"Anything happen there yet?"
"No."
"I see."
As she looks away I make my mind up. I say, "So why are you here, Audrey?"
She looks down.
Away.
When she finally answers, she says, "I guess I missed you, Ed." Her eyes are pale green and wet. I want to tell her it's barely been a week since we last got together, but I think I know what she means. "I feel like you're slipping away somehow. You've become different since all this started."
"Different?"
I ask it, but I know it. I am.
I stand up and look into her.
"Yes." She confirms it. "You used to just be." She explains this like she doesn't really want to hear it. It's more a case that she has to say it. "Now you're somebody, Ed. I don't know everything about what you've done and what you've been through, but I don't know--you seem further away now."
It's ironic, don't you think? All I've ever wanted was to get closer to her. I've tried desperately.
She concludes. "You're better."
It's with those words that I see things from Audrey's perspective. She liked me being just Ed. It was safer that way. Stable. Now I've changed things. I've left my own fingerprints on the world, no matter how small, and it's upset the equilibrium of us--Audrey and me. Maybe she's afraid that if I can't have her, I won't want her.
Like this.
Like we used to be.
She doesn't want to love me, but she doesn't want to lose me either.
She wants us to stay okay. Like before.
But it's not as certain anymore.
We will, I try to promise.
I hope I'm right.
Still in the kitchen, my fingers feel the stone from Lua in my pocket again. I think about what Audrey's been telling me. Maybe I truly am shedding the old Ed Kennedy for this new person who's full of purpose rather than incompetence. Maybe one morning I'll wake up and step outside of myself to look back at the old me lying dead among the sheets.
It's a good thing, I know.
But how can a good thing suddenly feel so sad?
I've wanted this from the beginning.
I head back to the fridge and get more to drink. I've come to the conclusion that we have to get drunk. Audrey agrees.
"So what were you doing," I ask later on the couch, "while I was at Clown Street?"
I see her thoughts swivel.
She's drunk enough to tell me, at least in a coy kind of way.
"You know," she embarrasses.