“I understand,” I said, trying to steady my breathing but it was like my heart might break out of my chest. “You know what? He’s fine, I shouldn’t have called at all.”
“Jude,” she said slowly. “If you need help, and you’re in over your head, you can say something. We can find you a different job.”
“No,” I said. “I don’t want that at all. I’ll make this work.”
“Please see that you do,” she said. “This is important to the longevity of my company. Don’t let me down.”
And with that, she hung up.
I threw my phone against the couch. It rebounded and clattered onto the floor. I stood there breathing hard, about to pass out, and cursed myself for being so freaking stupid. Calling Fluke like that was so childish and dumb, but being around Bret again made me feel like a goddamn teenager. It was like he transported me back to that time, when I was awkward and uncomfortable in my own body, and it was a horrible thing. I worked hard to escape those days, to grow up and to become someone better than that girl languishing in Levittown, hanging around the empty playground, kicking dirty, dented beer cans into the stream filled with radioactive catfish with their big, grinding teeth. He made me feel like that girl again, lost and alone, growing up in a house packed full of angry silences, desperate to escape. Desperate to be someone, or at least to be someone else, anyone at all.
It wasn’t his fault. I knew it, and yet I blamed him anyway.
Just last night, I told him we could work it out. And then this morning, I called Lady Fluke to try to have him removed from the project. I was hopping around between two extremes, unable to find my footing, and I felt like I was slipping away more and more every day.
I needed to make a choice, and the choice seemed clear, even if it wasn’t a choice at all, even if it was forced on me, and there was no turning back.
Sarcone’s was a small sandwich shop tucked into a tiny storefront that smelled like baking bread and deli cheese several blocks south of South Street. I sat on a small black bench in the shade of an awning and watched people walk past under the trees—girls in sundresses, men in shorts and button-down short-sleeve shirts, smiling and laughing, like the world was okay, and not slowly falling to pieces.
I saw him turn the corner and I squirmed in my seat. Bret wore jeans and a t-shirt, tight around his muscular arms, his hair pushed back in a perfect messy wave like he’d spent hours on it, but I knew he probably rolled out of bed and looked like that. He lingered near a tree, a few feet away from me, leaning his broad shoulder up against it, squinting at me like he couldn’t tell if I were real or some kind of imaginary friend.
He broke the silence first. “Bread’s really good here,” he said, nodding toward the shop behind me.
“I know,” I said, “it’s my favorite.”
“You getting anything?”
“I thought I might, but I’m not hungry.”
He didn’t move. I wished he’d say something about last night, but instead it was like that never happened, like even if we tried to move forward, I’d always end up dragging us right back.
I had to stop the cycle.
“I made a decision,” I said, my hands curling into fists at my side. I wanted to get up and leave and forget about all this—I could find a job somewhere else, doing anything else.
“What did you decide?” he asked, a little smile on his lips like he knew exactly what I was about to say.
I stood up suddenly. I couldn’t keep sitting still, not with him staring at me like that. I started walking, heading south, and he hurried to catch up. He walked with his hands shoved in his pockets, shoulders rolled forward, and that tense, closed-off posture somehow worked for him, like he made it confident instead of introverted, like the world would come to him whether it wanted to or not.
We passed row after row of parked cars and houses, doors looming at the top of concrete stoops, bars over the bottom windows of some. Stop signs hung loose, and across the street, a restaurant served beer through a small side window and couples sat at iron tables drinking from cans.
“We’re going to work together,” I said as he drew close at a crossing. He looked at me, then was quiet as we moved in front of a truck. It sped through the intersection once we reached the sidewalk.
“I already knew that,” he said.
“I called Lady Fluke,” I said, plowing forward, heedless. “I asked her to remove you from the project.”