But he doesn’t skip “good 4 u,” even though he always flinched at the way I sang it in the shower (not well, while also not knowing all the lyrics). And he doesn’t skip JP Saxe and Julia Michaels’s “If the World Was Ending,” the world’s certifiably saddest song.
It’s a playlist of my favorite songs. I didn’t know he had this. I didn’t know heknewthis.
He thinks we’re back together and everything’s okay. He’s saying yes—to himself; to me. And I’m just starting to figure myself out—what I want, who I am on my own, who I want to be when I’m with others. I need us to figure out how to take care of ourselves first, so we understand how to take care of each other. It’s like the closet: sometimes we stop seeing the spaces people fill, until we see the spaces their absence leaves empty. Seeing me gone forced Tobin tosee me,and I’m not ready to be less visible.
I’m so afraid this was a mistake.
Deep breath. Steady. Get down there and be fair to him and yourself.
“Diz.” Tobin meets me at the kitchen door with a kiss and a half hug, holding his wet hands away from my back. “Hope you’re in the mood for barbecue.”
He’s taking care of me again.
“You don’t have to cook.” I make it as gentle as I can.
“I want to.”
“Tobin…”
“Don’t,” he says softly, sliding away from me. “I know you’re not staying.”
“How?” His lack of surprise doesn’t make things any better. I still feel like I let him down.
“I know you. You’re worried about what this means. But it’s only dinner.”
My hands twitch at my sides. “How can I help?”
He gives me a look. “You can stop acting like I’m making you sign away your soul when all I’m doing is chopping vegetables. I know you can take care of yourself, Liz. I know you don’t need me. But just because you won’t crumble on your own doesn’t mean it’s not nice to be cared for.”
Tobin should know. He was expected to look after himself and not crumble at a shockingly young age, when his mom was a single parent hustling to make ends meet and his dad was god knows where.
I suddenly see his million friendships in a new light: a lonely kid, looking for connection. If Marijke had moved to our street twenty years ago, I can picture eleven-year-old Tobin discovering my family’s enforced togetherness, charming his way in, and blossoming in the same soil where Amber and I had failed to thrive.
“And caring isn’t all I want. I want a role here. I don’t like it when you shut me out of stuff like vet bills, as if Yeti’s not my cat, too. I hate having to beg you to take what I’m offering. I want usto make itgoodfor each other.” The muscles in his bare forearms tense as he speaks.
All this time, I’ve been so angry about the ways he didn’t know me, and ignored the ways he did. Glossed over the way I didn’t know him as well as I thought, either.
The truth hurts sometimes, too.
But that wasn’t the whole truth. “You’re right. We need to be good to each other. And we need the hard stuff too, Tobe. We have to trust each other with our failures. Our secrets. We can’t be intimate without them.”
He looks at me, wary. “We agreed not to discuss our pitches.”
“I didn’t mean the pitches. I meant us. The scenarios are fine—”
“—oh, they’rewaybetter than fine—”
“—but I’m talking about us. Our lives. Ourreallives, our real marriage. We’ve theoretically been learning how to communicate, but we haven’t talked outside of the scenarios.”
“We could talk anytime, Liz. If you still don’t want to come home, we could go out.” He rips into a head of lettuce.
“Like… out? On a date? Adatedate?”
“Yeah.Datedate. We’ve got a month till rafting season starts. After that, we can keep doing the book, or not. Schedule sessions with a real counselor for the fall, if you like. Just let’s… hang in. If we can.”
He’s working hard at this, voice not as even as he’d probably like it to be. For the guy who had “lost and found” stenciled on his tent, he seems pretty lost right now.
“Okay. I… Okay.”
