Don’t Be in Love

41

Don’t Go to the Gardens — Adelaide

Without even looking, Dorian began, “Not right—”

“James, hi,” I said, startled, finding him in an ash gray suit. I let go of Dorian immediately as if we were caught making out.

Everyone was beginning to change dance partners and shift around the ballroom for the next dance—my chance to get away from Dorian. “That would be great.”

Accepting James’s hand, I watched Dorian’s wilt at his side, looking staggered as we stepped away. My view of him disappeared as other girls approached him like pinecones congregating on a branch. Other guests filled in my view of him.

James’s hold on my frame was light once the music began again. I elongated my steps to keep up with the singing of the violins and the guests around us. Every few steps, his hand would slip off my back and I’d rush my footwork to keep it in place. His right foot forward, my left foot back, his hand on my back, and our elbows up. The room was a crowd of sparkles as dresses were spun and champagne was sipped.

“You and Dorian alright?” he asked.

“Of course,” I reacted. He smiled but the corners of his lips barely pushed at his cheeks.

“I wasn’t sure if I was interrupting something.”

“Just the agony that is Dorian talking.”

“Ah he does like to talk.” He laughed lightly. It had an unsettled fizz to it. “Anyone else around here subject you to boring conversations?”

“Unless you count the guy at the coat check, no. I know approximately four people here and that includes you.”

“That’s not true. You’ve met my mother, and she’s here. Dorian’s parents are here too, have you met them yet?”

“That sounds about as terrifying as it was to meet your mother.”

We turned together and now I was facing the glass garden doors. “She can come off that way at first, but that’s only at events. She’d rather people she doesn’t know to just leave her alone, especially if she’s in the middle of having a drink.” He raised his brows. “Mrs. Blackwood is the same way, but she doesn’t show it on her face. She’d want to meet you though.”

“I appreciate you saying that, but she looks like she’d ask me to lint roll her shoes if I approached her.”

He laughed. “You’re not the only one that thinks that—maybe the lint remover part since that’s a tad specific—but Dorian’s father said she was always had this look on her face that said, ‘leave me alone.’”

“Her husband said that? Really?”

He shook his head. “Not in a cruel way, no. They attended university together—that’s how they met. They were both in this film history course and she’d sit at the front. If she wasn’t greeting someone she knew, then she’d be sat at her desk, pencil between her fingers, writing things down with a furrowed brow. Until she dropped it one day—or more so flung it—and it bounced right off Mr. Blackwood’s head when he walked in. She apologized profusely. He said that’s when he realized how kind she was. That the face was a fa?ade. A way to get people to let her concentrate in peace.”

“And he asked her out after that?”

“God no,” he laughed. “He was too nervous to ask her on a date. She wanted to make it up to him, but he refused. Instead, they ended up trading class notes in the library after. It ended up getting so late that he offered to walk her home from campus. Every night after that, he’d walk her to her flat just to spend more time with her. That was until she took a liking to him too and asked him out herself.”

The visualizations I had been creating of young Mr. and Mrs. Blackwood screeched to an echoing stop.

“What?” I stared at him.

“I know. He walked her home every night for like three months until she caught on that he liked her. The only reason I know all of this is because he tells it every year during our Italy trip. He swears that if he didn’t walk her home all those nights, that she would’ve never gotten to know him.”

I flexed my hand over his shoulder needing something to focus on that wasn’t the film reel of Dorian walking me home every night for the past four months.

The music felt louder. It was plucking sharp chords through my eardrums and making my eyes water. Where was Dorian? I didn’t see him. Was he dancing with Victoria now? Was she here? Had he walked her home too?

James’s voice calmed the noise. “You know, Adelaide, I’ve been meaning to tell you something—ask you something really, but this is much harder now that I’m standing in front of you …”

I curled and uncurled my hand. My nail beds were even clammy. “Yes?”

He opened and then closed his mouth. When he started again, it was so quick I almost missed it. “The dress looks perfect on you, I’m happy it fits.”

My feet stuck to the floor, bringing us to an abrupt stop in the crowd. “You sent me the dress?”

“I—uh—let’s talk outside.” He stumbled over the words, but his hand was firm in mine as he guided us out of the dance, through one of the many glass doors, and into the snow-dusted gardens. I held onto my skirts tightly as we fled into one of the few lit areas where the back of the museum was covered in dead vines and lights.

His palm was my heat source. The January air was biting down my arms and chest. I rubbed my skin to make the goosebumps disappear and the thoughts wipe away.

Of course, Dorian didn’t buy you the dress you fool, you’re no different than the rest of them .

“Please, have this,” James said, taking off his coat jacket.

“Oh , no that’s alright—”

“Adelaide, just let me give you the jacket. You’re cold and I’m the one that dragged you out here,” he said desperately.

I nodded. Draping the jacket over my shoulders, it ended at the middle of my thigh.

Taking a step back, he started, “You really had no idea that I sent the dress?”

“Why would I?” I asked, just as confused. This entire development didn’t make any sense. Dorian bought me the purse that I had spent years looking for, for my birthday, and gave it to me after he saw Victoria. And James bought me a dress to wear tonight.

“Gods,” he sighed, brushing a hand over his face in frustration, pacing.

I stepped forward, holding onto his suit jacket. “I didn’t mean to make you upset or offend you. We’ve never exchanged gifts before. If I had known I would’ve gotten you something.”

He waved his hand. The intricate lighting strung through the vines bounced off his jaw. “That’s not the point,” he exhaled. “I didn’t expect anything in return. It wasn’t supposed to be just some Christmas gift. I just—I—I don’t know.”

“Was I not supposed to wear it tonight?”

“No, no,” he shook his head. “I was hoping you would.”

I stepped forward again. Close enough to brush his arm. “James, just tell me what’s wrong.”

I touched his hand. It was surprisingly warm. But he pulled away, dropping it at his side.

“Because I love you, Adelaide,” he said weakly.

My heart dropped to the grass like a stone.

“You what?”

“I love you. I bought you the dress, hoping you’d wear it knowing it was from me, and that’d mean, that maybe, some part of you would feel something too because I couldn’t find the confidence to tell you how I was feeling face to face. But here we are,” his laugh dripped with sadness.

The words on my tongue dried up. I didn’t know what to say. I was nauseous; my heart outside my body and the air trapped between us. He was supposed to understand. To understand how my brain and my heart worked. That this never worked for me. He wasn’t supposed to get this close because I couldn’t give him that.

And now he’d leave me to protect himself.

“Please say something,” he pleaded.

I was replacing the cold gusts with the hot air in my chest. In and out. In and out. He’s going to leave you. Your friend is going to leave you, just like Sabrina and Mia. He’s going to leave and find someone else who can make him happy and give him a family with twins. And you’ll be alone for the rest of your life, holding onto trinkets and the scent of sawdust at the bottom of drawers.

I shook my head. “You know I don’t do this.”

“I know, I remember what you had said. I’ve thought about it every day since. But you don’t just choose not to love. You can’t control that. And if even some part of you cared for me, I had to know.”

“I do care for you, of course I care for you. You’re one of my best friends. But I … I’m not … I don’t fall in love.”

He dragged the corner of his lip under his teeth in thought. His cheeks were so flushed. I wanted to press my hands to the sides of his face to warm his skin and beg for his forgiveness.

“Who did you think bought you the dress?” he asked. His voice was solid, unwavering.

“What?” I pulled my arms around my chest.

“When you got the dress, who did you think sent it?”

“Does it matter?”

He rubbed the back of his neck and sighed. “It was Dorian, wasn’t it.” It was an answer, rather than a question.

“Well, yes, but—”

He scoffed. “I should’ve known.”

Turning away, he strode through the garden back toward the ballroom with his hands stuffed in his pockets. The layers of my dress kicked up as I rushed to catch up to him.

“Known what?” I shouted from behind him.

The snow-soaked grass brushed the tops of my feet as I passed walls of dead hedges.

“James please, just talk to me. I promise this has nothing to do with Dorian.”

He halted. The stairs leading back into the ballroom were only a few steps away. He turned and his face was a perfect painting of sadness: disheveled air, red-rimmed eyes, pink cheeks.

“This has everything to do with Dorian,” he exhaled. “Because you’re in love with him, aren’t you?”

“Of course, not—”

“I wish I believed you. But the look on your face says it all. The worst part is that I get it, because I’ve known him my entire life.”

I was stuck. I didn’t know what else to say. How to convince him otherwise.

He continued, “I know that you think you can’t fall in love, but you don’t get to make that decision. You can choose not to date and to keep yourself at arm’s length from others who love you, but you can’t choose not to fall.” He sounded tired. Crestfallen.

“James, I don’t love him.”

“Stop lying to yourself,” he said with the light nod of his head. “Stop lying to me and giving me hope.”

I clutched my chest as he walked away, taking the steps two at a time and re-entering the ballroom, leaving me with his jacket.

I sank into the stairs. I wrapped my arms around myself, clutching my skin like a blanket and letting his jacket fall behind me.

The edges of the gardens blurred. A soaked postcard. Tears filled my eyes. Goosebumps puckered around my ankles and the side of my thigh where the dress parted.

What’s wrong with me?

I stared up at the moon as if she’d have the answer, but her lingering stare and crown of constellations that reminded me of Mom only made me feel worse.

One of the doors behind me let noise from the ballroom escape. Footsteps tapped the stone and then hit the stairs. Suddenly, Dorian was in front of me.

“Finally, I found you. We need to go— Adelaide, what’s wrong?”

I sniffed and wiped the wetness from under my eyes. “Nothing, I’m fine.”

I hated that every time I looked at him, I saw the boy in the telephone booth, before I saw the man who preferred Victoria.

“Love, look at me,” he said, and I shivered. He stood on a step below, leaning down. I sat rigid, trying not to give in as his hands consuming my jaw with concern. His entire being overwhelmed me. “Are you hurt? Tell me what’s wrong,” he urged.

I brushed his hands away, rubbing the last of the blur from my eyes. “I’m fine, really.” He gave me space as I picked up James’s coat and stood, fixing my skirts. “I was just about to leave actually—”

“You can’t go out that way.” His hand on my elbow stopped me from ascending the stairs.

“And why is that?”

“Because we have a problem.”