The Tamesis
Jeffrey sighed and began to fix his hair again. “I have nothing to defend myself. I am just a person who is committed to his job and is not good at communicating.”
I frowned. “How is this possible? Your whole job is to actively listen and follow up on questions. I’ve seen firsthand that you are very good at this.”
“Because I choose to be good at it. I actively work on it. I haven’t done this in my past relationships. My last serious relationship ended two years ago. Her name was Annika and she was introduced by a mutual friend. In the beginning, it was the easiest relationship I’ve ever been in.”
“So, what happened?”
“I was on three missions in a row and I decided the opportunities were too important to pass up. I was flying back from Rome on the worst possible route with three layovers when I got her FaceTime call. It turned out I’d missed her birthday without realizing it.”
I grimaced. “That’s really bad.”
“Yeah, she was more resigned than frustrated then.” He winced, as if he didn’t want to move on, but was trying to move on anyway. “I said I never thought about her before I took these jobs. And she was right. I didn’t even think about her.”
“It appears we’ve had the opposite problem in the past.”
He nodded. “I didn’t want to do this anymore. I’d been through enough therapy to know that I wanted to show up positively to the people I was with. The path I had chosen was pretty lonely, and I wanted to see what would happen if I actually gave it a try.”
“And I don’t want to lose myself again.”
We dance around our thoughts. What do we want from each other. It felt too serious to say the name directly, but the true meaning behind our words hung in the air between us. I know we can all see it there.
When I couldn’t take it anymore, I pushed him with my shoulder and he pushed back into me. “Tell me what you’re thinking about right now,” he said into my neck.
I leaned a little closer, even though we were closer than etiquette required.
“Are you always Jeffrey? Never Jeffrey?”
He smiled softly and warmly. “That’s not what you’re thinking now.”
I shrugged, wishing I looked like one of those insouciant women in French noir. “It’s one of those things.” My heart was racing and I was finding it hard to focus on what was the right thing to do now.
“What’s the other one?” His eyes sparkled, and I knew he knew the answer. But he was attracting me. Forcing me to tell him.
My eyes fell to his mouth and I remembered the feel of his lips against mine. It felt so good, so right. “You know I can’t tell.”
“I know you think you can’t.” He turned to me, our lips just a breath apart.
My mind raced through a hundred, billion reasons why this was a bad idea.
The idea of Alex, his story, public scrutiny, his work, the foundation swirled around in my head, but for every valid, tangible reason I should leave, there was one reason to stay: I wanted to do this.
