Read Online Carrie Pilby by Caren Lissner - Free Book Online Page B

didn’t look so kind anymore. “What’s the matter?”
    â€œIt won’t sound like me. It won’t sound right.”
    â€œSay it any way you want.” He leaned over me and kissed me again. “Come on.”
    I just looked up at him.
    â€œWhat’s the matter with you?”
    â€œIt’s not…I can’t.”
    He sat up and looked into the distance.
    â€œDavid?”
    He ignored me.
    â€œCome on. I’m…”
    He rolled over on his side and pulled his blanket up. “Forget it. What’s the use?”
    â€œAre you mad at me?”
    He ignored me again.
    I turned over, too, but I couldn’t sleep.
    I lay there, my back to him, quietly waiting for him to change his mind. I wanted to get up and put on some bedclothes, but I thought that the more silence there was, the more he’d need tobreak it. I was scared even to breathe. I watched the red numbers on his clock radio change.
    Eventually I fell asleep. At some point in the night, I woke up and pulled on a T-shirt. Then I went back to sleep.
    In the morning, when I awoke, David was already in the kitchen, heating up coffee. I padded in there, and he gave me a silent nod and went back to the coffee. He also was quiet in the car going back to campus.
    I went through my classes upset but trying to concentrate. When I came home, the light on my answering machine wasn’t blinking.
    I collected my introductory philosophy books and read in bed. An hour passed without a call. I was scared. Why had I been so stupid?
    But he would have to give me another chance, right?
    I read Meditations on First Philosophy, but my eyes just kept rolling over the same words again and again, as if I were highlighting the book in varnish. Nothing stuck. Every few minutes, I looked at my clock. Dinnertime was approaching. I’d have to hike down to the dining hall and sit at the end of a table alone. Doing that always gave me an empty feeling in the pit of my stomach. I didn’t want to do it if he was going to call.
    I felt hungry. I ignored my stomach and tried again to concentrate on Meditations, but I decided maybe I needed something light to read. So I picked up Thus Spake Zarathustra.
    The phone rang.
    I reminded myself, even as I dashed to it, to make my voice sound uninterested.
    â€œHello.”
    I wouldn’t have admitted it, and it sounds very clichéd, but clichés become clichés because they happen: when I heard his voice, my stomach jumped.
    â€œI went out and got wood for the fireplace,” David said. “I could use a little help initiating it.”
    I wanted to tell him how happy I was that it was him, how scared I’d been, how much I’d missed him and how I would say whatever he wanted. But I didn’t. I told him I would meet him outside in ten minutes.
    That night, we ate heaping bowls of linguine at an Italian place, then went to David’s apartment. Once in the living room, we lay down on the rug in front of the fireplace, a bottle of wine between us. David put his glass down on the brown tiles and lay on his side in an S shape, his knees bent. I rested my head on his jeans and stared into his chest. Thank God everything’s okay, I thought. It felt so good just to lie there, listening to him breathe. I closed my eyes, and we both lay quietly for a while. Then, I felt his fingers move over my wine-ripened lips. “Come here,” he whispered, and he brought my chin to his face. “Let’s stay here for a change,” he said, and I nodded. Soon he said, “Say it. What I wanted you to say yesterday. Please.”
    Before he’d called, I had told myself I would, and on the way over, I had told myself I would, but now I couldn’t. It didn’t seem like the right words. It didn’t seem to fit with either me or with us. And why did he want me to say it, when he knew how much it bothered me?
    â€œSay it!”
    I started. “‘I…