Daron's Guitar Chronicles Volume 12

1049 Connected

Connected

"Are you doing all right?"

That was what he wanted to know. The one thing I really wasn't sure I could answer. "I was going to ask you that."

"I'm lonely," he said. "But you knew that."

"I'm sorry. I know it's my fault."

"It's not your 'fault' but it is you who could do something about it."

"Or you could come here." I was in the kitchenette of the showroom clean extended-stay hotel, feeling rather like I was the grungiest thing in the place. It was night and I was thinking about death.

"I could," he conceded. "Tell me what it's like."

"I've told you."

"Tell me again."

"It's fairly nice other than the specter of mortality hanging over everyone." I started making myself a Pop Tart just to have something to do with my hands and to break up the sterility of the countertop. "You too could spend your afternoons playing hearts with the aged and the infirm."

"Oh stop with the metaphors. You're kidding, right?"

"No, really. They taught me to play. If you were here we'd always have a foursome, though. It's better with four."

"Everything is everything."

"It would have been really helpful to have you here when we were picking out a dress for Courtney's graduation."

"Which is next week?"

"Yes." My heart started to hammer without warning. "Wait, why don't you come up for that? You know she'd love you to be there. And, you know, we need to get our stuff out of the sublet."

"I know. But next week is... I don't know, Daron."

He said my name and it sent a chill across my skin. He said my name instead of an endearment, like we were roommates instead of lovers. "I wanted to come through New York on my way back to Tennessee with Claire, but they don't want her to travel by herself."

"I might be in Australia next week."

I hadn't felt so crushed by words in a long time. "When will you know? I can't make plans to come there to see you if I don't know when you'll be there."

"And I can't hang around here just hoping maybe you'll finally make a break for it." He sounded more tired than annoyed. Maybe he was tired of having this argument. Again. "Do you mean it this time?"

"Do I mean what...?"

"That you'll come back to the city after you get Claire back to Tennessee? That you'll let your sisters do some of the work?"

"Court's just graduated. She deserves a break."

"You deserve a break. And I deserve to see my life partner in the flesh once in a while."

Life partner. He said life partner. "You do. We both do."

"Did you promise Court a trip to Disney for graduation?"

"I did, but she can't schedule it right now so she's just going to Provincetown with some friends for a long weekend."

"We should all go. To Disney, I mean. You and me and her and whoever else she wants. Or... Euro Disney?" He was sounding forcefully cheerful now instead of whiny and I appreciated that. It was like he was trying to work with me.

But I hated that feeling like we were having two different conversations, one on the level of words and one on a level where we didn't connect at all, where we were guessing what each other was thinking and really not being sure. It was the way we used to be, in the bad old days. It was how we were in South America, until he found me in the water tower.