November 9: A Novel(52)

Her shoulders drop with her sigh. She gives her head a soft shake. “Ben, I’m not walking away from this. I’m not doing anything we didn’t agree to the first day we met. I’m the one sticking to the rules, here. We agreed on five years. And yes, we had a little hiccup upstairs where we almost caved and—”

I cut her off. “A hiccup?” I point to the house. “Did you just refer to us agreeing to start a relationship as a . . . hiccup?”

Her expression is immediately apologetic, but I don’t want to hear an apology. I’m obviously in the wrong here, because when I made love to her I knew what was happening between us was something most people don’t even know exists. And if she even remotely felt the same, there’s no way in hell she would be saying these things right now.

My stomach clenches and I want to double over in pain. But instead I hold steady and I offer her one last chance to prove to me that the entire past day wasn’t completely one-sided.

I grip her face until my fingers are wrapped around the nape of her neck. I brush my thumbs across her cheeks and encourage her to look up at me. I touch her softly—as gentle as my fingers are capable of touching her. She swallows, and I can see that my change in demeanor is making her nervous.

“Fallon,” I say, keeping my voice calm and sincere. “I don’t care about the book. I don’t even want to finish it. All I care about is you. Being with you every day. Seeing you every day. I’m not finished falling in love with you yet. But if you don’t want to finish falling in love with me, then you need to tell me right now. Do you want me to be a part of your life on more than just November 9th? If you say no, I’ll turn around and walk right back inside that house and things can go back to how they were before you showed up here yesterday. I’ll continue working on the book and we’ll meet up next year. But if you say yes . . . if you tell me you want to spend every single day on the calendar this year falling in love with me, then I’m going to kiss you. And I promise it’ll be an eleven. And I’ll spend every day after today proving to you that you made the right choice.”

My hands remain firm on her face. Her eyes remain firm on mine.

And then a tear slowly begins to take shape and rolls down her cheek. She shakes her head, “Ben, you can’t—”

“Yes or no, Fallon. That’s all I want to hear.”

Please say yes. Please tell me you aren’t finished falling in love with me yet.

“You need to be here for your family this year. You know that as well as I do, Ben. The last thing we need is a relationship over a cell phone. And that’s exactly what will happen, because we’ll spend every spare second wanting to talk to each other instead of focusing on our goals. We’ll alter everything just to be together, and it shouldn’t be that way. Not yet. We need to finish what we started.”

I let all of that go in one ear and out the other, because it isn’t the answer I want. I lower myself until I’m at eye level with her. “Yes. Or no.”

She inhales a shaky breath. And then, in a weak effort at sounding sincere, she says, “No. No, Ben. Go back inside and finish your book.”

Another tear falls, but this time it falls from my eye.

I take a step back and I let go of her. When she climbs into the backseat of the cab, she rolls down her window, but I won’t look at her face. I stare at the ground beneath my feet, waiting to see if it will split in two and swallow me whole.

“The one thing I want more than anything is for the whole world to laugh at you, Ben.” I can hear the tears in her voice. “And they can’t do that if I don’t do for you what you did for me the day we met. You let me go. You encouraged me to go. And I want the same for you. I want you to follow your passion instead of your heart.”

The cab begins to back away, and for a split second I think maybe she’ll realize how f*cked up her priorities are, because she’s my passion. The book was just an excuse.

I debate running after her—giving her a book-worthy performance. I could chase down the cab and when it comes to a stop, I could pull open her door and whisk her into my arms and tell her I’m in love with her. That I finished falling in love with her almost immediately after I started, because it was a straight plummet from the top to the bottom. A whoosh. An instant. Insta-love.

But she hates insta-love. Apparently she hates semi-instant love and slow love and love at a snail’s pace and love in general and . . . “Fuck!”

I curse at the empty street, because for once, I get exactly what I deserve.





Fourth November


9th


In her darkness, she is silent.

In my darkness, she screams.

—BENTON JAMES KESSLER





Fallon


Even counting the night I was called up from being the understudy, I wasn’t this nervous. I’m over an hour early, but our booth was already taken when I arrived here this morning, so I chose the one next to it.

I tap my fingers on the table, my eyes flicking to the door anytime someone enters or exits.

I have no idea how I’m going to start this conversation. How do I tell him that as soon as I pulled away last year, I knew I’d made the biggest mistake of my life? How do I tell him I made that last minute decision for his benefit? That I thought if I told him I didn’t want to fall in love with him, that I would be helping him in some way? And most important, how do I bring up the fact that I moved back to Los Angeles just for him? Well, not exactly just for him. I did make a huge career change a few months ago.