Page 77 of The Spirit of Love
“Chemistry guy?”
“Who’s chemistry guy?”
Oh. He’s bringing up Sam? Right now? Why?
I laugh, playing off the awkwardness. “I wouldn’t go that far. He’s actually not in my contacts anyway.”
“That’s a little suspicious,” Jude says, sitting up to face me. Something in his voice is confrontational.
“What’s suspicious?” I turn toward him and prop myself up on an elbow.
“Miss ‘We’re Here to Love Each Other’ is afraid to make good on the claim?”
“Who said anything about being afraid?” I snap. “I’m simply realistic. And that relationship wasn’t real.”
Jude tosses his head, as if he has the inside scoop on everything that happened with Sam. As if I’m the one missing a piece of crucial information. “Chemistry is real.”
“I know chemistry is real, Jude. But it’s not everything. And you don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t know my life, my experiences.”
“I know what you’ve told me. I’ve listened.”
“I don’t understand why you’re bringing up some guy I met on a vacation. I don’t understand why it has anything to do with our work today, or with you in general.”
“Because hanging around with you, Fenny, I start to believe you.” He sounds angry, like I’ve done something to betray him. “You talk a big game about knowing what we’re here on Earth to do, but you can’t even do it yourself? If you learned so much when you saw the other side, why don’t you live by it?”
I flinch, hurt. “I wasn’t talking any ‘big game,’ Jude. I trusted you with that story because I thought you wouldn’t judge me.”
“I’m not judging you.” He blinks. “I just see through you. And I think you’re just as lost as the rest of us.”
“He didn’t want me!” I practically shout. “Is that what you need to hear me say? That he rejected me?”
“Bullshit.”
“Jude—”
“Any man who has the chance to be with you would seize it. Would never let it go. You’re making excuses.”
We stare at each other for a moment. I’m out of breath and raging, and also—did he just say if he had the chance to be with me, he would never let me go?
“Maybe I am,” I admit. “I’ve never said love isn’t scary. That kindness always comes easy. When I try to connect with other people, more often than not, I fail. I’m not claiming expertise, but I still believe. I believe it’s worth it to try. You can call that bullshit. But I know you, Jude. I know you want the same things I want, the same things everyone wants. You just cover it up better, because not getting it hurts so much that you don’t know how to handle it.”
“I don’t feel that way.”
I stare at him, say nothing.
“You’re putting words in my mouth,” he says.
But hehadfelt that way. I saw it with my own eyes, how much connection matters to him, with Walter Matthau, with Buster. Even just meeting Edie and the boys, I could tell. And I heard the pain in his voice when he talked about his mother. We’d connected, hadn’t we?
But it feels too personal, on too big of a day, to bring up those things right now. So instead, I change lanes to the subject of work. Like we do. Because that way, we can keep fighting, but we’ll have our storytelling shields up. We can pretend all this isn’t so close to the bone.
“If you think my point of view is so embarrassing,” I demand, “why back me today? Why cheerlead my directing a scene that celebrates the infinite meanings of life and everything that awaits us after this?”
Jude narrows his eyes. “Better you than me.”
“Wow,” I choke out a laugh. “That’s it?”
He stands up to leave and turns his back to me, and when he speaks again, his voice has gone cold. “You’ve never needed my approval, Fenny. You just needed me to get out of the way.”
