The Past and Other Things That Should Stay Buried(58)

“You came along and you changed me.”

“I didn’t mean to,” Rafi says. “I wasn’t trying to.”

“It’s okay,” I tell him. “I needed to change.” I can’t resist anymore, so I reach out and take his hand. It’s moist and trembling, but I keep holding it and hope we can get through this.

“You challenged me, Rafi. I started to care about things I never cared about before. You showed me this whole world I didn’t know existed; this community I could be a part of.”

“You’re still a part of it,” he says. “Even if we’re not together anymore.”

I can’t help laughing. “See? This is who you are. I broke up with you, and you’re still looking after me. You’re amazing and wonderful and—”

“A total wreck.” Rafi wipes his nose with his free hand. “I’m not perfect. I’m insecure and moody and—”

“I know.” I wish I didn’t have to cut him off—it’s kind of nice hearing Rafi list his deficiencies—but I need to finish what I started or I never will. “My point is that I began to change, and July and I drifted away from each other, which made me uncertain I should change, resent you for making me want to change, and hate her for not giving me the space to see who I might become and for not being there for me if I decided to come back.”

Rafi inches closer, moving inside my defenses. “And then she died.”

“Yeah.” I look into his eyes and stumble. Everything I’ve said up to now was the easy part. Now for the hard part. “I broke up with you because I don’t know who I am. More than that, I don’t know who I want to be. I don’t know if I belong in the community you’re part of. Sometimes I feel like I do, other times I feel like I’m as much of an outsider as I’ve ever been. But that was okay when July was alive because there was always some part of me that believed if I got lost and needed to come home, she’d be there to guide me. But she won’t. She can’t. She’s gone, and I’m terrified that I’ll stay with you and become this whole other person and look up one day and not like who I am.”

Confusion haunts Rafi’s eyes and mouth. His lips move, but it’s clear he doesn’t know what to say.

“When you told me you loved me, I knew you were all in. But I’m not. Not yet. I’m not ready to leave behind who I was with July.”

“Dino,” he says. “No. I don’t want you to. You think I love you because you go with me to charity runs and to scare off those annoying tourists who bother nesting turtles?”

“Kind of, yeah.”

Rafi shakes his head. “You think I want you to change?”

“No, but—”

“No buts,” he says. “I fell for the guy I met at the Apple store who spent ten minutes interrogating Siri about her plans to subjugate humanity. The guy who made me watch every episode of Black Mirror on our second date so I’d, in his words, really understand you. The guy who thinks it’s plausible that the government is slowly changing the words in e-books in order to brainwash the populace.”

“It’s totally possible!”

“And you’ve changed me, too,” he says. “The first Saturday of the summer, I picked you up to drive to Palm Beach to protest the president and you convinced me to skip it and go to Disney instead.”

“Which was fun, admit it.”

Rafi holds up his hand. “It was one of my most favorite days, but it’s not an idea I would have come up with on my own.” He shrugs. “I don’t want to date me, Dino. I want to date you.”

“But I don’t know who I am.”

“Then figure it out,” he says.

“And if you don’t like the end result?”

“Then I dump you. Obviously.” He coughs and says, “Not that I’m assuming we’re getting back together. It was a hypothetical. Unless you want to.”

There’s hope in his eyes. In the way his hand tenses around mine and in the way his shoulders sit a little higher.

“I don’t know what to do,” I say. “You said you love me, and I can’t say it back because I want to say it and mean it, and I’m not there yet.”

“I understand.”

“Do you?” I ask. “Because you deserve someone great, and I’m not certain I’m that person. I want to be—I hope I can be—but I might not be him. We might go out again and I’ll realize in a month that we’re better apart. Or you might realize you don’t like who I’m becoming or—”

“I get it.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

Rafi smiles. “I don’t want you to hurt me either, but so long as you don’t do it on purpose, I won’t have to kill you.”

“Please be sure,” I say. “I really want to kiss you, but I won’t if you’re not sure.”

“Dino, I’m sure.”





JULY

OH, GROSS. HOW LONG ARE they going to be out there choking on each other’s tongues? I don’t think I can watch much more of this. It was painful enough listening to Dino spend twenty minutes fumbling with what he was trying to say. The boy takes a million words to say what could’ve been said with, “I’m a moron; please forgive me.” Now I’ve got to watch them slobber all over each other. I’m pretty sure this is the bad place.