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hannahssimblr · 3 months

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Chapter Thirty

The rain has slowed by the time we reach the shore, but clumps of damp sand still cling to our shoes and droplets of water to our clothes. Jude offered me a rain jacket back at the beach house but I refused. He never got one for himself either, but if he cares about the soaking wet shoulders of his sweatshirt he doesn’t show it. Raindrops form on the ends of his hair and fall down onto his face and it’s like he doesn’t notice that either. I wonder what is going on in his mind.

He doesn’t look back at me even as I gaze at him. The side of his face is framed by a grey and blue blur of sky and sea, mist and cloud. Waves crash, seagulls caw, our feet crunch into the wet sand with every step, and I don’t even know where to begin.

But he speaks first, “So you want for this to be over? You’re done with me?”

I fill my lungs with cool air, “Don’t say it like that, it sounds harsh.”

“Yeah, it is harsh.”

“I don’t know how to do this the right way.”

“There isn’t a right way, it’s-” he breaks off and presses his fingers into the space between his eyebrows, “Just- why are you doing this?”

“Because it’s the right thing to do.”

“How could it be the right thing? It’s the wrong thing. It’s the worst thing, and I’m asking you not to do it.”

“Jude-”

“Evie, please,” he whirls around to face me, and I don’t know what I expected his eyes to look like, but it wasn’t this, the level of confusion and pain on his face is enough to make me want to stagger backwards. God, why am I doing this? “Whatever it is, I know that we can work it out together,” He pleads, “just talk to me about what you’re thinking.”

“I don’t want for us to hold each other back.”

“We’d never do that to each other.”

“We’re already doing it though, all of these conversations we’ve been having these last few weeks, all of this going back and forth about where we want to live and how we might make it work, it’s just becoming really clear to me that there isn’t a perfect solution.”

“Of course there is, we can find a way, I don’t understand why-”

“It’s simple, Jude,” I cut in, “you want to go to America, and I want other things for myself. I can’t hold you back from your dreams, so I’m letting you go.”

“What if I don’t want to be let go?”

“I’m not going to be the reason why you don’t find success in your life, I can’t live with that. If you don’t go to America you’ll regret it for the rest of your life, and then you’ll resent me, and-”

“I want you more than I want some job.”

“That’s not true. That job could give you everything you want.”

He stares at me, and I say, “You don’t want to be here, in Ireland, I mean, and I know that you wouldn’t be if it wasn’t for me. You hate it, it’s not your home, do you think I don’t know how miserable it makes you to be here, how out of place you feel? You can’t make big life decisions based on your girlfriend, especially when you’re twenty two, that just doesn’t make-”

“Evie you don’t get it,” he implores, “What we have, you and I, this isn’t a normal thing. It never feels this way. Of all the relationships I’ve ever been in you’re the only person who’s made me feel this way, it’s like, cosmic, it’s crazy, the way I’m in love with you and the things I feel about you make me wonder if I ever truly loved another person before you came along.”

I fold my arms, “I do know this isn’t normal.”

“I don’t think you do, because if you did you wouldn’t be giving up on it. We could go our whole lives looking for something like this again and we’d never find it, in fact we will go our whole-”

“Jude,” I say as my chin begins to tremble, “I’m not saying this is forever, okay? I’m saying that it isn’t going to work now. Where we are in our lives and what we want for ourselves means that we will torture ourselves doing long distance, and then one day we’ll realise that it’s not worth it and we’ll resent each other for ever putting ourselves through it. Maybe one day in the future-”

“Well I don’t want one day in the future, I don’t want to waste any more time being apart from you, I wasted years like that already. I want now.”

“But now isn’t right.”

“Why isn’t it?”

“Because you want to be home. You want to be in America.”

He puts his hands on my arms and stares intently into my eyes, “But why can’t you come, Evie? Why can’t you come home with me? It will all work out if you do, I don’t understand-”

“Because I can’t just pack my things and go!” I cry, “I’ve researched it, okay? It’s easy for you but it’s not easy for me. They don’t just let anyone in. I’m not a citizen, I don’t have a visa, the process of trying to get myself there is so overwhelming and stressful, I can’t do it.”

“I’d wait for you. Even if it took months, I swear. You could come and visit whenever you could until it’s sorted out.”

There he is, I think. Jude the idealist, the romantic, the passionate and the unrealistic. The Jude that wishes his life was a movie or a novel with a neat ending where everything is tied up, and everything works out the way that you want it to.

“And I get it sorted and then what?” I say tensely, “I’m trying to get a job doing something artistic in LA, where every single person is trying to do the same thing, and they all have the advantage of being born there and not needing visas to work, and all of them have been to university and have degrees, which I won’t have because I’ll have dropped out to make the worst decision I’ve ever made in my life.”

He reels back and blinks hard like I’ve slapped him, “Being with me would be the worst decision you’ve ever made?”

And predictably, this, the pain on his face makes me cry, “No,” I sniffle, “No, that isn’t what I meant, it’s just when I think of all I’ll have to do to survive there, and the possible misery that waits for me, it just makes my chest feel tight and my heart beat so quickly that I think I’ll die. I can’t do something like that, it feels wrong in every part of my body. It’s not what I want.” I try to force back a sob, “I don’t even know what I want either, whether it’s to go back to college or try something new, I just don’t know. I’m going to have to work it out and really think long and hard about everything, but my gut tells me that it’s not LA, you know? LA is not the place, and I know that it’s what you want. You can’t possibly say no to it, it’d be ridiculous if you did. So that’s it. There’s nowhere we can go from here.”

“God, Evie,” His hand comes to gently cradle my face, and the gesture makes me want to throw my arms around his neck and kiss him until I’m breathless, but I don’t move a muscle. “What if I could take all of that stress away, you know? Make it so that visas don’t matter. Would that change anything?”

I look up at him through teary eyes, “What does that mean? How would you do a thing like that?”

“Well there are ways, you know, if you’re an American citizen, to extend that citizenship to your partner so that they can come and live with you in the states.”

My breath catches, “You mean marriage.”

“Well we wouldn’t have to think of it like that, we could just sign the papers and go on like we always have, and then do it for real later, and really, what would it matter because the way I see it’s more like fast tracking the inevitable, right? I figured that we might do it someday anyway so-”

I step back from him and he lets his hand drop, suddenly furious at what he’s offering. His promise of this wild, romantic future bears no resemblance to rational reality. “God, stop, Jude that’s ridiculous.”

He frowns, “Why is it ridiculous?”

“Because we’re too young to do something like that.”

“We’re adults-”

“Yeah but we’re still stupid. I can’t sign a contract like that, I can’t even think about that. I feel like I don’t even know who I am yet, you know? I have so many things to work out, and I’m doing so well at therapy and I’m only beginning to figure myself out and get comfortable in my own skin and-”

“But it might be a way to make everything work, make everything alright, and we won’t have to break up over this, Evie, seriously, think about it, it might be the only way.”

I shake my head, “But even if it was, it still isn’t the right choice. Do you remember what you said to me in Tullamore, when I showed you my application form for the Berlin Fine Arts Academy? You said that you would have felt guilty if chasing you was the sole reason I chose to move there.”

He bites his lip and nods.

“And if I moved to America, it’d be the same.”

He swallows convulsively, “So you don’t want to go, you have no interest in any of it, even if I could promise to take care of you and support you while you looked for work-”

“No, I don’t want to go there, it’s as simple as that.”

“But I’ll stay then.”

“Jude,” I touch his face and I’m surprised by how eagerly he leans into me like he is starved of my touch, “imagine if I got my dream job, say, in London like I’ve told you, and I gave it up because of you. How would that make you feel?”

I take in his tense jawline, the sharp movement of his shoulders with each shallow breath. He doesn’t answer me.

“I know it’d make you feel guilty,” I say softly, “at least I hope it would. I hope you would never ask me to give up on the thing I want most. And you know what else I know? I know that I’d never forget it, and I’d grow to loathe it, resent you and be bitter and angry and I couldn’t handle it if you felt that way about me because I made you stay here, I really couldn’t.”

“Evie, I just don’t want to do this on my own.”

“But if it wasn’t for me, like, if you and I never met and you never knew me, would you take this job and move to LA?”

His eyes zig zag over my face wildly as though he can’t figure out what I’m asking, or perhaps he’s never thought of it before.

I plant my other hand on his face and hold his head captive, “Jude,” I say again, “Would you take that job if I didn’t exist?”

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#lucky girl part 3 #the last chapter ahhhh omg!!

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