Funny Feelings (79)

“No.” I reach for her hand and she slides it away from mine. I look down at it like it’s been burned, until she takes it again. Such a small concession, and I could fucking weep with it. “Tell me,” I plead.

“Can I just admit the wrong thing? That I know we’ll be okay, that I know that it’s smart, but that it fucking sucks in the meantime, Meyer?” Her floodgates open and I feel tears prick their way into my own eyes. “I moved here when I was nineteen, away from a dad who spent years telling me how wrong I was for everything. Who made this dream of mine seem shallow and stupid. I’d already lost my person, you know? I’d lost the one person who accepted and loved me for all the crazy, too.” She slides the heel of her palm across her face before she clutches her chest with it. “And then I found you. And you just… volunteered to help me. You, who made comedy look easy, who always had some cutting remark, some brilliant, superior way of putting things. And you wanted to help me and my fart jokes and my foul mouth. It made me feel… right. Like, even if nothing big ever happened for me, I had the right to do it.”

I will myself not to look away, to take in every hiccuping, sobbing inhale she makes even though I think I might be dying. I fold my free arm around my middle like I can physically hold myself together. This is so much more, so much worse than I imagined. I thought about finding that fucking woman who threw hot coffee on her, thought awful things. Now I wonder if I’ll want to toss a vat of acid on myself when I look in the mirror. I cannot stand that I’ve made her cry. I’ll make it up to her, forever, somehow.

“But Meyer, I love you. I can’t fucking help it. I wish I had the ability to be smart or conservative with my heart, but I don’t. I just don’t. I get… I get why you don’t want to be my manager anymore, and I’ll eventually be okay with it. We’ll be okay. I have to do this stuff because I want to do it and not just because it feels safe or justified when I have you at my side. But I don’t think we should move in together, yet. And I’m still going to mourn the loss of what I’d already built up and pictured, okay?”

I look at the spots on my arms that are wet. “I can… I’ll support you, however I can. I won’t push you to move in if you want to take that back right now.”

“I’m only trying to stay on even footing, Meyer. Maybe— maybe it’s petty of me, maybe I only want to take that back because you took something away, too. I don’t really even know. But it’s how I feel.”

I nod, feeling like I might splinter bone from grinding my jaw so hard. “I’m sorry for hurting you, Fee. I should have… I mean, I would… You know that if you want me to I will stay on. I only thought I was doing the right thing.”

She laughs darkly. “Oh yeah, that would be great for us, at this point. You staying on and sacrificing yourself just to spare my feelings.” She wipes her nose on her sleeve. “No, that is not what I want. I want everything for you too. You deserve everything, Meyer. Of course I’m sad that that doesn’t include some of what I pictured for us together, but I’d rather your honesty than your sympathy, always. And I would love to support every single dream you have. I want you to share that with me,” she offers me a sad smile, her eyes bright gold and puffy.

“Please,” my voice cracks. “Please let me hold you?”

She nods, and we hold each other there by my front door for awhile, rocking, rubbing circles on each other’s backs.

When she leaves, she lets me kiss her goodbye, but doesn’t let it linger.

I know my job is far from over with Fee, but I have some more explaining to do with Hazel, too.

I walk into her room, and she immediately turns off the mute on the TV so that I jump at the glaring volume on some weird, eye-twitch-inducing YouTube show. I give her a stern look and she mutes it again. Give her another look and she turns it off.

“Why don’t you want to manage Fee, anymore? Why does she look so sad?”

I sigh and sit at the foot of her bed. I wish someone would write a parenting book on how to explain this kind of shit. Something full of perfect analogies and comparisons.

Reducing being with Fee to some kind of food over-indulgence or activity feels cheap. I can’t seem to scrounge up any applicable comparisons in the corners of my brain, so I default to the truth, without over explaining, and hope she understands it.

“Because, Haze. I love her. I want her to live with us, and be a family with us, more than she already is. I want that for a long time. And sometimes, when you want something to last, and want something to still feel special, you have to let it be its own thing. You have to protect it, not stretch it and force it into too many other things. It might seem like I care less, but really it’s because I care more.”

She blinks, considering me. “I don’t think she knows, though. I don’t think you’ve shown her enough. Fee is the one who comes to us all the time, who does all our life stuff with us. She’s the one who makes things fun. She makes me try new things, and you too. So if you don’t help her with her work anymore, you’re going to have to show her in other ways, Dad. What they lack knowing, we make up for in showing.”

I squint. “What was that?”

“It’s what Fee and I say before dance. What I don’t hear, I feel. What they lack knowing, I make up for in showing. You have to do your best to show her, and if she doesn’t get it still, then that’s her problem. But you have to do your best to show her.”