Coming Home(176)

An awkward silence fell over them, and Leah twisted the bag between her fingertips.

“Tell me a story,” he said. “Something good.”

She lifted her eyes. “Something good?”

Danny nodded.

“Um…let’s see. I met Tommy’s new girlfriend the other day.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Mm-hm.”

“What’s she like?” Danny asked.

This was safe. Pleasant.

“She’s adorable,” Leah said with a smile. “Really nice. And so smart. She’s going to school for forensic science. Like one of those CSI people.”

“No shit?”

Leah nodded. “It was so cool talking to her. She’s definitely a keeper. Gram loves her too.”

Something flickered in Danny’s chest. “Gram met her?”

“Yeah. Tommy brought her by one afternoon while I was visiting. We all ended up staying for dinner.”

Danny nodded slowly as he pressed his palms into the tops of his thighs.

The thought of them all sitting at Gram’s together should have made him smile, but the flickering in his chest tightened further until there was no mistaking what it was.

Jealousy.

What the f*ck was wrong with him? He had no idea he was capable of such repulsiveness. How selfish was it to resent the people he cared about for living their lives? What would he have preferred to hear? That they were all sitting alone in their living rooms with the curtains drawn, crying into a box of tissues?

“Are you okay?”

No. He wasn’t okay. He was the furthest thing from okay. He was spiraling into something ugly and he didn’t know how to stop, because hearing about home was supposed to be the one thing that helped him.

“Danny?”

He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees as he dropped his forehead to his clasped hands.

Tell her, he thought. Tell her you just realized you’re so far gone that other people’s happiness makes you angry.

“Danny…it’s okay,” she said. “Whatever it is, you can talk to me.”

But he didn’t know what he was supposed to say anymore.

He didn’t know how to be this version of himself with her. Trying to figure out the right words to use, what information to leave out of stories. Struggling to hide his reactions to things. She was one of the few people he could always be himself with, and having his guard up around her felt awkward and unnatural and wrong.

He couldn’t do this.

“This isn’t working, Leah,” he said, his forehead still resting on his fists.

“What isn’t working?”

“This,” he said finally, lifting his head. “Us.”

Leah blinked at him like he had just said something in a foreign language. “What are you talking about?”

The words were all there, just waiting to be said: that he couldn’t be around her until he figured out how to be himself again. That he didn’t want what they had to be dragged through shit in the process. That he needed to end their relationship now, because it was the only way to preserve it. And they could both remember it the way it had truly been—powerful and unblemished and real, not bruised and broken and so sullied it was impossible to remember it was ever beautiful in the first place.

Yes, the words were all there. But instead, he said, “I’ve been wrong about a lot of things, Leah. I’m realizing that now. And thinking we could make this work was one of them.”

“Danny,” she said, a hint of dread in her tone. The confusion on her face was slowly giving way to realization.