I took a deep breath and said, “Because I think we should break up, and bringing you with me would feel wrong.”
He took a step back almost as if I’d hit him. “You want to break up? With me?” When I didn’t answer right away, he demanded. “Why?”
I searched for the right words, tugging at my braid. Finally, I breathed out a partial truth out. “Because…I think we want different things.”
“Since when?” he demanded.
“Since always,” I replied before turning back to my packing.
“Violet, I don’t understand. Everything is perfect. I thought you loved me,” he said. “I thought we were going to be a team like my parents. I chose you because you’re smart and vibrant and beautiful.”
I didn’t know what to react to first. The “love,” the “choosing” me, or the fact he wanted us to be little mini-mes of his parents.
I’d never once said I loved him. He hadn’t said it either. In truth, I’d been flattered by his attention because in our three years together at UC Berkeley, he’d barely given me the time of day. He’d been the star of our geeky community: valedictorian of our graduating class, internships with the best scientific research firms, and a set of scientific geniuses for parents. He and his life had been like a shiny image of something I thought I wanted. Science and family rolled together.
But the sad truth was, I hadn’t felt for him what I should have. Even sadder, crueler in many ways, was that leaving Silas wasn’t going to break my heart.
Because I’d given it away a long time ago.
“You chose poorly,” I said with a small twist of my lips, trying to lighten our mood with the Indiana Jones reference. Truck and Dawson would have snickered at it, but it just went over Silas’s head.
“Don’t get all snippy at my word choice, Vi,” he snapped, eyes flashing. “I could have had anyone, but I wanted you.”
“Wow. Way to be humble.”
“That isn’t how I meant it,” he replied, blowing out a frustrated breath.
I started toward him, wanting to give him comfort, wanting to ease the sting of my bite, but then stopped myself. “I’m really sorry, Silas. Truly. I just think that vision you had of us―like we were your parents―that isn’t me.”
I’d thought I wanted it, briefly, like a mirage. This was my fault.
“I think you’re upset about your dad,” he said. “And you’re projecting it onto us in some weird way. Why don’t you go, do what you need to do, and we can talk when you get back?”
He’d drawn a linear equation from point A (Dad dying) to point B (my breaking up with him), but he didn’t see they weren’t the same equation at all. They just had happened to intersect at the same time and space.
“If that’ll make you feel better, then by all means, we can talk when I get back, but it won’t change my mind. This isn’t about my dad. This is about us,” I told him. “I’m sorry. I have to go. I don’t want to miss the flight.”
He walked me out of the apartment, opened the door of the CarShare, and said, “We’re not done, Vi.”
I didn’t know how to respond, and I didn’t have to. He shut the door, and the driver took off. I sat in the back seat, trying not to cry.
The tears weren’t for my dad. They weren’t even for breaking up with Silas. They were because all the boxes in my life that I thought had been marked with x’s now seemed to be erasing themselves. My thesis. My formulas. My relationship. I felt like a jerk for not ending things sooner. For letting myself and Silas believe that his perfect scientific family could ever fit me.
♫ ♫ ♫
The funeral director glanced awkwardly at the three of us. It was just Truck, Jersey, and me at the mausoleum. We’d left Nell with Mandy and Leena. They’d asked if we wanted them to come, but it wasn’t that kind of burial. There weren’t going to be tears and talks of what the man had done for the world.
I could tell the director wanted to say a few words as we got ready to place the urn holding our father into the niche with our mother. The mom I barely remembered because she’d died of ovarian cancer when I was six. Before the man could say anything, I cut him off.