Still packing up, she says, “What about—that you’re a coward?”
The words sting. I didn’t leave her because I was afraid. I left her because I couldn’t protect her. Even though I’ve buried myself in work for the last six months and the firm is going well, there’s not a day that that ugly truth doesn’t intrude. “I wasn’t running away when I left you.”
“Sure as hell looked like it. Why are you even here, Dieter?”
Good question. Looking at her flushed cheeks and bitten lips, I find I can’t remember. I think I just wanted to see her. I’ve missed her. “I wanted to know that you’re all right.”
She rolls her eyes at me and reaches for her backpack. “You know what? Fuck you.”
“I want to know that you’re all right and I get a ‘fuck you’?”
Standing up suddenly, she leans over the table and shouts, “You deserve a hell of a lot worse than a fuck you, Dieter.”
People have started to look, and I’m conscious that these are her classmates. They can think of me what they like but I’m sure she’ll be embarrassed later if we air our dirty laundry in front of them. “Adrienne, you’re making a scene. When I arranged for Martin—”
But she cuts me off and goes on just as loudly, “I have not yet begun to make a scene. You think I’ve enjoyed doing all this without you? Do you think it’s been fun for me, getting attached to you, starting to like you, starting to feel like you might—and then you just decide that you weren’t up to your high standards or whatever and you just leave? Why didn’t I get a say in that?”
I stay seated and I don’t raise my voice. “You’re right, Adrienne. I’m sorry I didn’t give us a chance to talk about it properly at the time.”
This only seems to make her even angrier. “Will you stop being so polite? I want to speak to the real Dieter, not this well-mannered simulacrum spouting bullshit about whether I’m all right or not. Of course I’m bloody not all right.”
I don’t know if it’s the confession that she’s not all right or watching that pretty mouth of hers frame ugly words, but I feel my eyes narrow and my voice lower to that dangerous, commanding register. Enunciating every syllable I say, “Watch your mouth.”
Her eyes spark in response, and she leans down and says, just as precisely, “Make me.”
She’s that bratty girl in the kitchen again, calling her new bodyguard a troglodyte and having a meltdown because she’s not getting her way. My hands itch to take hold of her, to kiss her, to correct her.
But then suddenly she isn’t a little brat anymore. Her eyes fill with tears and her angry façade crumbles. “No, seriously, Dieter. Make me. I’m so tired of everything. I’ve got on with things since you’ve been gone, but it’s been so hard. I’m not impatient to be brave like I was when I was with you. It’s been no fun without you.” Her voice cracks on the last words.
I stare at her, breathing hard. “I didn’t come here to...” I begin again, but we’re well past that. Watching her lower lip tremble I suddenly don’t care who’s listening in. I just want to get this out. “Being a dom is about showing good judgment, and I’ve shown you I can’t offer you that. I just wanted to tell you that I’m sorry, and to wish you well.”
She pulls her sleeves down over her hands, and the gesture makes me think of all those mornings mixing two cereals together for her, of her arms snaking around me and stealing kisses, of watching her chew her thumbnail and draw pictures and a hundred other things she did that made me want to keep her safe and loved and protected.
I can feel my brain getting fogged up with wanting her. That is the last thing I intended, so I get up and walk out.
There’s a screech of chair legs against linoleum and I realize I’m being followed. She keeps pace with me, a few steps behind, all the way out of the Slade and onto the street. I remember another day, months ago, when I followed her out of the
same building.
“Are you going to follow me all the way to my car?” I call over my shoulder.
“Yes.” There’s a bratty well duh edge to her tone.
“Why?”
“Because I don’t accept your apology.”
We reach the car and I keep my back to her, my shoulders rigid like a shield. I shouldn’t have come. Whatever my intention was I’ve upset her by coming here, and during such a difficult time.
But then I realize something. She’s upset, but she’s not flipping out. She’s not throwing a tantrum or trying to take control of the situation in a provocative way.
I turn to look at her, and her cheeks are pink with fury and she’s breathing hard, but she’s got a look of determination in her eyes that I’ve never seen before when she’s so emotional. I was never fazed by the brattiest of her behavior, but all the same I’m fascinated by the change. “What can I do to make you accept my apology?”
“You can admit that you were wrong to leave me that day.”
I shake my head. I’ve been over and over this in my head. I wasn’t wrong to leave her. She needs someone who’s stronger than me, who doesn’t make decisions that means people get hurt, or broken. I thought waking up in hospital after my accident was the worst feeling of my life, but seeing her lying in a hospital bed was far crueler.
“Admit it, Dieter.”