“I catch a plane and go home to Santa Barbara.”

More heavy silence. The lump in my throat is strangling and I can’t look at him because if I do I don’t know what I will do.

“You can’t be serious, Chrissie. You’re not leaving.”

The room is filled with Alan’s panic and his need. It moves across my flesh like a chilled nightwalker.

“I have to go, Alan. I’m not ready to be everything you want me to be.”

“I don’t want you to be anything other than you are,” he whispers, his voice raw. He crosses the room and stops my hands in their frantic efforts of packing. “You’re not leaving, Chrissie.” His thumb traces my lower lip. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” I whisper, almost unable to push the words out of me. “But I have to go home.”

I step away from him and gather my clothes to wear. I lift his shirt to my face and breathe it in deeply. “Can I keep this shirt?”

“Why?”

“I love the smell of you. I want to smell you until I can’t anymore. In a perfect movie lovers would never end they would slowly fade away. I want to smell you until I can’t smell you anymore.”

He closes his eyes. Oh shit, that was a really shitty thing to say, but I didn’t mean it and I wish I hadn’t said it.

“You can keep the fucking shirt, Chrissie.”

My scalp prickles as every nerve in my body is suddenly blasted by a chill. The earth falls away beneath me. Oh no, this is not how I want this to go between us. What have I done? I don’t want us to part angry.

Alan pulls on his jeans and crosses the room to light a cigarette. Finally, he runs a hand through his hair and doesn’t look at me. “I’m sorry. You may have the shirt, Chrissie. My reaction to the shirt thing has nothing to do with you. It is an enormous irritant. The shirt thing. But I shouldn’t be rude to you. Sorry.”

My eyes open to their roundest and it takes everything I have not to cry. That was unkind, Alan. Why do you have to be such a shit at times? A shit who lets me know that girls taking souvenirs after climbing from your bed is a frequent event; a shit who on purpose reduces me to meaningless, when my words were only an accident; a shit because…

“You can stay, Chrissie. You can stay with me in New York. We can get married. Whatever you want. I’ll quit now before the tour starts. I don’t want you to leave.”

I have to get out of the room quickly. Anymore and I’m going to crumble and stay. “I can’t stay, Alan. And you don’t really want to marry me.”

That spikes his anger. “Don’t tell me what I want.”

Oh jeez, another stupid blunder. I’m going to ruin us if I don’t get out of here quickly. I sink my teeth into my lower lip and continue to dress. The words clog in my throat and they are too painful to speak. I hear them in my head: Oh Alan, I’ve got my own shit to fix.

“I can’t stay,” I repeat.

“If you leave we are over.”

Oh god, I see it and I don’t want to. Alan loves me, but right now Alan loving me is more a thing about him than me. He doesn’t want me to leave because he’s afraid to be alone. That’s the fear and desperation I see in his eyes and it is the wrong reason to stay.

We both have so much messed up shit we need to work through. It would be wrong for us both if I stayed. But I don’t remember me before Alan and I don’t know if I really want to.

I reach for my purse. He flinches as though I hit him.

“At least let me take you home,” he says in despair.

“No. I think I want to walk today. Can you have Colin deliver my things to the apartment?”

“You can’t walk home, Chrissie. There are at least two dozen photographers at the curb waiting to pounce on you. Don’t be unreasonable about this.”

How could I have forgotten about the tabloids?

“Then I’ll go with Colin alone. Can you call him for me? I want to go to the garage alone.”

I rush quickly from the bedroom. I head for the foyer. I listen. I am so relieved that Alan doesn’t follow me. I press the elevator button and the doors open. I couldn’t leave if he followed me, but that he didn’t really hurts me.

I lean back into the icy metal wall and stare at the square mirror images of myself. Oh, please doors close! Close quickly! Then I realize I haven’t pushed the garage button. I hit it and I am numb. The metal moves, taking me away.

Oh god—I’ve left him. Alan Manzone asked me to marry him and I’ve walked away. The only guy I’ve ever loved. The only guy who will ever understand me. The second the door slammed closed I knew it with certainty: Alan is the love of my life. Crippling pain slices through me and I am not at all sure I’ve made the right decision.

The love of my life…and I walked away. What have I done? The pain is indescribable, but I can’t surrender to my grief. I’ve got to pack up my mother’s things with Jack, catch a plane, and somehow return to Santa Barbara and fix my perfectly fucked up life.

Deep down I know I’m doing the right thing. The right thing for Alan. The right thing for me. It just doesn’t feel that way today. Alan is right: I never know what I want, but I always know how I feel.

* * *

Everything seems longer and slower and harder. Usually any return home feels faster and easier because it’s familiar. There is nothing familiar today. It is just long and slow and hard.

I have survived the first day without Alan and the trip to the airport with Jack. Internally I am still messy, but a different kind of messy. Parts of me have been quieted, new parts of me stirred awake, parts of me I leave behind, and parts of me I take.

I repeat that last part in my head. I want to put it in my journal once we are aboard the plane. There should be something in my journal about Alan.

We are ushered into the VIP wait lounge in the airport terminal, and for today that is more about me than Jack. The tabloids have been our crushing shadow all day. I don’t care. They don’t know what the last three weeks have been about, and they never will. Let them write what they want. No one other than Alan and I will ever know or understand it.

It is too honest. Too human. Too real. I love Alan and he loves me. That’s it. End of story. And I leave New York for the simple reason that that is what girls like me do. We say goodbye. We board the plane. We go home and fix our own shit.

Jack hasn’t said a word since we finished clearing out Mom’s personal things from the apartment. It never occurred to me until I came to New York that Mom’s things were exactly where she left them and Sammy’s room remains exactly the same as it was that day. Jack has lockboxes too. I am like him that way: keeping things in little boxes, hurting privately and slow to share my pain.

Jack’s silence today is more about him than about me, and I am OK with that. I understand it because I said goodbye to Alan today.

More airport security comes when it is time for us to board the plane, and by how everyone on the plane stares at us I can tell we are the last ones on the plane even though our seats are first class.

I laugh. No proletarian seats today.

We are in the air before Jack speaks.

“It’s going to be OK, Chrissie. It will all blow over. It always does.”

But I don’t want it to blow over. I am in love with Alan.

I smile. “Why did Rene leave yesterday?”

I was so consumed with Alan I didn’t stop yesterday to wonder why Rene left me.

“The school is graduating you early, Chrissie. They remarked that they would prefer you clear out your things on Sunday so as not to disturb the returning students. Rene and Patty are packing up your things from your dorm room today.”

Oh shit.

“Are the Thompsons angry we’ve been kicked out of school? I know how Rene’s mom feels about never having the crap be public.”

Jack gives me a small smile. “They didn’t kick out Rene. She left in solidarity and the Thompsons are cool with it.”