A Very Large Expanse of Sea(38)

“I think maybe I had too much time to think about it.”

He looked heartbroken. There was no other way to put it. And he sounded heartbroken when he said, “You don’t want to be with me.”

Ocean was so straightforward. Everything about him felt honest and decent and I really admired him for it. But right now his honesty was making this conversation harder than it needed to be.

I’d had a plan.

I’d had it all worked out in my head; I’d hoped to tell a story, paint a picture, illustrate very, very clearly why this whole thing was doomed, and why we should avoid hurtling toward the inevitable and painful dissolution of whatever it was we were building here.

But all my carefully thought-out reasons felt suddenly small. Stupid. Impossible to articulate. Looking into his eyes had flipped tables in my head; my thoughts were now tangled and disorganized and I didn’t know how else to do this but to throw my feelings at him in no particular order.

Still, I was taking too long. I was silent for too long.

I was fumbling.

Ocean sat up, sat forward. He leaned in and I felt my chest tighten. I could suddenly smell him—his particular, familiar scent—everywhere. I was sitting in his car, I realized, and it had only just occurred to me to look around, to get a sense of where we were, who he was. I wanted to catalog the moment, capture it in words and pictures. I wanted to remember this. I wanted to remember him.

I’d never wanted to remember anyone before.

“Hey,” he said, but he said it softly. I don’t know what he saw in my face, what he’d caught in my eyes or in my expression but he seemed suddenly different. Like maybe he’d realized that I’d fallen, hard, and that this wasn’t easy for me, that I didn’t actually want to walk away.

I met his eyes.

He touched my cheek, his fingers grazing my skin, and I gasped. Leaned back. It was unexpected. I overreacted. I was suddenly breathing too hard, my head full of fire again.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “I can’t do this.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” I said. “Because.”

“Because why?”

“Because it won’t work.” I was flustered. I sounded stupid. “It just won’t work.”

“Isn’t that up to us?” he said. “Don’t we have control over whether or not this works?”

I shook my head. “It’s not that simple. You don’t get it. And it’s not your fault that you don’t get it,” I said, “but you just don’t know what you don’t know. You can’t see it. You can’t see how different your life would be—how being with me, spending time with someone like me—” I stopped. Struggled for words. “It would be hard for you,” I said, “with your friends, your family—”

“Why are you so sure that I care what other people think?”

“You’re going to care,” I said.

“No I won’t. I already don’t.”

“You say that now,” I said, shaking my head. “But you don’t know. You’re going to care, Ocean. You’re going to care.”

“Why can’t you let me decide what I’m going to care about?”

I was still shaking my head. I couldn’t look at him.

“Listen to me,” he said, and he took my hands, and I didn’t realize until that exact moment that my own hands were shaking. He squeezed my fingers. Tugged me closer. My heart felt wild.

“Listen to me,” he said again. “I don’t care what other people think. I don’t care, okay?”

“You do,” I said quietly. “You think you don’t, but you do.”

“How can you say that?”

“Because,” I said, “because I always say that. I always say that I don’t care what other people think. I say it doesn’t bother me, that I don’t give a shit about the opinions of assholes but it’s not true,” I said, and my eyes stung as I said it. “It’s not true, because it hurts every time, and that means I still care. It means I’m still not strong enough because every time someone says something rude, something racist—every time some mentally ill homeless person goes on a terrifying rampage when they see me crossing the street—it hurts. It never stops hurting. It only gets easier to recover.

“And you don’t know what that’s like,” I said. “You don’t know what my life is like and you don’t know what it’d be like to become a part of it. To tell the universe you’re on my side. I don’t think you understand that you’d be making yourself a target. You’d be risking the happy, comfortable world you live in—”

“I don’t live in a happy, comfortable world,” he said suddenly, and his eyes were bright, intense when he said it. “And if the life I’ve got is supposed to be some example of happiness then the world is even more messed-up than I thought it was. Because I’m not happy, and I don’t want to be like my parents. I don’t want to be like everyone else I know. I want to choose how to live my own life, okay? I want to choose who to be with.”

I could only stare at him, my heart beating hard in my chest.

“Maybe you care about what other people think,” he said, and his voice was softer now. “And that’s fine. But I really, truly, don’t.”