Christine and I have had semi-regular dinners and coffees since shortly after we met, so I'm not sure why it felt so hard to make plans with her in the wake of our recent dalliance.
Okay, I do know. For the first time in a very long time, I like someone. I like her, but I can't be with her. We are within two months of returning to the Inn, at which point the role of Ed will go back to its originator and I think he would prefer to live out his days alone, looking after Pam and Cayden and Caesar the dog.
Which is fine. It's great, actually. I do not want him to take up my relationship (such as it is) with Christine. I do not want Christine to try to have a connection with him, thinking he's still me inside. It's an impossible situation that is going to require breaking some eggs to get out of.
So I put off reaching out to her out of self-consciousness about that fact... wanting to see her but not wanting to face the truth, and not knowing how to break it off gently or what I was even going to do or say. And in all this time she didn't really contact me either, there was a frostiness between us and it seemed like we had crossed a line we didn't mean to cross when she spent the night at my place (half naked in my bed.)
You may not think it but that's a memory I will cherish for a very long time...
After a few furtive, fumbling attempts at communicating in the last few weeks, we finally did manage to sit down, and what she said was surprising to me.
"We made a mistake, that wasn't right, this can't happen."
I was taken aback. I was supposed to be the one saying these things, but I felt no relief hearing them out of her mouth. I was confused and a little hurt, even though it was "easier" for me to get it this way.
I took a moment to gather my thoughts and admitted, "I'm sort of on the same page... but I'm curious what makes you think that?"
She sucked in her teeth, like she wasn't sure how to put it. Deep breath, hold, looking around the room, finally she said some generic stuff about "When it happened, it felt great, but afterward something just felt off, and everything that was right about it kind of was tainted, and... well, then there's Pam..."
Pam, huh.
"She's been calling me, asking, more demanding to know what's going on between us, am I after your money, or... or what, and I... I just don't have the stomach for it, Ed."
I was dismayed. This was not the sort of thing that was supposed to come between us. This, to me, was the kind of thing that if you liked someone, you figured it out. And if I were in any position to do so, I probably would have dismissed it and said "Hey, you let me worry about Pam, I want us to explore this" because that's what I wanted.
"You're a fun guy to be around, Ed. More fun than I would expect for a man your age, no offense. There's life left in you, and I hope that you enjoy your time and maybe find someone else who doesn't get off on the wrong foot with your daughter."
I placed a hand on top of my thinning scalp to absorb all of this, and run it through the filter of what do I think and then what should Ed think.
"I wish we could run away together," I said, perhaps with half a smirk, thinking of the Inn. "Someplace we didn't have to worry about Pam and all that. But that's not in the cards."
"No sir," she said.
We hugged and parted ways and I was left alone, a throbbing ache in my chest. When things ended with Laura it felt different... it was a slow disintegration that I didn't even notice happening so that when we were torn apart by the forces of the Inn we were both ready for it to happen. This was heartbreak. But it was necessary.
I wondered, as someone who is seemingly doomed to a life of wandering through the Inn, if I would ever be in a place to find love again. I literally do not know who I'll be in a year, but who does?
I went home and I thought about it all and I wondered exactly what Pam knew, or thought she knew, about me and Christine, and how. The answer seemed clear. I reached out to John, to ask what exactly he had told his "mom."
"Everything I could reasonably know," he said -- casually, like it was no big deal, "That you gave her money, that I thought I heard she'd slept over... of course I have to pretend like I'm a kid who doesn't know what that means."
"Why would you do that?" I asked, trying to mask my hurt.
"Because I couldn't let you get attached, Marc. I was looking out for you, the same way you looked out for me. You seemed to have some trouble detaching yourself from her. We have to move on, now don't we? I go back to where I came from, you move on to whatever it is you think you have ahead of you... better luck next time. Tell me if I'm wrong, if you honestly can."
I couldn't. It didn't feel good, but it wasn't wrong. The same way he eventually admitted it wasn't totally wrong for me to bring him to the Inn in the first place.
Hard truths. Sometimes it just doesn't work.
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