I thought that’s what I had to be to be important. But I’ve never felt more important than when you’re holding me, darlin’. That’s just true. It doesn’t matter to me what anyone else in the world thinks. What matters is what you think. I’ve never given myself to someone wholeheartedly before. I’ve always kept parts of myself back. My wife couldn’t love me, because she didn’t know me. And I couldn’t love her because I didn’t give her all the pieces of myself. Because I didn’t really trust her. Not ever. Good thing, as it turns out. But still.”
“I need... I need to...”
“You don’t need to do anything,” he said. “You don’t need to change a damn thing. The woman you are reached in and saved me somehow. And I want to spend my life drinking Coke with you in the middle of the day in a bar. Having sex in a basement at a museum. I want to watch you put your uniform on in the morning, and then I want to take it off you at night. I want to meet this big family of yours that raised you and made you who you are. Because that woman, I love her.”
“It’s not enough,” she said, everything in her pushing against these declarations.
“Why not?”
“I’m not... I’m not enough. I’m just not. I need to get this job.”
“Why? To build a monument to a dead man? I’ll tell you what, it’s a lot easier to do that than it is to look around you and fully embrace the living people that care about you as you are. You’re having conversations with someone who can’t talk back. You don’t know what your dad would say with all these years and all this hindsight. You don’t know if he’d be proud or not.”
“He would be proud if I...if I did what he did.”
“Maybe, maybe not. Maybe he didn’t like the man he was, Pansy. You don’t know. You were a child. Let me tell you what I think. I think he would’ve been proud of you if you would have become police chief, an artist, a dancer. Whatever. I think at the end of the day he would’ve wanted you to be happy. You know why I think that? Because you love him so damned much. Which means that in spite of whatever issues you had with him sometimes, you loved him a whole lot. Because his opinion mattered to you. And you wouldn’t want to make him proud if he weren’t a really great dad. And if he was a great dad, that means he would’ve loved you always.”
She pushed back. She rejected it. She couldn’t believe him. She couldn’t. And she didn’t quite understand why she couldn’t with such desperation. She only knew that it was so.
“No. Get out of my house, West. I have to deal with the fact that I’m going to have to call a man that I want to punch in the face my boss in the next couple of weeks, because lord knows Johnson is closer to getting the job than I am. I just lost the one thing I cared about.”
“Pansy...”
“I don’t love you,” she said. “I just wanted to lose my virginity. That’s it. I was so focused on this that I forgot to do that. And then big surprise it turns out I don’t do balance very well. Well, my lesson is learned. And I’m done. Please get out of my house.” He looked at her for a long moment, his blue eyes filled with pain.
Pain she had put there.
Only a week or so ago she had thought that if anyone ever hurt West, if she could find the people who had been responsible for putting him in prison, she would have to fight against her desire to put them in the hospital.
And now she was the one hurting him. But she had to.
She had to. To save herself.
He said nothing. He only nodded once, and tipped his hat.
And then West Caldwell turned and walked out the door.
Pansy couldn’t catch her breath. She had been struggling with it since she’d left the interview, and now it was even worse. She collapsed onto the ground, breathing hard and heavy.
And suddenly she remembered the day that her parents had died.
Remembered the pieces of it that she had forgotten. This. On the floor. Breathing hard. Thinking she was going to die too.
Grief.
Whole body grief. Stole her breath. Stole her ability to think. But she