The Pace

by Shelena Shorts

  Our arrival was a little awkward. Both of us were unsure how to handle the situation. By this time we were very comfortable with each other, but all of our experiences spending time together, through the night, had been in my room. This was different. This was his house, and his room. To help with the transition into the new surroundings, I settled on a familiar room to start.

  “Mind if I change in the study?” I asked.

  “No, of course not.” He seemed a little bit more at ease at the idea of that as well.

  I ended up changing in there while he went to his room. I quickly changed and pulled my hair back into a ponytail, then I went to wait for him downstairs. He followed shortly after wearing black sweatpants and a gray long-john shirt that clung to the curves of his muscles. Suddenly, my T-shirt selection felt inadequate because I was sure it didn’t show off my assets like that.

  “Are you tired?” he asked, as he entered the living room.

  “No,” I answered, without having to think about it.

  He picked up the remote control and put on the remnants of televised New Year’s celebrations. It felt like a first date, because there was obvious nervousness between us. I think both of us knew this evening would be cardinal in our relationship. The largest matter at hand was that I loved him and wanted him to be the one that night.

  Instinctively, I rested my head on his shoulder, and he wrapped his arm around me. “Thank you for taking me to dinner. It was great,” I said, softly.

  He gave me a squeeze. “Thank you for coming.”

  We watched the television for a few more moments until I broke the silence.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “You can ask me anything.”

  “Will you kiss me?”

  He looked perplexed. “You don’t have to ask me, Sophie.”

  “No, I mean. Will you really kiss me?” I could see the inference register in his mind. He knew what I wanted, and he put his palm to the side of my face and pressed his lips to mine. I closed my eyes and absorbed the heat coming over me. My body was on fire for him. I felt it from my toes all the way to the top of my head. I wanted to be one with him. So much that when I was absolutely sure every cell in my body wanted to move forward, I pressed my lips fully to his and pulled him toward me. His hand moved through my hair as he shifted his weight onto me.

  He moved his lips down my neck in response and kissed me from one side to the other in a way that sent even more fire through my body. I turned my face to find his lips again. After a few moments, I moved my hands beneath his shirt and molded my hands against his cool back.

  He gripped the back of my neck in response, only to release it as I pulled his shirt over his head. The firmness and coolness of his chest against the heat that was permeating through me, was about to send me into a frenzy.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” he whispered in my ear.

  I nodded without hesitation. “Yes.”

  He returned his lips to mine and started moving down my neck again. After a few seconds, he let out a low, frustrated grumble and slid himself lower to rest his head on my chest. He squeezed me tighter, as if to signal that he didn’t want to let me go, but I could see torment and frustration in his face. His eyes were closed tightly, and his jaw was clenched. It was completely unexpected. I lifted my head in reaction.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “No you’re not. What’s wrong? What did I do?”

  He still wouldn’t open his eyes, and he continued to press his ear to my chest.

  “Nothing,” he uttered. “You didn’t do anything. I’m fine. Just give me a minute.”

  I rested my head back on my pillow trying to run through the last moments and nothing seemed wrong to me. I didn’t understand the disruption, unless it had to do with me.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “If you don’t want to...”

  “Sophie . . .” He was burying his face into my shirt. “I don’t know how to stay focused. I can’t.”

  “Oh, you mean you can’t, actually do that?” I looked down to read his expression.

  “Yes, I can. I think anyway.” He shook his head, dismissing my assessment. “But that’s not the problem.”

  “Then what is it, Wes? You’re killing me with suspense.”

  He sat up. “I have to concentrate really hard to keep my mind on pace with real time.”

  “Okay,” I murmured, not quite understanding.

  “When I’m close to you like that, it is virtually impossible for me to keep focused.”

  “So what are you saying?” I needed him to spell it out for me.

  “An hour together with you could feel like a second to me if I’m not careful.”

  “Careful?”

  “If I let myself lose concentration on time, which is exactly what happens when I’m that close to you, then I would virtually lose hours of time with you.”

  “Don’t you think it would be worth it?” I asked. “You might lose one thing, but you gain another.”

  He pondered what I was offering for a few moments, then smiled and touched his cool hand to my still heated flesh. “Being close to you feels better than you can imagine.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “I would rather be just like this with you for hours than the other way for minutes.”

  “So, it bothers you to be close to me?”

  He shook his head. “No. Actually, when I’m around you, I’m the calmest. It’s easiest to concentrate when I’m with you, until you get me like this.” He smiled.

  “So, does that mean we could never?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. But, I won’t sacrifice my clarity for it. I don’t want to miss a single moment of the time I have with you.” He pulled me close to him and gave me a gentle kiss on the forehead. I had to take in a deep breath just to absorb it all.

  “Well, I guess we have plenty of time to work on your clarity,” I said, still hopeful. He didn’t seem to find as much optimism in that idea as I did. He didn’t reply.

  “Speaking of time,” I added, breaking the silence, “what will happen to us as time does go by and I get older?”

  I could feel his chest and arm muscles contract around me with unease.

  “I don’t know,” he answered.

  I’m not sure if I was too tired to think about the unsure future or too afraid to let myself, but neither of us elected to consider the question further. Instead, silence took over until I nodded off to sleep.

  He must have carried me upstairs, because the next thing I remembered was waking up to the splendid sunrise through his bedroom window. The question from the night before still lingered in the back of my mind, but it was only a fraction of my thoughts in comparison to the other memories of the night.

  Chapter 12

  THE TURNING POINT

  That weekend, he was out of town for a racing event, so I didn’t see him for a few days. It ended up working out well for me, because I had midterms to study for and it gave me time for that.

  It also gave me time to work on a paper for English. Normally, I would’ve dreaded it, but this time, I was looking forward to it. It’s not that I minded writing. I loved it. What I found difficult was getting out what I wanted to say without sounding too opinionated. Teachers always say they want students to express themselves and write about what they want, but when we do, it’s like playing the lottery. You never know what the teacher is going to say. They may love it, or they may say it’s all wrong, so I had always handed in my papers with apprehension. But the online school was different.

  I appreciated the whole cyber student-teacher relationship. I didn’t have to see my teacher’s face when I turned something in, or better yet, I didn’t have to see the reaction when it was passed back. This way, I sent it through the Internet without ever having to gauge the reception. It was great, and so with this paper, I was eager to get going. I was really planning to go over the top with this one.

&nbs
p; Our topic was a motif in Othello. We had to identify a recurrent theme or element found in the play and write about it using supporting evidence. Excellent, I thought. I decided to write about blindness. Sure, it’s argued that military valor, naivety, and jealousy are all portrayed, but I couldn’t help but think about how Othello’s blindness to what was real caused him to see what was not.

  I wasn’t sure where to begin, so I spun around in my computer chair and reached for my copy of Othello, which was on the end of my bed. I thought about how easily Othello loses faith in those he trusted based on stories and fabrications. I was flipping through the pages to find a good quote when I heard the taps at my door. It scared me at first, because I wasn’t expecting Wes, but I relaxed when I saw him. I turned off the light at my desk, as if I was afraid someone was watching us from the darkness, and then I opened the door.

  “Hey, what are you doing here?” I asked happily.

  “I just wanted to talk to you.” He eyed my blank computer screen. “Oh, were you trying to get some work done?”

  “Yes, but I don’t want to do it now. I’ll do it tomorrow. It’ll be easy.” I was distracted by his presence. Realizing how much I had missed him, I reached up on my toes to give him a kiss, and he leaned down just enough to meet my lips in the darkness.

  “What is it?” he asked, reaching for the book.

  “Othello paper,” I answered, plopping down on my bed. “I’m going to write about how stupid he was. I mean not stupid, per se, just…blind.”

  “Othello wasn’t blind,” he said, sitting at the foot of my bed, flipping through the pages. “I think he saw everything so clearly from the beginning.”

  “You think he saw that he was going to kill Desde­mona?”

  “No, I don’t think he saw that. I think he just knew true happiness was unattainable to him from the beginning. He subconsciously believed their love was too good to be true.”

  “That’s interesting, but I think it means exactly what I said. He was blind. It was attainable.”

  “You’ve always been so hopeful about life.”

  “Well then,” I said, moving over to him. “Since you know so much, I guess you know how much I missed you.” I climbed up on my knees and leaned over his back with my arms around his waist.

  He gently cupped one of my forearms in his hands. “Well that’s what I came to talk to you about.”

  “Okay, talk.” I leaned my head down so it was resting on the back of his neck. He smelled so good. I nestled my cheek further into the comfort of his cotton, hooded sweatshirt.

  “Sophie,” he said, softly, while tilting his head toward me until his temple was touching my forehead. “You have no idea how happy I was to see you that day we met.”

  “Really? I couldn’t tell. You looked like you’d seen a ghost.” I giggled.

  He turned away, and I squeezed him tighter, so my forehead was touching the back of his neck, just to let him know I preferred less distance.

  “Sophie, I was living in the darkest abyss possible until you came back into my life.”

  I nestled closer to him. He turned his head back toward me, which suited me just fine. Then, he softly said, “Which is why I don’t think this is such a good idea.”

  I wasn’t sure I’d heard him, so I lifted my head and was about to ask him to repeat what he’d said when he continued.

  “You are so young, Sophie. I have a lot of experience here, and I admit that you make me happy, but I don’t think it’s enough.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that I know where this is going, and it’s not good, so I want to do us both a favor and spare us any more pain before we get too close.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I shook my head in disbelief. “What are you saying?” It was all so sudden.

  He stood up and took two steps toward the door. Without turning around, he quietly murmured, “I can’t do this with you. I just can’t.”

  Hopping up, I lurched forward and moved in front of him. “What do you mean, you can’t do this? You’re confusing me.”

  He remained just a few inches from me, but he looked away. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to confuse you. I just can’t go through this again.”

  I was losing my patience with him. I felt my chest tighten. One minute, everything felt so right, so perfect. And now, I’m not exactly sure what was going on, but it felt very wrong. “Stop it,” I snapped. “Again? What do you mean by again? We’ve never been through anything like this. Please just tell me what’s going on.”

  I was almost embarrassed. I’d never begged anyone for anything before. I’d always gone out of my way to distance myself from someone, and yet there I was clinging to every word he said. I took a deep breath and let out a sigh. We stood there in the darkness of my room facing each other, although I was the only one trying to make eye contact.

  I studied the perfect angles of his face, which were illuminated by the glow of my computer. I examined the crease between his eyebrows and wondered why he looked so troubled. More like pained. It made no sense. I reached for his face, and in the same motion, he leaned away from me.

  Rejection and anger were building in me. Before I had a chance to get one word out, he cleared his throat and said, “I’m sorry, Sophie, I just can’t be with you anymore. Not now. Not ever.” Then, he turned and looked at me, as if trying to see if I understood.

  I shook my head, and then he whispered, “I’m sorry. I really am.”

  “Wait!” I gasped, and just like that he was gone. I lurched to the door and cried out, “Wait!” Only this time, it was raspy and barely audible. Not that it mattered because there was nothing out there. No one to hear me anyway. He was gone, and only the darkness remained; yet I couldn’t bring myself to turn back into my room. I stood there trying to understand, trying to make sense of this. I had no idea what had happened.

  My eyes searched the darkness while my mind frantically ran through the last twenty minutes in my head. I tried to pinpoint exactly what had gone wrong.

  Thinking back twenty minutes wasn’t far enough. Once I thought about it, I knew right away. The look on his face when he arrived had been distant. I had noticed something was off, only I’d ignored it.

  With that last thought, the realization of what just happened gathered together in a lump in my throat. I had not imagined this. It was real. He was gone. Whatever happened, whatever the change in him, it happened prior to these last moments with him sitting in my room. He had come over specifically to break things off. I blinked, and with that last revelation, the first tear spilled over.

  When I woke up the next morning, my eyes stung in the sunlight. I must have literally cried every last tear I had, because my eyes felt dry and sore. I rolled back over and covered my head with the pillow in an effort to drown out each thought. The memories of the night before wouldn’t go away. I remembered the butterflies I’d had in my stomach as I leaned against his back. I felt the warm sensation when my arms wrapped around his waist. And then I felt the gravitational pull that yanked my heart out of the door into the darkness. I had nothing left, and all I could do was curl up into a little ball with the pillow still over my head. I didn’t cry. I’m not sure if I was out of tears, or if crying and cringing in anger didn’t mix.

  I had no idea where any of this had come from. We had been going out for almost five months. I saw him just about every day. He had opened my eyes to things I hadn’t known existed. There was nothing else in this world like him. He was magnificent. He was caring. He was nothing I would ever find again. And that did it. The cringing turned to crying again.

  I think I cried for about an hour more and slept for another two hours, because it was lunchtime by the time I woke, and I hadn’t eaten anything. My stomach was growling. I blinked away the sunlight again and was greeted by more stinging in my eyes. I sat up in my bed and waited for the blood to catch up to my head. Once I felt I was capable of holding my head up, I walked myself to the
bathroom to brush my teeth. It wasn’t a pretty sight.

  My hair was all over the place. Part of the top was laying to the left, part of the top was laying to the right, and the back was sticking out. What was most shocking was that my eyes were bloodshot, with red circles under each of them. Seeing myself in such a state made me angry. I brushed my teeth without looking in the mirror again, and when I finished, I wiped my mouth on my towel and headed downstairs to get something to eat.

  I grabbed a bowl, the milk, a spoon, and the box of cereal in one trip and plopped down at the table and began eating. Oh crap, I thought. It’s Monday, and Mom is off today. If I had been coherent enough to have remembered that, I would’ve stayed in my room starving, but it was too late; she came around the corner as soon as the thought crossed my mind.

  “Hey honey,” she said, entering the kitchen.

  “Hey.” I had a mouthful of cereal, and I kept my head down, hoping she’d pick up on the idea that I was too busy eating to talk.

  “You look terrible,” she said.

  “Thanks.”

  “No, I mean it. Look at me.”

  I decided I had eaten enough breakfast, so I tilted my head down, grabbed my bowl, and began making my way to the sink. “No, I am fine.”

  “Sophie, I know you well enough to know you are not fine. I am your mother, you know. You can at least tell me what is bothering you. I won’t pry.”

  “You’re prying now,” I pointed out, as I put away the milk.

  “Just tell me what happened.”

  “Fine. Wes broke up with me last night. Okay?”

  “Oh,” she said, nodding her head in understanding. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “No,” I answered, making a quick exit from the kitchen.

  “His loss,” she called out.

  Although I didn’t reply to her, I liked the sound of it. He did say that I was the one who brought him out of the abyss. I mean, he was the one living the miserable, empty life all alone, feeling like a freak, and being bored out of his mind. My mother was exactly right. It was his loss. At least that was what I told myself.