over the gun, which released me from its hypnotizing effect. When I finally looked back at Hamlet, his face was eerily calm given the subject at hand. His blue eyes were soft and his voice soothing as he said, “You’re worrying too much. I knew you were miserable, and I wanted to see you.” Stepping forward and tucking strands of hair behind my ears, he added, “But you didn’t expect me to come back home unprotected, did you?”
I shook my head slowly, hoping he was telling me the truth.
He took my face in his hands and kissed me gently. It almost made me forget about the gun.
The next day he came back, and the next, and the next. We got pretty comfortable with our routine and our privacy. And complacent. We didn’t take into account the possibility that my father might have a budget meeting requiring files that he might have forgotten in his study. I was trying to finish a paper while Hamlet sat on my bed flipping through magazines when we heard the elevator door open. We froze. My father walked directly to his study, so I was nearly ready to consider us safe. I listened to his footsteps come down his hall then stop abruptly in the sitting room. Double-time he pounded through the apartment and filled my doorway holding a pair of sneakers. Hamlet always kicked them off when he walked in. My father looked at Hamlet and then at me with ferocious disappointment, almost more than the morning we came back from Wittenberg. He dropped the sneakers and whipped back around without speaking. I heard the elevator doors open and shut, and then silence.
I put my face in my hands and listened to my breath echo off my palms. The veins in my neck were throbbing, and my ears filled with a panicked whine. Hamlet sank to his knees next to my chair and gently pulled my hands away from my face.
I squeezed his hands in mine and said softly, “You should go.”
“Cat’s out of the bag now.…” he replied.
I didn’t even want to think about the cat or the bag or the little mouse the cat was going to murder when it finished with its meeting upstairs. “Go, Hamlet,” I insisted.
He looked up earnestly and explained, “But I feel so much better when I’m with you. Don’t make me go off by myself. I think too much when I’m alone.”
I sat picturing my dad’s disappointed face but also knowing that Hamlet did think too much when he was alone and that he’d been almost himself since he’d returned from Wittenberg and that I really did want him to stay. Even so, I couldn’t. Not that day. I shook my head.
Hamlet’s eyes darkened and he sat back on his haunches. “So you’d choose your dad over me?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You are choosing to play the obedient daughter rather than do what you know is right for you… and me? You’re not a child anymore.”
My temper was starting to rise. “No, I’m not, but he asked me, and I have to respect that.”
“And I’m asking you to be with me.”
“I can’t.”
He stood up. “Give me a break, Ophelia. If you really wanted to be with me, you would.”
“Don’t be so dramatic. This isn’t forever.”
“Maybe it should be.”
“What?”
His eyes were full of accusation and fury. “Choose. Choose now.”
“Don’t,” I begged.
“Choose.”
“You don’t want me to do that.” It was both a plea and a threat.
“Choose,” he said slowly, his eyes mere slits.
I stood to match his gaze, fuming. “I have put everything aside to be with you. Everything. My friends. My ambition. Don’t make a face. I used to have it. But in the last few months, I let everything else slide. You want to know what I want? Well, so do I! But I can’t see past this little world we have when we’re together. I can’t see a future that doesn’t include you.”
He took a step forward, as if those last words were encouraging him, but I put my hand up to stop his progress and continued. “Hamlet, as much as it’s crushed me when we’ve broken up, it’s almost a relief, because it forces me to think about myself. But then you change your mind. And every time you’ve wanted to get back together, I’ve said yes. Every time you’ve asked for forgiveness, I’ve given it. Everything that’s mine has been yours. For as long as I can remember, it’s been this way. It