Page 122 of Only After We Met
Rhys looked at the strip of photos when it came out, and thehot night wind surrounded us. I saw his expression change. He tore off a couple of the pictures, one of us smiling, one of us kissing with his hand buried in my hair. He slipped them into the back pocket of his jeans.
“I thought you didn’t like photos…”
“I like these,” he responded softly.
69
Ginger
One day, I found the copy ofThe Little Princethat I’d given him in his nightstand. It was more ragged than I remembered, with yellowed edges, dogeared pages. There were new underlines and notes in the margin in his handwriting. Inside the back cover, he had written the dates when he’d reread it, just like I used to do in the front. And underneath, in a corner, he’d written a quote from the book:The baobabs start out by being little.
70
Rhys
I didn’t want to fuck it up. I couldn’t stand the thought of leaving behind a bitter memory when this was our last night together, but I still had that same feeling I’d had in my chest for days now. Crushing. Asphyxiating. I took a deep breath. We’d gone to a Mexican restaurant near the apartment, five minutes away at a slow walk. We had fajitas and nachos for dinner before the time came to blow out the candles stuck in a ball of chocolate ice cream while Ginger sang “Happy Birthday,” making me laugh. I had turned twenty-nine by her side. Like a crazy person, she kept shouting, “Make a wish! Make a wish!” And I realized the one thing I wanted was impossible. An exit off the road of my life, which was full of potholes.
We were on our second Coco Loco and our third shot of tequila. Ginger was wearing a white dress that made her tan stand out. She’d struggled to achieve it, and she liked showing it off. Her hair was loose, her eyes were shining, her hands were stretched out on the table over mine, and she was tracing circles with her thumb. I was bewitched, watching her skin stroke my own, sometimes grazing the edge of the quarter moon that she, too, had tattooed on her wrist.
“Rhys, are you okay?”
“Yeah. Why?” I looked up.
“You seem absent. More than normal, I mean,” she joked, but then she turned serious, her brow furrowed. “What we’ve been through together this summer…”
“We don’t have to talk about it.”
“I just want you to know I’ve had the best time of my life. I wouldn’t change anything. Not a single day. Every hour has been perfect. With you. Here. And you were right when you said a few weeks ago that neither of us should ever forget it. I just was scared. I thought it would hurt too much.”
I took a deep breath. Uncomfortable. Angry. Sick. “So it doesn’t hurt?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know, you just seem…” I shook my head. “Forget about it.”
I got up. We had already paid, so all I had to do before leaving was finish the last sip of my drink. Ginger followed me down the street. I wanted to disappear. I could feel the darkness infiltrating those parts of me I didn’t like and that I didn’t want her to see. Selfishness. Insecurity. Fear.
“Rhys! Where are you going?” she asked, agitated, trying not to be left behind. She ran past me and came around in front of me. Her small hands against my chest. Her eyes full of reproach. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I don’t know…” I rubbed my face.
“Okay. It’s okay. We’ve been drinking.”
“Goddammit. I knew you’d make everything complicated.”
“How can you say that to me?” she asked in a thin voice.
I wanted to let out all the things that were making my throat close up, but I couldn’t. Instead, I felt it closing tighter and tighter…
Ginger was standing in the middle of the street, eyes welling with tears, lower lip trembling, arms crossed, as if protecting herself from me. I hated it. Seeing her this way. The guilt. Feeling I always ended up hurting the people I loved most, the way I was doing with her. I sucked in a breath.
“I don’t want you to go.”
“Rhys…” She stepped toward me.
“Goddammit, Ginger. It didn’t have to be like this.”
“How else could it have been?”