Held A New Adult Romance(66)

The sign says ALL BREAKAGES MUST BE PAID FOR.

I settle on a cloudy glass vase with veins of red and gold - the same two colors that quarrel in her hair. It's not the best time in the world to get sentimental, but as I move down the aisle I realize I've felt this way before - that same, nervous sense of being around breakable things. She makes me feel that way sometimes.

I'm halfway home before it occurs to me I should have asked them to gift-wrap the vase. We never did that - Amber and me. Gifts, flowers, love - all the usual things that lovers do. It started with cigarettes, secrets and lust. We have it all the wrong way around.

That evening I drive to her apartment. It's already dark and the Christmas lights are twinkling - electric stars and snowflakes, plastic light-up snowmen in a city that never sees the snow. When I think of how long I've known her it seems crazy; it's been no time at all, really. Maybe we're not so deep after all, not so connected as we'd like to pretend.

I'm trying to make this easy on myself.

When she opens the door I can see she's not going to make this easy. She's improvised a table with a packing crate, and in the middle is a candle burning, scenting the room with cinnamon. "Hey," she says, looking as beautiful as she ever did in black. She's washed her hair and left it to dry - when she kisses me I can smell the shampoo, and when I touch it there are damp strands under my fingers. "You're late," she says, matter-of-factly.

"Traffic." I hold out the box. "I bought you something."

"Thank you."

"You don't know what it is yet."

She shrugs. "So? No reason to be rude. I'm sure I'll love it." She picks at the tape and glances up at me. "Unless it's a severed head, I guess."

"It's not that."

"Oh. Good. Because I think I'd go off you quite quickly if you thought I was a severed head kind of girl."

Unerringly she's led me right to the point; she needs to go off me. And somehow she knows it too. I can tell. This isn't her - this is some kind of self-conscious clowning she borrowed from elsewhere to cover her nerves. Her eyes are too bright and their expression is too wary, and when she raises her hand to brush her hair from her face the pearls of her bracelet shimmer in the light. She reaches into the box and lifts out the vase.

"I was gonna buy you flowers," I say. "But I figured you had nowhere to put them yet."

Her eyes shine even brighter. "It's beautiful."

"You sure? I can change it if you don't..."

"I love it, Jaime. Thank you. It's very thoughtful of you."

Her eyes overflow. Oh God. I can't do this. I can't break her heart any more. "What's the matter?" I ask, like I'm not going to make things a whole lot worse for her.

She sets the vase down next to the candle and reaches out for me. “Hold me?” she says, so sweetly that I can’t say no. We stand there for a while, half-swaying. I feel her ribs rise and fall under my hands, the press of her breasts against my chest. It would be so easy to just give in right now, to let myself get lost in the smell of her hair and the taste of her skin. But I can’t.

“I love you,” she says, in an outrush, like she was holding it in until she had to breathe.

“Amber...”

Her face is streaming wet, her lips salty. “Say it,” she says, her hands hot on my cheeks. “Please. Just once. I know what we have to do.”

“You do?”

“Jaime...” I’ve never heard anyone sound so heartsick. And is she saying what I think she’s saying?

“I have to break up with you,” I say, and suddenly the whole future looks gray.

“I know that,” she whispers. Her lips are so soft and wet that I think back to Big Sur, and I’m almost lost – I’ll never taste her again, I’ll never see that look on her face when I’m inside her.

“Please,” she says. “Just once. Say you love me?”

“I do,” I say. And I’m crying now too. “I love you, Amber.”

I can taste the faint trace of smoke on her tongue and it’s all I can do to keep from hiking up the skirt of her little black dress and taking her up on the invitation she’s trying to grind out against me. We love each other – doesn’t that make everything okay?

Except I know it’s not going to make her better. Nobody can do that but herself.

“Your dad’s downstairs,” I say, cockblocking myself the most effective way I know how.

Amber steps back. “What the fuck?” she says, but she doesn’t seem mad. Just tired.

“He wants to make up with you, Amber. He loves you.”

She sighs. “This was my Dad’s idea, wasn’t it? You? Breaking up with me.”