"Should we leave?" she asked, making for the door. I held her hand, stopping her.
"Wait. Ron," I started. She looked up at me. "What we talked about yesterday?"
"Yeah?"
"I know it's going to take more than me just telling you that you have nothing to worry about. I still want to say it, though. I need you to know that I love you, Ron, and I never stopped. This is probably more than I deserve from you, but I love you for giving me a chance. All I want is you back in my life and I am going to do whatever I have to do to deserve you again."
"It needs to happen naturally," she said to me. "We're not in the same place right now, and if it's going to work at all, then you need to allow me to catch up."
"All I want is for you to trust me again."
"Then you need to give me time to get there. I'm not going to lie and say that it will happen fast or easily, but I'm here, and I'm open to trying again. My feelings didn't fade, either. I just need to be in a place where I can feel comfortable again." She paused and sighed. "I don't know what I'm doing."
"It'll be fine. Just trust me. I want you to."
"I'll try," she said quietly, shrugging. That was all I was getting. I knew that. I didn't even have the right to try to ask for more.
"Thank you," I said, kissing her forehead.
"Where are we going tonight?" she asked once we were in the car. She hadn't complained or asked to take separate rides. That was a small win, but still meant she was putting in effort.
"I was thinking that one place we went to for Tiff's birthday that one year," I said, pulling out onto the street.
"Before you left? The Mexican place when she was turning nineteen?"
"That's the one," I said, almost proud that she remembered so well.
"Are you set on having Mexican tonight?"
"Not really. Why? You want to go somewhere else?"
She did. It was this place a lot of the guys I used to play with used to come – buffet, cheap food, as much as you wanted, a great deal for packs of hungry football players, especially when we were bulking. I had taken her before, a few times because after the first time she hadn't been mad about sharing a dining room with the kind of people who you usually found at an all you can eat buffet. Part of the territory when you're a broke college student, but we weren't slumming all the time.
As soon as we walked in, she seemed overdressed. It was a huge, badly-lit dining area with the food lining one wall. Periodically, a person in a dirty apron would come through a pair of swinging doors and refresh the food that was running out. It made me think of the cafeteria on campus, but with more screaming children and more overweight people who had to use those buggies in the supermarket.
Ron was a creature of habit. On her plate when we finally sat down were potato skins and the awful, thick, soggy crust pizza they served that she loved for some reason. Her usual. It felt good that I knew that about her, especially for those times that she felt distant and I felt like I was fighting a losing battle.
"I can't believe you still eat that shit," I quipped.
"I like my pizza with girth," she said, taking a bite out of a slice. It was bread at that point. Bread with cheese and pepperoni on it. This was part of the reason why we never got pizza together, she hated thin crust and pineapple, while I couldn't stand the thick crust. She took another bite happily.
"I can't afford to eat like this every day, let me enjoy it while I can," she said.
"If it makes you this happy, why not?"
"Long as I'm happy weighing fifty more pounds than I do now. You boys have it so good."
"Just come to the gym with me," I suggested.
"Not a chance in hell. Not again," she laughed. She worked out, she was small, but she liked to take care of herself. She did it mainly from home; those easy at-home videos you can get online. Or at least that was what she had preferred doing before. Once I had managed to convince her to come to the gym with me... Let's just say that was the last time she ever did.
"You still do those little work out videos?"
"Are you saying I need to? Are you calling me fat?" she teased.
"You're trying to get me in trouble. You know I didn't say that."
"Choose your next words wisely," she said, peeling a pepperoni slice off the pizza and eating it on its own.