“So what are we doing?” she asks, the tears again forming in her eyes.
“We’re getting to know each other,” I tell her. “That sort of thing takes time.”
“Yeah,” she says. “But that doesn’t solve anything. We don’t have time.”
“We have a little,” I tell her. “If you’re not sick of me by the time you move, we can have more—I know I would like that.”
“Why don’t you move with me?” she asks.
And there’s the possibility I didn’t want her to realize.
“Things are only just starting to turn around at l’Iris. Wilks is still finding himself as a chef. I can’t just up and leave Jim without anyone to help,” I tell her. “He gave me a chance and kept me on when anyone else would have just fired me on the spot. I can’t walk out on him.”
“Then you’ll commute,” she says. “I found the place I want to move to. It’s got two bedrooms, one-and-a-half baths. It’s in a really good neighborhood and the rent is a fraction of what it is here.”
“I don’t have a car,” I tell her.
“I don’t have a car either,” she says. “How else are we going to do it, though?”
“I have a car,” Mike says from the kitchen.
“I’m sorry, Mike, but do you mind?” I ask.
He scoffs and shrugs and I would very much like to put my fist through that tissue paper skull of his.
It may sound really odd, given that Leila and I have been roommates for months now, but I don’t know if we’re really in the place, relationship-wise, where we should be living together.
“Let’s take every day, one day at a time,” I tell Leila. “Let’s make the most of every moment while you’re here, and when you have to go—”
“That’s it?” she asks. “And when I have to go, that’s it?”
“That’s not what I said,” I tell her. “I don’t want there to ever be a ‘that’s it’ with us.”
“What then?” she asks. “If things go well you’ll move, if they don’t, you won’t?”
“I don’t know!”
The words come out before I give them any thought. Leila just sits there, startled by the outburst, hurt by the words.
“Okay,” she says. “Okay.”
“I don’t know what to say,” I tell her. “I don’t want you to go.”
“This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for me,” she says.
“So is this,” I respond. “It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity for both of us.”
“Let’s take it day by day then,” she says. “We’ll see how things are going when it comes time for me to move.”
Contrary to all appearances, this is not what I want.
More than anything, I want to just pick up and follow her wherever she wants to go.
Maybe it’s ridiculous that I feel this strongly about a woman with whom I’ve only been in a relationship for a few days, but since I met her, we’ve gotten to know more about each other, and I sure as hell don’t want to miss out on learning everything there is.
That’s what I want, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen.
I’m used to the city.