Love in the Time of Serial Killers(79)

He dropped the crumpled napkins he’d been holding, wiping his hands on his jeans before leading me away from the pavilion, under a couple of shady oak trees where we could have more privacy.

“You shouldn’t leave all your equipment there,” I said. “It looks expensive.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Sam said.

“There’s a kid standing close to it with a ‘Baby Shark’ gleam in his eye. I’m telling you.”

“Phoebe,” Sam said, a little impatient. “It doesn’t matter. Talk to me. Tell me why you’re freaking out.”

“This whole thing feels like it’s moving so fast,” I said. “What are we even doing? It was supposed to be a summer fling, and now we’re talking about marriage and kids? It’s too much, Sam. I can’t do it.”

He stepped back, running his hand through his hair. The sweat had dried by now, and his agitated hands made the hair stick up around his ears. I could see from his face that the words summer fling had hurt him, and a part of me wanted to take them back. He’d told me multiple times that this wasn’t casual for him, and the truth was that it hadn’t felt casual to me, either, since after that first night. Since maybe before then, I didn’t know.

But I also felt stupid and naive for thinking this could ever work out long-term. His life was here, and mine wasn’t. He was made for a picket fence future—he deserved that future—and I didn’t know where I fit into that at all.

“The kid asked me a question,” Sam said. “And I answered it. What was I supposed to say—nah, kid, that’s just my neighbor, we fuck sometimes?”

I flinched at his language, although I knew I’d asked for it, by rewinding us back to that first morning after, rewriting the rules of what we called whatever this was between us. “At least it would’ve been more honest,” I muttered.

For a moment Sam just stared at me, like he didn’t know me at all. I barely recognized myself, the things I was saying. I wanted to stuff them all back in my mouth and start over. I would’ve begged off, said I had a headache or wasn’t feeling well, that I needed to focus on my dissertation for a bit and would talk to him later. This may have ended—it seemed inevitable to me, suddenly, that it was all going to end, any hope otherwise no more real than the fantasies I’d had as a kid about living in an apartment with a view of the skyline. But it didn’t need to end like this.

“Honest,” he said, almost more to himself than to me. “You’re right, I haven’t been honest. I’m falling for you, Phoebe. I’ve wanted to tell you that a million times. But I always worried I’d scare you off—that we’d end up having a conversation a lot like this one, actually—and so I held back. I know you may not feel the same way yet. I know the idea of being in a relationship terrifies you. I know it’s complicated, with you only being here for the summer. But my feelings for you—that part’s not complicated.”

The shrieks of the playing children around us were an incongruous backdrop to this conversation. I wished we could somehow be transported back to his house, or mine. I wished I could be in a headspace where his words didn’t freak me out, because he was right, they terrified me. Falling for me? Even the word choice implied pain, loss of control. He couldn’t be falling for me, any more than I could be for him.

“It’s been an intense few weeks,” I said. “Hell, an intense day. It’s been a concentrated incubation period, like when people meet at summer camp, or like Keanu and Sandra in Speed. But we barely know each other, when you get down to it.”

“So tell me,” Sam said, crossing his arms over his chest. “Tell me something big about you that I don’t already know, something that would change my mind about the way I feel.”

“You don’t even know my middle name.”

“I know it starts with an R,” he said, then, at my expression, “You publish your papers under Phoebe R. Walsh. Rachel? Rebecca? Rumpelstiltskin?”

“It’s Rachel,” I said grudgingly, irritated that he’d guessed it on the first try. If he made any allusion to Friends I’d lose it.

“Mine is Copeland. Fun fact, all my siblings’ middle names are Copeland. It’s my mom’s maiden name. So now that’s out of the way.”

“How old are you?” The most basic shit, and I didn’t know the answer. It had never come up.

“Twenty-eight. Anything else?”

He was almost two years younger than me. There was no reason for that to be a deal breaker, but somehow it seemed to prove my point, of what little foundation we actually had to be making plans for any future.

“I’m leaving in a few weeks.”

His eyes shadowed, but didn’t leave my face. “I already know that. But we have phones, email, cars, access to air travel. I can take an extra day or two around Labor Day. I get the whole week of Thanksgiving off. We can make it work until you finish your graduate program, and then we can figure it out from there.”

He made it sound so doable, so reasonable, but I’d never been able to sustain a relationship when we were both in the same city, much less when we were states apart.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I never meant to have this conversation today, especially after . . .”