up at all.

So it’s easy to leave him. To pack her things while he’s at the bar and sit on the couch until he comes home. It’s easy for her to look at him and say, “This isn’t what I want.” It’s easy to watch ten years slip through her fingers, because she’s been doing it for so long.

----------------

She moves back in with her mother while she tries to find a place for herself. At first she doesn’t mind that two hour commute. It gave her time to think, to clear her head. But having to get up at five every morning starts to take its toll.

She falls asleep at her desk one day only to be waken by a voice saying, “I’m the one who’s supposed to die of boredom.”

She looks up at him. “I got four hours of sleep last night.”

He rests his elbows on her desk and leans toward her. “You know, you could always come stay at my place for the time being…” He trails off as they both realize that his place won’t be his place anymore in a week. “Right. It won’t be-”

“Yeah, no. Thanks for offering, but I think I can suck it up for a while.” She smiles at him and he laughs a little and it’s easy for a second.

Only it’s Tuesday so it’s not even a week. Six days. She tries not to think about it, but her calendar is hanging right at eye level.

----------------

She spends those six days thinking.

She thinks they’d fight about stupid things. Small things. Like who drank the last of the milk and who should go out and buy more. She thinks these sort of fights would last for a few minutes and he’d walk out of the room and turn on the stereo a little louder than usual while she stands in the kitchen irritated because it’s late and she doesn’t want to go out. But then he’d turn down the music and come back to the kitchen with his keys in hand and say, “Is there anything else we need while I’m out?” And she’d smile at him and kiss him before he left and when she says that she loves him, he’d laugh a little and say, “I know, I know.”

She thinks they’d have a dog. They’d get a cute little puppy that messes up the entire house, but he’d come home from work and sit in the middle of the living room floor playing with it and laughing until she peered in from the kitchen to say, “Are you going to play with him all day or help me with dinner?” And he’d play with the dog for a few more minutes before getting up and chopping vegetables for the salad.

She thinks they’d drink wine and sit on the couch together without the TV on and just talk about their days. She thinks there would be slow kisses that left her sort of dizzy and content. She thinks he’d always make her laugh until her cheeks hurt so much that she has to leave the room. She thinks they’d take road trips on weekends to beautiful places where she could sit and sketch for hours and he’d just watch her hands move over the paper and smile.

She thinks she would be happy.

----------------

She comes over the night before he leaves. Even though he called her earlier in the day to say goodbye, she needs to see his eyes when he says it. She needs to kiss him hard on the mouth in the doorway of his house. She needs to find herself in his bedroom, learning what his fingertips feel like on her shoulders and her stomach. She needs to know what his mouth feels like on her neck. She needs to sleep next to him. She needs to find out that his arms will go around her waist and stay there for the entire night. She needs to know what it’s like to be held for once. She needs to know that his lips will rest on her neck as he sleeps and that the feeling of his breath on her skin will be something she can’t even imagine.

She needs to see her future for a moment and so that’s why she’s standing at his front door, ringing his doorbell and listening to his feet coming quickly down the stairs.

That’s why when he gives her a questioning look upon opening the door, she says with unflinching certainty, “Take me with you.”