Page 37 of All That We Are Together
“I left you some fish in the oven.”
“Thanks, but I’m not that hungry.”
I kissed him and went into the kitchen, grabbed a piece of fruit from the fridge, and ate it absentmindedly as I returned and sat down next to him. There was some kind of tension between us. We’d never felt that before. I didn’t know how to deal with the situation, and I’d screwed up again because I’d promised we’d have dinner together and I still hadn’t told him I was going to spend a week in Byron Bay.
“I’m really sorry, but I lost track of time.”
“Don’t worry about it.” He shrugged.
“Landon.” I left the fruit on a napkin on the table and hugged him. He didn’t pull away. He wrapped his hands around my waist. “Are you mad?”
“No…” He bit his lip and exhaled. “I want this to go well,Leah, and I get that you need to work a lot of hours to guarantee that.”
“But…”
“But everything would be way simpler if our situation was clearer. We’ve been hanging out for months, and things are getting more complicated, and in the meantime I feel we’re not going anywhere.”
I pulled away, looking for some space.
I understood Landon. He’d always had stable, more or less long-term relationships. Relationships where he could call the other person hisgirlfriendand not worry about it. I’d come into his life, and what we had was very clearly more than just friendship. And there we were, in limbo, and I didn’t know what to call it, but analyzing it also scared me. I loved him a lot, and the idea of losing him terrified me… I had lost too many people along the way.
“I don’t know if I’m ready for this,” I whimpered.
“When will you be?”
“Isn’t what we have enough?”
Landon rubbed his face, stressed.
“Sometimes, yeah. Sometimes, no,” he admitted.
“Tell me what worries you the most.”
He looked away before answering. “You seeing what we have as somehow temporary.”
“I never said that…” I protested.
“Do you think it’s forever, then? Look at me, Leah.”
My stomach turned. Forever? Be with Landon forever? A part of me did want that, because it would be so simple, so comfortable, like curling up under a blanket when it’s cold. But the otherpart of me wasn’t ready to decide. The other part didn’t even know what it thought about all that.
“Let it go. You don’t have to answer that.”
Landon got up, and I followed on his heels to the bedroom we had shared so many nights those past few months. He brought his fingers to the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. I hugged him from behind.
“I’m sorry. I love you, Landon, but the idea of deciding now whether I want to stick with someone for the rest of my life… I think we’re in different stages, and I don’t even know if I understand myself.”
How could I explain it to him? I didn’t know where to begin. The past few years had been full of changes, and it was hard for him to grasp all that I had been through. Landon had never known the girl who used to walk around Byron Bay with a permanent smile on her face before the car crash that changed everything. Nor did he know the other Leah, the one who had closed up on herself, who stopped painting and had only stayed afloat thanks to a certain stubborn someone who did everything possible to get her out of the black hole she was stuck in. But then… Well, then everything turned out wrong, and when I got to Brisbane, I was yet another version of myself.
I felt like I’d spent the past few years changing skins. Maybe that was why I wasn’t sure who I was just then.
“What should we do?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” I was still holding him.
I’d have liked to give him the answer he was looking for, but I didn’t want to lie to him. It’s not that I could never imagine adistant future with him, I just hadn’t made it that far. It had never passed through my mind. But that worried me.
“I need to go to Byron Bay for the exhibition. I’ve been meaning to tell you for days.”