She looked at me quizzically. “And what?”
“Get married. Start our family.”
She looked at me with surprise. “I never said I wanted to marry you.”
“What?”
“It’s not just you. I don’t want to be contractually tied down to someone.”
“But you said you love me.”
“I do love you. But I don’t know if you’re the one I want to spend the rest of my life with.”
I stared at her speechlessly.
“Joseph, we’re happy the way we are. Why would you want to get married?”
“Because I love you,” I said.
“If you love me, you’ll stay in Denver.”
Tears began to fill my eyes. “I’m sorry.”
She took a deep breath before saying “Then so am I.” She covered her eyes with one hand, then said, “I think you had better go.”
“Ash . . .” I leaned forward to touch her, but she backed away. I exhaled slowly. “Okay,” I said.
She didn’t say another word to me as I left her apartment. On the drive home I thought my heart would break.
When I left the agency, I thought my world had fallen apart. But now it was completely shattered. When I pulled into my driveway, I couldn’t stop crying.
CHAPTER
Eight
Today I left for a new city but arrived in a new world.
Joseph Jacobson’s Diary
I guess some stupidly optimistic part of me hoped that Ashley would show up at my apartment before I left, but as the taxi pulled away from my curb, there was no sign of her. No romantic cavalry riding in to save the day. There was nothing to save.
I think my heart felt heavier than my bags, which is saying something since I ended up having to pay a fee for overweight luggage. Just like that, my Ashley was gone. What was worse is that she wasn’t even mine. She never had been. I didn’t blame her for being upset. I knew I had pulled the rug out from under her, but I guess I’d expected her to fight harder to keep us. To keep me.
Aside from Ashley, I left Colorado without saying goodbye to anyone. I might as well have just vanished.
The landing at O’Hare was pretty rough, which seemed appropriate. I waited nearly an hour at the carousel for my luggage, then waited again in line for a cab. The taxi driver, a stocky, dark-featured man with puffy eyes and an accent I didn’t recognize, put my bags in the trunk. He slammed the trunk and we both climbed inside the car.
“Where you going, pal?” the driver asked.
“Jefferson Park area,” I said, repeating what the landlady had told me to say.
“You have an address?”
“Yes.” I handed him the slip of paper I’d written the apartment’s address on.
He examined my note, then said, “No problem.” He pulled away from the curb.
Twenty minutes later the taxi stopped in a sedate neighborhood on a corner of Lawrence Avenue near an ugly white apartment building. Rusted, gray satellite dishes stuck out from its side, and the bricks under the windows were painted baby blue. The driver lifted my bags from the trunk, dropping them heavily on the sidewalk.
“How much do I owe you?” I asked.
“Twenty-two dollars,” he said.
I handed the man two twenties. “Could I have sixteen dollars back please?”
“Skapiec,” he mumbled. He took the money from me, then drew the bills from his wallet and handed them to me.
I looked at the names listed on the outside mailbox. Five of the six were Polish. The lobby was dirty, with heavily stained carpet, and it smelled of cabbage. The pale green plaster walls were well marked and chipped, almost as worn as the wood banister that ran up the stairs.
I could hear U2 playing from one of the apartments. “With or Without You.” Ashley loved U2. She loved Bono. She would have followed Bono to Chicago.
It took two trips to lug my bags up the narrow flight of stairs to the second floor. I had called my new landlady from a payphone in the Denver airport to make sure everything was ready. She was a gruff-sounding woman. She was unable to meet me but had left my apartment key with a neighbor. “He’ll be home,” she said. “Two-zero-seven is always home.”
I knocked on the door to apartment 207. No one answered. What if he wasn’t home? I waited a couple minutes then knocked again. To my relief, I heard footsteps and a muffled voice said, “Chwileczke, chwileczke.” A moment later the door opened a few inches, stopped by a chain. I could see a slice of face, an elderly man with gray-white hair.
“What you want?” he said with a thick accent.
“Mrs. Walszak told me you’d have the key to my apartment.”
“Co?”
He looked confused, so I spoke more slowly. “Mrs. Walszak told me you would have the key to my apartment.”