Avoiding Intimacy (Avoiding 2.5)

“Well, yours is still warm,” she said, snatching a box of rice and some chicken concoction out of his hands. “So, I’m calling dibs.”

“I assumed so,” he said, taking a seat on a bar stool and popping open his own take-out boxes.

Chyna ripped open the chopsticks provided and dug into her meal. She was surprisingly hungry after such an exhausting day. Oh yeah, she hadn’t actually eaten her salad during her meeting with Cassandra. No wonder. Had she had anything today?

They ate in silence for the most part.

He chatted briefly about work, and she told him about Alexa’s plan in Atlanta.

They both laughed at that one, knowing how her plans normally went. It was nice.

Normal. Comfortable.

She swallowed as much as she could eat, happy to be eating real food again.

Her diet had been delicious but small, very small, and specific in Italy. Plus, they didn’t have Chinese take-out like this.

Neither of them seemed ready to move on with the conversation. Even after they were both stuffed and Chyna had put the leftovers back into her refrigerator, they seemed hesitant as to where the conversation should go…where it should even begin.

“Soo...” he said, trailing off.

“Yeah. Soo…” she copied.

“How was Italy?” he finally asked.

Chyna chewed on her bottom lip and fiddled with her chopsticks. “A dream come true,” she told him.

“Hey, it’s just me,” he said, reaching out and extracting the chopsticks from her grasp. “You can talk to me.”

“No, really,” she said, dropping her hands onto the island. “It was a dream come true. Everything I wanted and more.

I was actually great at something…beyond great at something.”

“Then, why do you seem so down?

How could it be everything you wanted?”

he asked softly.

She looked down and away from his probing eyes. She didn’t want to tell him, but isn’t that why she had asked to talk to him? She had been thinking about him before she even left Marco. And she had been an emotional wreck after they had broken up. At the time she couldn’t even figure out why. She still didn’t know why…not really. Nothing had ever hit her so hard. Except this. Maybe worse than this.

“Because I messed it all up… like I always do,” she whispered the last part glancing up nervously into his hazel eyes.

“Why do you always say that? You don’t mess everything up,” he told her placing his hand on hers reassuringly.

“Well, I messed this up. I can’t model anymore,” she told him. The words felt tragic coming out of her mouth. And every time she thought about it, she felt like someone had punched her in the gut knocking the breath out of her.

“Why not? I thought you said you were great at it. Won’t people notice that? I sure noticed your picture all over the city,” he said with a fake cough to break eye contact.

“Because I…I, God!” she cried dropping her face into her hands. “That picture is the whole problem!”

Adam sighed, reaching across the island and raising her chin with his hand.

“I wanted you to be happy when you left.

You thought it was the right thing, and I wanted to believe you. I thought when that picture was up all over the city that it had all happened for a reason. Now, you’re telling me that it didn’t?” he asked, trying to put the pieces together.

Her bottom lip quivered as she stared up at him. How could she make him understand what had happened? “It did until I left.”

“Why did you leave?”

She closed her eyes. She didn’t want to admit the truth. “Because I was scared.”

His resolve crumbled at her admission.

“What could scare you?

You’re fearless. You charge into every situation head on ready to conquer the world.”

“You think so?” she asked feeling very small in that moment.

“I know so. You scare me sometimes with how you react to situations,” he told her. “And sometimes—I want to be more like you.”

“You do?” she asked her brows furrowing.

“Yes, Chyna. So what were you afraid of?”

She swallowed trying to absorb everything he had just told her. He thought she was fearless. He thought she conquered situations. She had always thought the opposite. It was easier not to get attached, not to have anything she obsessed over, not to feel anything really.

That way, at least, she never felt this.

She turned her head away from him and looked out in her living room. Taking a deep breath, she finally answered him, “Failing.”

“Everyone fails.”

“Not me,” she told him.

“Never?”

“No. Never,” she said. “I’ve never put myself out there to fail. So I left, because I didn’t want to face the alternative. Then when I got here and saw the ads, I started seeing how much I messed up by not giving it a chance. Now I can’t model anymore. He blacklisted me,” she whispered the last part.

“He?” Adam prompted.

“Marco,” she said, meeting his probing gaze.

“Ah, the fashion designer,” he said as if he knew where this was going.

She took a deep breath and plunged forward. “We were together in Italy.”

He nodded, pursing his lips. “I figured.”

She cringed slightly at his reaction.

She knew it would be there. “And, I left him without a good-bye.”

“But, you think you made the right choice?” he asked.

She bit her lip, thinking about the question. Leaving Marco, in the end, was the right thing, but the consequences…that was a different story. “I know I did.”

“And, it’s over?” he asked the loaded question but the easier one for her.

“Yes,” she told him without hesitation.

It was very over. “But, now I can’t model.

All because I left.”

Adam sighed, standing and coming around the island to wrap his arms around her. She turned to face him, burying her face into his shoulder. He stroked her hair back as she nuzzled into him, and he gave her the moment she needed to just feel.

“Now,” he said, keeping his arms around her but pulling back so that he could see her face, “you are not a failure.

Even if you were, it would be okay because you’re resilient. You bounce back. You are a beautiful, confident, accomplished young woman, and this one pitfall—because that’s all it is—will not break you. I promise.”