Winter Jacket: Finding Home (16 page)

“Minnesota?” I repeated. “What about California?”

“The more I’ve been thinking about it, I don’t think it would make sense for me to move to out there, try to find a job, and get accepted into a master’s program. It would be more efficient and take less time if I went to school here.”

“I could help pay for school in California,” I offered. “You wouldn’t have to find a job. You could be a full-time student and get through the program even more quickly.”

“It wouldn’t help my career to stop nursing while I’m getting an advanced degree in nursing,” she pointed out. “Besides, my parents paid for my undergraduate degree; I want to do this myself. I went from my parents paying my bills to my girlfriend paying them. I’m supposed to struggle and make stupid mistakes that I may or may not learn from. Life is supposed to be messy, and I’ve only ever been neat.”

“What is this really about?” I sensed that this was more than just a rough patch at work or the desire to go back to school and get an advanced degree.

“I’m in a rut,” she admitted. “I feel like my life has lost its spontaneity. I go to work, come back to the house, talk to you on Skype, go to bed, and repeat.”

“That’s what happens when you get old and have a full-time job,” I quipped a little too carelessly. 

She shook her head. “It would be different if you were with me. I can’t remember the last time I went out and had any fun.”

“You don’t have to come straight home after work, Hunt. This isn’t high school when your parents have given you a curfew. And we don’t have to talk all the time if you feel like it’s keeping you from things you’d rather be doing.” My words left a bitter taste in my mouth, but I worked to keep my tone neutral. After a long day at work, I wanted nothing more than to come home to her. “You should go out with your friends, be young, have fun.”

“That’s just it. I 
am
 young, but our situation is making me feel like an old, married lady. I want to go on dates. I want to hold hands, and have someone to kiss, and go to sleep with at night. I want romance and surprises and butterflies in my stomach.”

I felt myself unraveling. “This thing we’re doing right now with the distance, it’s not forever. It’s only temporary. Once I figure out if California is right for me, I’ll either come back to Minnesota or—”

“Or you’ll expect me to move to California to be with you,” she interrupted.

“Hold up,” I frowned deeply. “
Expect
? You’re making it sound like I’m some overbearing brute, forcing you to move against your will. When I first decided I was going to come out here, you wanted to come with me.”

“I know I did. And I should probably thank you for not letting me follow you out there.”

“Would it have been that bad?” 

“Maybe not at first. But you were right. It would have put an unfair strain on our relationship. Nik and Troian can handle it because they’ve been together for so long. But we wouldn’t have.” She exhaled deeply. “I don’t think I can visit you anymore. It’s too hard to see you and then have you taken away.”

Her words gave me pause. “Okay.” I licked at lips that had suddenly gone dry. “I’ll just come see you then.”

Her head dropped and her eye contact disappeared. The next words that came out were little more than a whisper: “Maybe you shouldn’t.”

“So you don’t want to see each other until the end of my sabbatical?” I rapidly worked the muscles in the back of my jaw.

“Maybe. I don’t know.” She exhaled loudly, and her shoulders slumped.

“What are you saying?” 

“I’m saying . . . I’m saying that maybe we should think about hitting the pause button.”

My mouth went dry. “You—you want to break up?”

“No, of course not.”

“You want to go on dates with someone who’s actually there and not a face on a computer screen,” I charged. “You said so yourself.”

Her pause was pregnant. “I guess I did.” She drew in a great breath. “I’m not happy, Elle. And I want to be happy again.”

“It sounds like you’ve given this a lot of thought,” I stated quietly.

“I have.” She bit her lower lip. “Elle—”

“You’ve said what you wanted to say,” I interrupted. “And unless you want to take it back, I don’t know what else there is to talk about tonight.”

I shut my laptop lid, effectively hanging up on her. It was juvenile, but I couldn’t handle hearing any more words like ‘breaking up’ or ‘needing time’ tonight.

My phone rang and a picture of her face popped up on my cell phone screen, but I sent the call straight to voicemail. She didn’t leave a message. Instead, she called a second time, but I once again forwarded the call to my recorded message. 

I put my phone on silent and stashed it in a bureau drawer. I couldn’t deal with this right now. I couldn’t deal with this 
ever
.

+ + +

I sat with Troian in her office, looking over the initial edits she’d given me on the first rough draft of my episode’s script. She hadn’t asked me how the rest of my weekend with Hunter had been, and I hadn’t offered up any information, especially not how we were on rocky footing. There was no use bringing in anyone else into my mess, not even my best friend, until I knew what exactly was happening with us.

I had woken up to nearly one hundred missed calls from Hunter, but not a single voicemail or text message. My e-mail inbox was similarly empty. I wondered if she would have had any words for me if I had answered one of her many, many calls or if we would have both been silent, just breathing into the receiver.

Troian’s fingers hit a number of keys on her desktop computer’s keyboard and then she sat back in her office chair. “Well, it’s official.”

“What is?” I asked, looking up from my thick stack of papers.

“I’m getting married.”

I arched an eyebrow. “Was that up for debate before?”

“I just put the rest of the deposit down on the wedding venue.”

“Ah,” I said, catching on. “So I guess there’s no turning back now.”

Troian smiled. “I know this is the part where I’m supposed to get nervous and second-guess getting married, but I’ve never felt so sure or so confident about anything in my life.”

“It helps that you’re marrying an amazing woman,” I pointed out. 

“You don’t have to tell me,” Troian enthused. “I know what I’ve got; I know how fucking lucky I am that she wants to spend the rest of her life with me.”

“So tell me about the venue.” I didn’t really care; I’d never been into wedding planning. It wasn’t me. If I had ever been with someone long enough that marriage came on the table, I doubted I would want a formal ceremony. But to see Hunter in a wedding gown, walking toward me down the aisle, face lit up like it was Christmas morning … yeah, I’d be into that.

“Are you even listening to me?” Troian scowled.

I shook my head and rattled images of Hunter in a white dress out of my head. “I’m sorry. What were you saying?”

“It’s a vineyard in Sonoma.”

“What is?”

“The place where I’m getting married!” Troian huffed.

“But you don’t drink. You get all red in the face.”

“I know. But everyone else who’ll be there drinks. Plus, Nik always wanted an outdoor farm kind of wedding. Or an orchard or something.”

“Sounds like it’ll be lovely. Where’s the honeymoon? Wait—you’re having a honeymoon, right? Please tell me you’re not coming back into work the day after your wedding.”

“We might not still have jobs by the time my wedding happens, so I’m not worrying about that yet.”

“Are you really worried the studio is going to end your contract if this show flops?”

“I dunno.” Troian shrugged. “If it happens I could always just use my gay card, I suppose. Charge them with discrimination.”

“You never use your gay card; are you even sure you know where it is?”

“It’s probably in the pocket of an old pair of cargo pants.”

“Or an old pair of basketball shorts,” I added with a grin that somehow found its way onto my face despite the foreboding feeling sitting heavy on my chest.

“I’m glad we’re friends,” she smiled.

“Ditto.”

When I got home from work that day, I knew I couldn’t avoid Hunter forever. I called her phone, although I wasn’t entirely sure of her work schedule. While she remained low nurse on the totem pole, her hours were wont to change at the last minute.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” she said in lieu of a hello.

“Not without reason,” I countered.

We were both silent for a long moment, each carefully weighing our next words.

Her tone was matter-of-fact when next she spoke: “This isn’t going to go away or be resolved by ignoring it.”

“I know.” I sighed heavily into the phone. I ran my fingers through my hair and tugged in frustration. 

“When you come back—
if
 you come back,” she qualified, “maybe we can try again.” 

A lump caught in my throat. “So you’re serious about this? That you want to break up?”

“I love you, Ellio,” she said. “And that’s why this distance has been so hard. If I loved you any less, I wouldn’t miss you everyday. I wouldn’t want to be with you all the time.”

“So we’re breaking up because you love me too much?” The words got caught in the back of my throat, tangled up in a strangled sob. “There’s not … someone else is there?”

“Of course not,” she immediately dismissed. “I’ve been entirely devoted to you—emotionally and physically.”

In some ways I thought it might have been easier if she’d found somebody new or if her feelings for me had changed because of the distance. I couldn’t understand this need to break up if there wasn’t someone waiting in the wings.

“I’ll still watch Sylvia,” she said, still in that maddeningly practical voice. “You don’t have to worry about finding a new cat sitter. I made a promise to you about that, and I’m not going to break it.”

I bit my tongue. I was bitter, and scathing, aggressive words would do nothing to make this situation any better.

The call ended, and with it, inexplicably, our relationship. I carefully placed my phone down on the countertop as if too much pressure might cause it to shatter. I stared at the screensaver: Hunter’s beautiful, youthful smiling face—naturally. I stared at the image until the phone went to sleep and the picture faded to black. 

I had no idea what to do with myself or how to feel. In the absence of clear action, I got in my car and drove. I didn’t bother typing a destination into my navigation system because I didn’t know where I was going. The only thing I knew was that I had to get away. I kept driving until I had escaped the tall skyscrapers of the city and had found the limitless horizon where I could finally breathe again. 

I pulled my car onto the shoulder of a county highway when I spied the ocean beyond a sand dune. I abandoned my shoes in the sand on my way to the shoreline. The sand was still warm beneath my feet from that day’s sun and it squeaked with each determined step.

I didn’t know where I was or if I’d even found a public swatch of beach, but I didn’t care. It was unlike me; I was a rule follower who got ulcers from the grey areas in life. But maybe being with Hunter had cured me of that; we’d only ever existed in the grey.

It was a calm evening and miniature whitecaps lapped at the edge of the sandy coast. The water was cold against my ankles, but no colder than swimming in the Great Lakes, even in the middle of the summer months. I stood in the shallows and wiggled my toes in the muddy, saturated sand until my feet disappeared from view. Disbelief washed over me like the crashing waves against the shoreline.

As I stood in silence, gazing out along the water’s rippled surface, the tears refused to come; it was like my whole person had become numb, much like my feet in the brisk ocean water. I was only aware of a tiny cut on my lower right leg, which I’d probably nicked in the shower. The saltwater stung, but it was nothing compared to what was happening to my heart.

CHAPTER TEN

What’s the right way to grieve? What’s the appropriate amount of time to feel sorry for yourself? I didn’t know the rules—I’d never been in this situation before—to truly be in love and to have it snatched away with no warning. I spent a lot of time at the beach over the next few days, looking out at the great vastness that was the Pacific Ocean and tried not to feel insignificant. What was one more heartbreak to the world? What was one more salty tear to the ocean?

My mother had once told me that in every relationship there was a gardener and a flower. It was an unexpected analogy considering my mom’s inability to grow anything, but maybe that’s why it was so appropriate. It also hadn’t escaped my notice that she’d once again borrowed an idea from one of my favorite childhood stories, this time from
The Little Prince
. I hadn’t thought my mom had played much of an influence on my life, especially not my love life, but as I stood ankle-deep in seawater, feeling the compelling tug of the tide and undertow, I thought about the gardener and the flower.