Always You

by Jerica MacMillan

  “So … what? You’re asking me not to take the summer internship?”

  He reached out and took her hand in both of his, pressing against her cold, limp fingers. “I know it’s a lot to ask.” He swallowed and licked his lips, his guts churning and his mouth dry. “And it’s not fair to ask you to choose between me and something that could help your career. But there’s still time for you to apply to another internship, and I know Sandra would give you a glowing recommendation. She’s the main reason they’re going to offer you the summer internship there. But if you take it, we’ll have to break up.”

  “What?” She jerked her hand out of his grasp, red patches coming to her cheeks, her eyes blazing now. He was glad to see some emotion in her face, but this was not what he’d been hoping for. “This is the best internship out there!” She pointed her finger at his face. “And you of all people should know that. You interned there. So much that they offered you a full time job upon graduation. And you weren’t even an intern there last semester. They waited for you, created a position for you. And you don’t even care that much about them or what they do.” She stood, gesturing wildly with her arms. “I do care. I love what the company stands for and what I’m doing there. This kind of thing is what I’ve wanted to do. The only thing better would be working for a nonprofit dedicated to saving the environment. Since everyone knows those kinds of places pay crap, my plan has always been to get a good job and volunteer for the Sierra Club or something. But at Eco Utilities I get the best of both worlds! I can do work I enjoy and benefit causes that are important to me. And you want me to just give that up? And get an internship somewhere else, work somewhere else, somewhere that pollutes and destroys and doesn’t give a rat’s ass about clean energy or not ripping out all the good and beautiful things in the world? What the hell, Matt?”

  He sat there with his mouth hanging open. Before he could formulate a response, she went on.

  “What about you?”

  “What? What about me?”

  “You could quit. Find another job. You said Janine likes you. I’m sure she’d be willing to give you a good reference if you’re leaving willingly and not getting fired.”

  His mouth hung open again, this time in astonishment. Yeah, technically him quitting would solve the problem, too, but what would he do then? “It’s not that easy to just find another job, Hannah.” He managed to keep his voice low and even, despite the fact that she was almost yelling, and part of him wanted to yell back.

  “Well, you’ve got some time, right? I mean, there’s not a conflict until the summer internship starts, which isn’t until the end of May. That gives you a couple of months.”

  “Hannah, I have friends who started applying before graduation in December, guys with good grades and good resumes, who still haven’t found anything. They’re working as waiters or doing construction in the summer and saving as much as they can for the fall and winter when nothing’s going. I can’t just quit my job. That would be stupid.”

  She paused, looking around the room before settling her gaze on him again and crossing her arms. “So I should alter the course of my career for you at your say so, but you won’t even consider doing the same for me?” She huffed out a laugh and shook her head, turning her face away again.

  He ran his hands through his hair, frustrated that she would think he could just quit and find a new job like that. She was still in school, she didn’t understand the job market, or how much he needed a stable job. Yeah, he didn’t care that much about the job itself, but it had good benefits, and it meant he could save up enough money to go to the coast for a couple of weeks a year. And he could pick whenever the surf was best. Hell, he could even go back to Westport in September for the annual surfing competition like he used to do in high school. He hadn’t been in years because he always had games that weekend. No way could he compete even at the amateur level this year. He was way too out of practice—the baby waves in the summer that he had access to when he went to visit his parents were nowhere near enough to keep his skill level at even amateur competition level. But maybe next year. Just for fun.

  He shook his head. “Will you at least think about it?”

  Her green eyes were hard when she skewered him with her gaze again. “Will you?”

  “Hannah, be reasonable.”

  “Don’t patronize me, Matt. I am being reasonable. You’re the one who’s not. You have dreams you’re too scared to go after, content with your safe little job because it gives you a paycheck, and now’s the time to go after what you want. I’m going after what I want, because I have the guts to do it. But if you won’t even consider—” She held up a hand to hold him off when he opened his mouth to interrupt. “I’m not saying you should definitely do it or not, but the fact that you aren’t even open to discussing it, and you expect me to just turn down something that I want—that I’ve worked hard for, that I’ve earned—without batting an eye, can only mean that you’re not as invested in this relationship as I thought. I was right all along.”

  He stood, unable to sit through what she seemed to be trying to say. “What? Right about what all along?”

  She looked down, rubbing her hands up and down her arms like she was cold.

  “Hannah. What do you think you were right about all along?” Matt’s voice came out harsher than he intended, but he needed her to say it, spell it out for him, because he needed to know if the dread solidifying in his gut was right. “Spit it out.”

  Her face twisted in anger and pain, her eyes a blaze of green fire, stark in her pale, anguished face. “You’ve never felt as strongly about me as I’ve felt about you.” She spit the words, each one piercing him like a shard of glass, embedded so deep inside him that he didn’t know if they’d ever come out. “Never. Not that summer three years ago and not now.”

  His breath left him in a whoosh, like he’d just been punched in the gut and had the wind knocked out of him. “How can you say that?” He still couldn’t breathe, the pain from her face and her words crushing his lungs. He sucked in a breath, trying to force air into his chest. “How can you say that?” His voice came out louder this time. “I fucking love you, Hannah. Jesus, how can you not see that?”

  One corner of her mouth twisted in an ugly travesty of a smile, and her eyes shimmered with unshed tears. “No you don’t, Matt. Maybe you think you do, but you wouldn’t ask this of me if you loved me. You would talk with me like an adult, like an equal, not come in here with ultimatums, telling me to choose my dreams or you. You, who for all I know will just stop talking to me again if you decide we shouldn’t be together anymore.”

  “That’s not fair, Hannah. I apologized for that, and you said that you forgave me.”

  “You did apologize, and I did forgive you, but people don’t change, Matt. Not that much. Just because you’re sorry about before doesn’t mean you won’t do it again.”

  He ran his hands through his hair, pulling until it hurt, trying to stop himself from punching a hole in the wall. “Fuck! What do you want from me, Hannah? You want me to quit? Have no money? Get a job as a waiter somewhere? Flip burgers at McDonalds? Is that really what you want? Your internship is more important to you than me? Than my ability to support myself, to support you?”

  “You don’t support me, Matt. We’re dating. We’re not married. We’re not even engaged! If we were, I’d expect you to come and talk to me, not just try to order me around or manipulate me into doing what you want. And I definitely would hope you wouldn’t just disregard my goals and my dreams for the sake of a paycheck. As though you couldn’t find someone to give you a paycheck anywhere.”

  “You don’t—”

  “Yeah, I do. I get it. I know it’s not that easy to find a job. But here’s the thing, Matt. It’s even harder to find a job you care about, a job that you love, doing something you want to do. And that’s what Eco Utilities is for me. It’s more than just a paycheck. You don’t even like your job, so it makes more sense for you to find something
else. Better yet, find a way to do what you love to do. Come up with a way to surf for a living that’s not on the pro competition circuit. There’s more to the sport than just that. You have a degree in management and marketing, and you work in HR so you know how corporate crap works. Start a company where you take executives on surfing trips for bonding or whatever corporate-speak calls that kind of shit where they pay a crap-ton of money to go on vacation and supposedly do planning so the company can pay for it. Yeah, you’d be teaching a bunch of old, fat dudes to surf, but you’d get to travel, stay in awesome resorts, and get to surf all the time.”

  That made him pause for a minute, dropping his hands at his sides, all the fight gone, liking the picture she painted. Could he do something like that? Work for himself? And be able to surf? She made it sound so simple.

  But he shook his head. That was stupid. Dreams didn’t come true. “It’s not that easy, Hannah. Where would I get the money to start something like that? Marketing, travel, not to mention equipment. That’s a nice idea, but it’s not realistic.”

  “It could be. You could figure it out. But that’s not the real problem. The real problem is that you don’t want to. Or you’re too scared to.” She shrugged a shoulder. “It’s easier to just give up, to coast along and never have to confront anyone or anything.”

  He couldn’t say anything to that, because she was right. He could confront the opposing team on the football field, but only because someone else called the plays and told him what to do, who to cover. His responsibilities were defined there. In real life? Confrontation ended with people yelling, people hurting, and no one changing their mind. That’s how it had been with his dad growing up. That’s how it was with Hannah right now. It was easier to just let things go and avoid the confrontation.

  “What are we doing here, Matt? What’s the point? I won’t be responsible for you losing your job at the beginning of the summer, but I’m not going to turn down a summer internship at Eco Utilities if they offer it to me, either.”

  He raised his eyes to hers again, her face no longer angry or twisted, just sad. Bile rose in his throat, and he fought to swallow it down. “What are you saying?”

  She shook her head. “We’re at an impasse. You won’t quit, and I’m not going to destroy my career for a guy who won’t make any compromises for me. Who expects me to do all the bending. That means we have to break up by the end of May.” She lifted one shoulder and let it drop. “What’s the point, though? Why wait? This clearly won’t work out between us, and we’ll have a couple of months to move on and get over this before you’ll be one of my managers again. It’ll be cleaner this way. No wondering what happened or why. We both know what’s happening and why.”

  He was going to throw up. “That’s it? You’re just going to break up with me? And you think that you care more about me than I care about you? At least I’m trying to come up with a way for us to work out and stay together. You’re ready to throw everything away at the first problem.” He laughed, but it sounded mean, even to his own ears. “I tell you I love you, and you throw it back in my face. No, Hannah. You’re wrong. If anyone cares more, it’s me. I’ve been in love with you for weeks.”

  “Oh, Matt.” She shook her head, tears tracking down her cheeks now. “I’ve loved you since I gave myself to you that first time. But I can’t be with someone who expects me to do everything and gives nothing in return.”

  He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. There was nothing left to say. He watched as she moved to the front door, her head down, her hair hiding her face from him. The deadbolt slid back with a loud snick, and she looked at him again, tears still streaming down her cheeks. “I need you to leave now, before you break me more than you already have.”

  His eyes burned as he stepped toward her, and the corners of his mouth pulled down no matter how hard he tried to fight it. He cupped her cheek with one hand, his thumb wiping away some of the tears, but they kept coming regardless. Lifting her face, he pressed his trembling lips to hers one last time. He pulled back and blinked hard, forcing away the moisture that blurred his vision. “You’ve destroyed me, too.”

  She closed her eyes and turned the door handle, pulling it open. He left, and the tears spilled out, the dam holding them back finally breaking. He managed to control himself by the time he got to his truck, stopping at a liquor store on the way home, needing more than the three beers left in the fridge. He came home with a bottle of cheap tequila and drank until he could barely stand, stumbled into his bedroom, and passed out face down on top of the blankets.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “Hannah?” Elena’s voice reached her in the bathroom, where she sat on the floor scrubbing at the baseboards.

  “In here!” She didn’t stop, even when Elena’s shoes came into her peripheral vision in the doorway.

  “What are you doing? You do realize our lease isn’t up for months, right? We don’t need to do a move-out cleaning any time soon.”

  Hannah sat back, blew a strand of hair out of her face, and looked up at her roommate. “It’ll make it easier then if we keep up with it now.”

  Elena stepped past her, sitting down on the lid of the toilet, chewing on her lower lip, her eyebrows creased with concern. “What happened?”

  “What do you mean?” Hannah turned, closing the door and attacking the corner behind it with the old toothbrush in her hand, scrubbing away the accumulation of eight months of dust and gunk from the baseboards in the bathroom. “Dammit! Hand me a paper towel, would you?”

  Elena grabbed the roll of paper towels off the counter and handed it to Hannah. “Why are you cleaning the baseboards? You barely keep up with the dishes and day to day stuff. Our apartment is spotless. I didn’t even expect you to be home. Where’s Matt?”

  Trying to seem casual, Hannah shrugged and kept her attention on scrubbing the baseboard. It didn’t need it anymore, but she didn’t want to look at Elena right now, knowing the pain from the question was written on her face. “We broke up.”

  She heard Elena suck in a breath. She stilled, waiting for whatever Elena would say next.

  “Shit. I’m sorry, Hannah. I was really hoping things would work out this time.”

  Hannah’s shoulders slumped, and she stopped scrubbing. Squeezing her eyes shut, she pushed her palms against her eyelids, trying to will the tears to stay inside. She’d cried enough over the last several days. She didn’t want to do it anymore. And when relief hit her at Elena’s words, she realized she’d been waiting for her friend to say, “I told you so,” or something along those lines. The compassion she offered instead brought out Hannah’s tears. Again.

  Arms slipped around Hannah’s shoulders, squeezing her tight, and she turned into Elena’s arms and let go. She cried for the girl she’d been when she’d met Matt the first time, for the way he’d broken her heart then, and the way he’d broken her heart again. She’d been afraid going into this that it would happen again. And she’d been right. She cried for that, too. And for the many times she’d been tempted to call him, tempted to agree to turn down the summer internship, wanting him so badly, but unable to bring herself to go through with it. Each time she thought about what he’d said, what she’d decided, the pain lanced through her again. She let it all wash over her and cried until she couldn’t anymore.

  When she stopped, she determined that this would be the last time. She wouldn’t cry for Matt anymore. Standing up, she wiped the tears off her cheeks.

  Elena stood too. “Better?”

  Hannah nodded and gave her the best smile she could.

  “Good. Now, do you need me to go cut his balls off?”

  Hannah let out an unexpected laugh, and Elena smiled at her. “Seriously, though. What happened? You guys were supposed to spend the week together. It seemed like everything was going well. I don’t get it.”

  With a sigh, Hannah looked around the bathroom. “Can we talk about this in a different room? Maybe the living room, or the kitchen?”

/>   Elena chuckled. “Of course. Come into the kitchen. I’ll make you some breakup pie, and you can tell me all about what happened.” Elena made pies when she was stressed or working through something in her head, so they always had ingredients on hand in the apartment.

  So while she mixed together a pastry crust and found some berries in the freezer for filling, Hannah filled her in on the disaster that happened at dinner on Monday evening. Elena made appropriate sympathetic noises, and when Hannah finished telling her about their conversation on Tuesday, Elena looked thoughtful. After creating the lattice crust for the top of the pie in silence and putting it in the oven, she washed her hands and turned back to Hannah. “That really sucks, Han. I’m sorry. How are you doing?”

  Hannah blinked away the tears that threatened to fall again. She gave Elena a pathetic smile, but it was the best she could do. “Not great. I’ve cried every day since then. Like a lot. But I’m trying to stop. I don’t want to feel like this anymore. He obviously doesn’t care enough about me to be willing to work things out except by telling me that I have to give up on my life goals. Because keeping a job he barely tolerates is clearly more important than me having the chance to do something I love.” She shook her head, bringing her voice back to normal. “But whatever.” She pulled her shoulders back and straightened her spine. “I’m going to focus on myself and going after my goals. And I’m going to put myself out there more to meet someone new. It’s past time, don’t you think?”

  Elena opened her mouth, her brows crinkled and concern in her eyes, but then closed it without saying anything. She gave a short nod. “Sure. That sounds like a good plan.”

  “What?”

  Elena arched an eyebrow. “I agreed with you. What do you mean what?”

  Hannah narrowed her eyes at her. “You were going to say something, and you stopped yourself. What were you going to say, Elena?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing. I’m just sad for you. And while I agree with you, it seems like there ought to be some way to fix this, but I can’t think of anything.”