I’m not just going through the motions. No one pressured me. No one pushed me. I knocked on the door because I intended to. I’m standing here because this is exactly where I mean to be.
It’s me, Anna. There’s something I need to say.
THIRTY-SIX
Quan
I’m standing in the shower, enjoying the exhaustion in my muscles and the stinging spray of hot water on my skin after my run with Michael—I sold him on the R2R2R run, and we’re planning to do it together as soon as we’re both ready—when I hear the knocks on my door. I groan and crank off the water before wrapping a towel around my waist. Michael must have forgotten his keys here or something.
When I open the door, I’m not at all prepared to see Anna standing there. Her color is off, washed-out almost. I can tell she’s nervous. But there’s a fierce glint in her eyes and a stubborn tilt to her chin. She looks like she did in her YouTube video right before she played the first notes on her violin. She’s absolutely beautiful. For a full two seconds, the breath is knocked out of me.
“I wanted to talk to you, if that’s okay,” she says. “To apologize.”
That word, apologize, makes everything come back to me, and I tighten my grip on the door handle as my need to keep looking at her wars against my need to shut the door in self-preservation. “You already apologized. You don’t need to do it again.”
“Does that mean you’ve forgiven me and you’ll take me back?” she asks in a hopeful tone. Her smile is light, but her eyes remain dark, uncertain.
“Anna . . .”
She looks over my shoulder into my apartment. “Can I come in?”
I indicate the towel around my waist and try to gently turn her away by saying, “Now’s not a great time. I was in the middle of—” Her face drops and her eyes gloss over as she backs away, and I can’t help it, I open the door wide. “Come in.”
Her expression immediately brightens, and she walks past me and enters my space. It’s the first time she’s been here, I realize. I don’t know how I feel as she considers everything. It’s decently neat because I finally had a cleaning lady here, and the place came furnished with all these contemporary-style couches and decorations and things. None of this represents me, but it’s bright and airy, especially in the daytime like this.
“It’s nice here. Thanks for letting me in,” she says, being so damn polite that this is ten times more awkward than it should be. We broke up, but it’s still us.
She falls silent then, and my gaze drops to her hands, where she’s mangling her purse’s shoulder straps. I feel like I need to comfort her somehow, to calm her down, and I clasp my hands behind my back so I don’t do something stupid like hug her. My arms get twitchy at the thought of it. They ache to hold her.
I forcefully remind myself that we’re over. No self-respecting guy would get back with her after what she did.
“I’m sorry,” she says suddenly. “I’m so sorry for what I did. It’s because I have trouble speaking up, especially in public, and especially when my family is involved. I know that’s a horrible excuse, but it’s true. I’m determined to change, though. I promise you that I’ll never do something like that again where you’re concerned—if I have the chance. I’ll draw a line around you, and I’ll protect you and stand up for you and speak up for you when it’s right. I’ll keep you safe. And I’ll do the same for me. Because I matter, too.”
Her words, the expression on her face, her body language, it all begs me to give in. Part of me wants to. But a bigger part of me remembers all too well what it felt like when she let another guy announce they were getting married and kiss her in front of her entire family, a guy she told me she was going to break up with. “I know you mean what you’re saying. At least you do right now. But, Anna, when the time comes, I don’t trust that you can actually do it. I just don’t. You’re ashamed of me. Because I’m not like fucking Julian.”
She sucks in a sharp breath. “I’m not ashamed of you,” she says forcefully as tears spill down her face. “I don’t want you to be like Julian. I want you to be just as you are. I love you. I don’t know how I would have gotten through these past months without you. Every day in that house is hell for me, watching my dad suffer, watching him hate his life, and keeping him alive anyway. It destroyed me bit by bit until there was almost nothing I wanted to live for. I’ve been swallowed up in sadness and pain and hopelessness and every different kind of self-hatred that exists. But you’ve been my bright spot. You’ve pulled me through. The only good thing this broken heart of mine can feel is love for you.”
Her words hit me so hard that I feel shell-shocked. I know she’s telling the truth. I can hear it in her voice, and it matches what I saw with my own eyes. I take several steps toward her before I realize what I’m doing and stop myself. “I didn’t know how bad it was,” I whisper, addressing the first part of what she said and not the second. I don’t know what to say about her admission of love. It’s what I’ve wanted, but I’m afraid there isn’t a path forward for us.
She looks away from me and wipes at her face with the back of her hand. “I didn’t know how to talk about it. Good people don’t feel that way about taking care of the people they love. It should make me feel . . . happy, purposeful, things like that.”
“Your dad’s case is different,” I point out. “I don’t judge you for feeling the way you do.”
“My family does,” she says, and her face wrinkles with such intense hurting that I take another step toward her. “But I’m going to learn not to care what they think, what anyone thinks. I have to. Because I can’t go on like this.”
She drops her purse to the floor then and squares her shoulders as she looks at me with intense resolve.
“I can’t make you trust me, but I can show you how much I trust you,” she says before she pulls down the side zipper to her dress.
“What are you—”
She pulls her dress over her head and carelessly drops it to the ground, and my tongue lodges in my throat. I can’t guess what she’s doing. That would require thinking. All I can do is watch as she reaches behind her back, unclasps her bra, and lets it fall away from her tits. Biting her bottom lip, she reaches for the waistband of her underwear, pushes them down to her ankles, and kicks them to the side.
I greedily drink in the sight of her naked body, her tits and dark nipples, the curve of her belly, the flare of her hips, the cloud of wild curls between her luscious thighs. I’ve never seen this much of her. Because we’ve only had sex in the dark.
Breathing rapidly and visibly shaking, she searches about my apartment until she finds what she’s looking for and heads there. To my bedroom. My legs follow her without my telling them to, and I watch, completely stunned, as she pulls open the blinds on all the windows, sits on my unmade bed, and scoots back until she can rest her head on my pillow.
She shuts her eyes and turns her cheek toward my pillow, breathing deep like she’s pulling my scent into her lungs. “You wanted me to tell you . . . or show you . . . what I like,” she says. “It’s hard for me, so please . . . be patient with me.”