I try to resist, but even I know it’s useless. I take out my phone and bring up the text from Dom, even though I know what it says. I touch those four words. Just once.
What’re you looking at? the waitress asks. Her name is Estelle (Call me Este) and she’s the only one working aside from Abe. It looks like it hurts you. She frowns in concern.
I shrug and put the phone away. Just a text.
She hands me a glass of juice. It’s tart. Things that hurt you shouldn’t be kept around, she says.
It’s okay, I tell her. It hurts in a good way.
She nods like she knows what I mean, and I catch her glancing back at Abe in the kitchen. She smiles ruefully. Then that’s okay, Este says. Waffles coming up. They’re pretty good. Surprisingly.
The waffles turn out to be very good indeed.
I DON’T know what happens on the third day. One minute I’m fine, better than I’ve been the previous two days. The next minute, I see something or hear something (I don’t know, I don’t know), and all of a sudden, I am flooded by Dominic. I can hear him, taste him, smell him. He laughs in that broken voice. He moans my name. He asks me why I’m following the ants, and then he says good-bye. I see the look on his face, the lines around his eyes. The feel of his hair under my fingers. The way sunlight through the window plays across his face as he sleeps next to me. It’s all him, him, him, and his voice overlaps in my head, and everything he’s ever said to me starts ringing in my ears, and I think I’ll explode. I think I’ll explode from the force of it all.
And through it all come the four words again, and on the side of a two-lane highway in the middle of nowhere, I hold onto them as tightly as I can.
ON THE fourth day, I am in Girard, Pennsylvania, when I call him.
I get his voice mail, as I knew I would. He’s at work.
This is Dominic Miller. Leave me a message and I’ll call you back later.
I close my eyes to the sound of his voice.
The phone beeps in my ear.
It’s me, I say. It comes out rusty. I clear my throat. Almost there. In Pennsylvania. I… I’m second-guessing myself again. But that’s what I do, I guess. I know this is the right decision. It has to be. I have to make sure I can stand on my own. I need to know I can do this. And I… shit. I got your text. You always know what I’m trying to say, don’t you? You always have. And I think you always will. Okay. Gotta go. I’ll… talk to you soon, okay?
ON THE fifth day, just as the sun begins to set, I arrive back in Hanover, New Hampshire. I leave the SUV in the parking lot of Corey’s old apartment and head up the stairs.
The key is where he said it would be: under the mat. His former roommate (and now my current one) left it there before he went out of town. A little vacation before school starts up again. Rob’s a good guy. It’ll be fine.
I open the door to my new home.
It’s clean. There are flowers on the kitchen table. A note from Rob. It’s sweet.
Day after tomorrow, I meet with my advisor at Dartmouth to figure out the next steps.
The day after that? Well, I guess we’ll see.
I’m here now. That’s the first step.
And slowly (but surely), I’ll put myself back together again. There is no other option.
Those four words.
I love you too.
29. Tyson And Dominic
Four Months Later
“ARE YOU sure you don’t want to fuck?” Rob asks me from the doorway wearing nothing but a strategically placed towel. His pubes curl against the white cloth, and I have to resist the urge to roll my eyes.
“I’m sure,” I tell him, turning back to my laptop. “But thanks for the offer. And all the ones that have come before it. Your persistence is alarmingly hysterical.”
He shrugs. “I like to fuck.”