I didn’t say anything, didn’t want to break the spell. I walked over to him and reached out, drawing one of his hands to my waist and lifting the other in the air beside us. I circled my free hand over his shoulder, leaving a proper distance of space between our bodies. We almost matched up, practically eye to eye. I could see his objection coming, could feel the magic leaving him, so I pulled him gently toward me, starting the steps. One-two-three. One-two-three. And, like a miracle, he began waltzing.
Our pace was slower than mine had been. He moved me deliberately around the room, skirting the edge of the lake, never looking away from me. Neither of us smiled. I could feel my blood pumping warmer and faster, creating that reaction in the pit of my stomach that always happened whenever Peter touched me. I could tell he felt it, too.
After circling the dry half of the barn for what felt like an eternity, we moved to the middle and broke out of the waltz. Peter let go of my waist and spun me, slowly, one, two, three times from the length of his arm and stepped back, until only his fingertips brushed the edges of mine and then were gone. He let his arm fall to his side and we stood apart, breathing heavily.
“I don’t know what I’m doing here.”
“You’re dancing with me.” I tried to keep it simple, even though Peter never let anything be simple. He sighed and I knew complications were coming; they were climbing up his throat right now. I stepped forward and held my hand up. “Just wait. Wait.” I took a deep breath, remembering what I wanted to say.
“You’re going to be a shitty father.”
Peter opened his mouth. Closed it. Then said, “Thanks.”
“I’ve thought this all through. I know you, Peter. I know you think you have to do what’s right for the baby and stay with Mary, but she’s never going to leave Pine Valley. So you’re either going to be trapped here forever, hating every minute of it, or you’re going to eventually get divorced anyway and drag the kid through some awful custody battle, making him believe it’s his fault Mommy and Daddy hate each other, and leave him—or her—psychologically scarred for life.
“Then what? You’ll move back to Minneapolis to try to start over, alone, never seeing your kid anyway because you’re too far away for the every-other-weekend deal that most dads get. And by then I’ll be in my twenties or thirties, probably married to some Wall Street guy that I only liked in the first place because he kind of looked like you, hating him because he doesn’t understand me at all, and having his children, which I’m pretty sure I don’t want.”
Peter was trying not to smile. “What’s his name?”
“Barry.” I shook my head like I’d said it a million times, and it was stuck to me like chewing gum on my shoe. “His name is Barry. Can you believe it?”
“Yes, I can. Don’t forget that Barry has a good job. You probably have a time share in the Hamptons. Barry can give you the kind of life that you deserve.”
“Barry is an asshole.”
Peter burst out laughing and I plowed ahead, acting like the put-out wife.
“He never helps with the kids and stays out at happy hours with his friends all the time. When do you think was the last time he even took me to see a play, much less let me audition for one?”
Peter’s laugh trailed off and he shook his head at me, smiling. “God, I don’t think there’s a Barry in the world who can stop you.”
I walked over to my purse and pulled out a small, black-handled locker key, then came back and put it in his hand.
“Here’s your money. Kind of.”
As he stared at it, his forehead crinkled up the way I loved. “What’s this?”
“Our future.”
“We”—he emphasized the word as all the amusement drained from his expression—“don’t have a future, so what the hell is this?”
“Greyhound station, locker number twenty-four. Our tickets are inside.”
He made a strangled noise and spun away from me, balling the key into his fist. The barn floor shrieked as he paced too close to the water. I kept talking, careful to keep my voice neutral.
“We leave the week after graduation and I’ve reserved space in a hostel for a few weeks until we find a room to rent. With the rest of your money and my savings, we’ve got enough for a down payment and two months’ rent. I can transfer to three different CVS locations that have openings while you figure out your New York teaching license, but I think in the meantime you should work at one of the publishing houses.”
He swung back around, as angry as I’d ever seen him. “You’re delusional.”
“I prefer the term go-getter.”
“You lied to me. You said you wanted to return the money and say goodbye.”
“I do.” I stepped forward. “I want us to say goodbye together, to this barn, to this town, to this crappy situation. It doesn’t have to end this way, with both of us miserable and apart. We can escape. We can start our life together.”
“You want to start a life with a man who would abandon his wife and unborn child?”
“I want you, Peter. Just you. Not the labels you keep trying to put on us. I haven’t thought about anything except us in weeks. Here’s what I know.” I put my hand on his arm and, even though his muscles were tensed and rigid, he didn’t pull away.
“I know that when I met you I was untouchable. No one affected me. No one made me want to laugh or cry. I felt like I was above it all, but beneath it, too. Does that make sense? I was like a shell of a person. And you were this light that gave me the courage to see inside myself for the first time. But I didn’t know that you were broken, too. You made all the wrong choices, all the choices I might have made if I hadn’t ever found myself. You needed someone to save you just as much as I did. And now that we have, now that we’ve found each other, we can’t turn away from it. I can’t live the rest of my life knowing I had you and gave you up.”