of me?” she asks. She doesn’t sound happy, and I’m afraid this will get ugly. Why must I constantly explain the danger we’re in? Why is she unable to grasp these facts?
“It’s you,” I say. It’s everything about you. Everything I’m not. Everything I can’t have. Anger at the injustice of it all rises up to suffocate me.
“Is it so unbearable to be around someone who cares for you?” she asks.
Let’s not beat about the bush.
“I’d say you’re feeling a bit more than ‘care’ for me, Anna. I could see your emotion popping around you like pink bubble gum last night.”
“So what?!” she yells. “I haven’t tried to say it to you. I’m sorry I lost focus for a second and let you see it!”
I grit my teeth and take the airport exit. This entire situation is driving me mad. The sooner she’s away from me, the better. “Don’t be dramatic about this.”
“You don’t call this dramatic? Abandoning me at the airport before daylight?”
Abandoning? As if I’d leave her in an unsafe situation.
“I’ll see that you’re in safe hands before I leave.”
“Don’t bother!” She’s seething, and her angry passion stirs me. But then everything shifts as her chin trembles. “I’ve never even been on a plane before.”
I desperately hope she doesn’t cry. I prefer her anger to her tears.
“You’ll be fine,” I say.
“I want to stay with you.”
Don’t cling, Anna, please don’t cling. Don’t make this harder for me, when all I want to do is cling, as well.
“You can’t,” I say. “Your father was right. You should get home as soon as possible. I don’t trust myself with you.”
“Don’t trust yourself? Or don’t trust me?”
I’d thought about this all night. I’d imagined dozens of scenarios where we’d run away together. I imagined what it would’ve been like if I’d ignored that intuition and kept going when Anna told me not to stop. I imagined a life in Atlanta where we’d sneak to be together when my father goes to New York each week. And every single imagining ended the same way.
In our early deaths. Watching Anna be killed. Reality.
This is clearly not what Anna sees when she imagines us. She still envisions rainbows, kittens, and fucking unicorns.
Frustration ignites. I explode. “I don’t trust either of us! We can’t be together in any capacity ever again. It’s a damn-near miracle you’re still a virgin now. If that Sword of Righteousness is intended for you to use, then you should want to stay away from me, too, because I promise I could not resist if you told me to pull the car into that parking garage right now.” I inch closer, daring her. “Could you resist a drug if I repeatedly placed it on the tip of your tongue, Ann? Could you? We’re playing with fire!”
Her eyes are wide and filled with realization. She now sees how hard last night was for me, but pity isn’t what I want. Nothing I say has the effect I need it to have. I glance up at the outdoor check-in desk, which blessedly has no line.
“So, what are you going to do now?” she asks. “Go back to doing your father’s work and pretend you never knew me?”
That’s exactly what I’d intended, though it sounds so pathetically depressing when she says it. I sigh and let my head hit the headrest. “What would you have me do?”
She pauses a long while. “You have to work.” Anna’s voice is full of emotion, and I wish for the millionth time that she wasn’t so soft for the things of this world. I need her to be tougher, more aware. I need her not to love me. I need her to let me go.
“Do you know what my father said when I came home the night after he met you?” I say quietly. “He said God was a fool to put you in my path. And he was right.”
“No. Your father was wrong! And how do you know it wasn’t you who was put in my path? There’s a purpose for you in all of this, too.”
I want to laugh at her naive view and the ridiculous notion that I can be used for anything good, but I can only shake my head. She thinks all I’ve done is seduce a few girls for a bit of fun. The only reason she fell for me is because she doesn’t know everything about me. It’s time to remedy some of that.
I tell her about Father’s relationship with Marissa