In Five Years

Chapter Twenty-Eight

“She doesn’t mean it,” Aaron says. We’re sitting at a diner on Lexington, some late-night one named Big Daddy’s or Daddy Dan’s or something like that. The kind of place that can’t afford to be downtown. I’m on my second cup of strong and bitter black coffee. I don’t deserve creamer.

“She does,” I say. We’ve been going through this script for the last twenty minutes, since Aaron ran up to the hospital’s double doors to find me crouching outside. “She always felt this way. She just never said it.”

“She’s scared.”

“She was so angry with me. I’ve never even seen her like that before. Like she wanted to kill me.”

“She’s the one going through it,” he says. “Right now, she has to think that she’s capable of anything, even alcohol.”

I ignore his attempt at levity.

“She is,” I say. I bite my lip. I don’t want to cry anymore. Not in front of him. It’s too vulnerable, too close, too near. “I just can’t believe her parents are behaving this way. You don’t know what they’re like—”

Aaron removes an invisible eyelash from his face.

“You don’t know,” I repeat.

“Maybe not,” Aaron says. “They seem to care. That’s good, right?”

“They’ll leave,” I say. “They always do. When she really needs them, they’ll be gone.”

“But Dannie,” Aaron says. He sits forward. I can feel the air molecules around us stiffen. “They’re here now. And she really needs them. Isn’t that what matters?”

I think about his promise on the street corner. I always believed it was just Bella and me. There was no one she could count on but me. There was no one who would really be there, forever, but me.

“Not if they’ll eventually leave,” I say.

Aaron keeps hovering closer. “I think you’re wrong.”

“I think you don’t know,” I say. I’m starting to believe it was a mistake calling him. What was I thinking?

He shakes his head. “You mistake love. You think it has to have a future in order to matter, but it doesn’t. It’s the only thing that does not need to become at all. It matters only insofar as it exists. Here. Now. Love doesn’t require a future.”

Our eyes lock, and I think that maybe he can read it there. Everything that happened. That maybe, somehow, he has reached back. That he knows. In that moment, I want to tell. I want to tell him, if only so he can carry this thing with me.

“Aaron,” I start, and then his cell phone rings. He takes it out.

“It’s work,” he says. “Hang on.”

He stands up and leaves the booth. I see him gesturing out by the glass doors emblazoned with the diner’s name: Daddy’s. The waitress comes over. Do we want any food? I shake my head. Just the check, please.

She hands me the bill. She hadn’t expected us to stick around, I guess. I leave cash on the table and get my bag. I join Aaron at the door, where he’s hanging up.

“Sorry about that,” he says.

“It’s okay. I’m going to head out. I should go back to the office.”

“It’s Saturday,” he says.

“Corporate law,” I mutter. “And I’ve been gone a lot.”

He gives me a small smile. He looks disappointed.

“Thank you for meeting me,” I say. “Really, thanks for showing up. I appreciate it.”

“Of course,” he says. “Dannie — you can call me anytime. You know that, right?”

I smile. I nod.

The bells on the door jingle on my way out.