New Year Second Chance

Dax presses his lips to my forehead as he gives a final thrust. He lets out a muffled groan against my skin as he convulses. Then he collapses on top of me, panting. The sweat on his skin sticks to mine.

I wrap my arms around him and start to stroke his hair.

“I love you,” I whisper in his ear.

I sense Dax go still in my arms. Not like the still I was earlier when I felt like all the air had been vacuumed from my lungs and I was too tired to move a muscle. The kind of still you don’t want to be but you’re forced into because of some sort of shock, something you didn’t expect, something bad. That, combined with Dax’s silence, ices the embers in my veins and sends my thoughts back into motion. Frenzied motion.

I push him away – or did he pull away first? As I look into his eyes, now without a trace of lust or tenderness, I crash down from the clouds to the hard ground.

Dax turns his back to me as he pulls his boxers and pants up and fastens his belt. As sexy as I thought the sight of him taking off his belt was, I find the sight of him putting it back on to be one of my least favorite things. Especially now, when my stomach is already a sinking pit.

I grab my panties from the pile of clothes on the floor and slip them on. I put my shirt back on next. I’ve just popped my arms through the sleeves when Dax starts to talk.

“I wasn’t going to tell you.” He turns to me and takes a deep breath. “But I’m leaving.”

My fingers freeze on the hem of my shirt. I stare at Dax as I take a few seconds to process the words that have just left his mouth.

He’s leaving?

“Are you going to see your mom?” I ask him. “Because I totally understand. Like I’ve told you, I’m seeing my family in a few days, too, so…”

“I’m not,” Dax tells me, but he offers no further explanation.

I grab my eyeglasses and put them on. “So you’re just leaving town for a few days because you’ve got something to do?”

Just like he’s done a few times before. The only difference is that this time he’s telling me beforehand. It’s a good thing, right? Maybe it’s a sign of progress.

“I do have something to do,” he answers. “But it’s not just for a few days.”

My eyebrows furrow. “A week? A month?”

I guess since the recently concluded semester was his final one, he has more time on his hands now.

“How long?”

“Indefinitely.”

My jaw drops. Okay, I wasn’t expecting that.

I close my mouth and cross my arms over my chest as I mull over the word.

Indefinitely. That’s a big word. It means Dax isn’t sure when he’ll be back. A few months, maybe? A year? At any rate, it means all our plans for the foreseeable future – us moving in together so he can hang around while waiting for me to graduate, him working for some biochemical research laboratory while I work at NASA after I graduate – they’re all hanging in the balance now.

I tap my arm. “Well, you can go do what you want to do and I’ll just be here and…”

“I might not come back, Jenna,” Dax cuts me off. “I can’t promise I will, and I won’t.”

My arms drop to my sides, weighed down by an invisible burden that tramples on my shoulders and threatens to crush my chest. A lump forms in my throat.

So when he says indefinitely, what he really means is never.

I swallow as I put my hands on my lap. “You’re breaking up with me, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

Blunt. Honest. Heart-wrenching.

“Why?” I manage to find the strength to ask.

If he’s being direct, I should be, too. The time for hesitating is over.

Dax shrugs. “Like I said, I’m leaving. Not just town but the country.”

“To do what?”

“Work.”

So he got a job offer abroad and he’s taking it without even asking me. Heck, he was going to leave without telling me.

I stand up so I can move closer to him. “So leave. Work. You don’t have to come back. When I’m done with school, I’ll follow you. We don’t have to break up.”

“Follow me?” Dax arches his eyebrows. “Jenna, didn’t you want to work at NASA? Hasn’t that been your dream since you were eleven?”

“But that’s not my only dream,” I tell him. “Not anymore. You, being with you – that’s a dream for me, too.”

“No.” He turns his back on me and runs his fingers through his hair. “You’re not making any sense.”

“You’re the one not making any sense,” I point out as I stand in front of him. “I’m your girlfriend, Dax. I have been for nearly two years. We’ve been through a lot. I know you care for me. And now you’re just leaving me?”