The Guilty - Jason Pinter [127]
up to me. Her hands were in her pockets. She moved her toe
back and forth across the pavement, afraid or unwilling to
make eye contact.
"Hey, Amanda," I said.
"Hey" came the flat reply.
"Were you able to find--"
"Yes," she said, cutting me off. "A friend said I could sublet
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her studio for a few months. Rent's not too bad. Commute is
kind of a killer. Guess you take what you can get."
"Yeah," I said. "Guess so."
She looked at me, the pain and hurt and confusion in her
eyes nearly tearing me apart, letting loose everything I wanted
to say but knew I couldn't.
"So what happens now?" she asked.
"I don't know," I replied. "I do want to see you again."
Amanda shook her head, and it was just then that I saw
she'd begun to cry.
"Nope," she said. "If we end this...I want to end it. I don't
want to have to think about this every time I see you. I just
want to pull it off. Like you said."
"Amanda." I never wondered, in all my life, what it would
feel like to tell the girl I loved, who loved me back, that I
couldn't be with her. Part of being in love, part of being a man
was putting your loved ones above yourself.
I didn't love Mya anymore. Not like that. But she'd paid
a price for my failures. I had a debt to pay her back.
To keep Amanda safe, to keep her alive, I had to leave. I
knew pulling away from her would tear open a wound that
would probably never heal. But at least at some point the
bleeding would stop; it would scar over.
I noticed her hand had left its pocket and was fidding with
her jeans absently.
"What's that?" I asked. She seemed surprised.
"Nothing," she said. "Just, you know...guess old habits die
hard."
"Show me," I said, but had a feeling in the pit of my
stomach that I knew what it was. She stared at me as she
brought it out. A small spiral notebook. Just like the kind she
wrote in back when we met. Back when she had nobody, and
every person she met was cataloged in one of those note-368
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books. For a girl who'd grown up with no real family, no real
identity, those notebooks helped her hold on.
I hadn't seen her write in them in the year we'd been a
couple. And now that we were coming apart, she needed
them again.
It's for the best, I told myself. She's smart. She's beautiful. She has the world waiting to open itself for her. If you
stay with her, you selfish bastard, you could steal it all from
her.
And so I knew I had to end it.
"If you ever need anything," I said. "Someone to talk to..."
"I won't," she said. "But I appreciate the gesture."
"Right," I repeated blindly. "Gesture."
She wiped her nose, sniffed once.
"Well then, goodbye, Henry." She turned to leave.
"Amanda," I said. She turned back. The tears were flowing
from her eyes, and all I wanted to do was gather her in my
arms, kiss her and tell her everything would be all right. But
to do that would allow events like the other day to happen.
Jack was right. He'd been right all along. And Amanda nearly
paid for my ignorance with her life.
"If you want to say something, Henry, say it." My mouth
opened but nothing came out. So she said, "Goodbye, Henry."
Amanda walked away without saying another word. I
watched as her hand went to her pocket again, then wiped
at her eyes, and before I knew it she'd turned the corner and
disappeared.
I stared at the empty street for several minutes, half hoping
something would happen, the rest of me praying it wouldn't.
And when I was sure it wouldn't, I turned around and
went back inside.
(r)
ISBN: 978-1-4268-1341-2
THE GUILTY
Copyright (c) 2008 by Jason Pinter.
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or
utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic,
mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher,
MIRA Books, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.